VANCOUVER - Just under a year ago, the UBC Thunderbirds women's swim team won the 2012 CIS Championship in record-breaking fashion. In a truly dominating performance, they scored more points than any other team in meet history, and swept the individual MVP awards. A month later, four of those women went on to qualify for the Canadian Olympic team.
When you're surrounded by greatness, sometimes performances that would otherwise standout get overshadowed. Amidst all the glory and excitement, team captain
Laura Thompson (Port Perry, ON) was quietly having the best meet of her life. Flourishing under the training program of new head coach
Steve Price, Thompson placed in the top 5 in all four of her events, taking huge chunks of time off all her personal bests in the process. While she won a bronze medal in the 200 Individual Medley, two 4
th place efforts in the 100 and 200 Breaststroke were perhaps more impressive given that those events featured two of her Olympics-bound teammates,
Martha McCabe (Toronto, ON), and
Tera Van Beilen (Oakville, ON).
Following the meet, Laura took a six month break from the pool. “I had the best year of my life last year. I was so excited for this year, but I took the summer off, and taking 6 months off stings, so coming back was hard,” she admitted.
It's even tougher when your core group of friends won't be joining you this time. Laura's boyfriend, who was also a varsity swimmer, chose to stop swimming and focus on academics. Then her best friend was forced to leave the sport due to a serious back injury. With those two, and others, not returning, Laura “had that moment where I had to evaluate if I did come back, what was it that I wanted from the sport, and why do I still do it?”
It is said that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and Laura credits the time off for putting everything in perspective. For many athletes, time off shows them what else is out there in the world and opens up time for other things. But Laura says all she wanted to do was swim.
“Obviously when you're out of shape it sucks coming back and I wasn't happy that people had stopped. But I missed the pool. I love having a team. I love the feeling of having a good workout. I love the feeling of when you have a bad workout and you can work on one thing. I love being fit. You really learn to love that when you don't have it for a summer. The time off showed me that I'd started taking it for granted. It was really a clear answer that I love to swim still.”
You have to love your sport to want to do nine workouts a week. While the majority of races generally last two and a half minutes or less, UBC's swimmers spend 16 hours per week in the water, plus another seven or so doing dryland activities, such as weights, core work, and stretching. That's basically the equivalent of running marathons every day, sometimes twice a day, to race the mile on the track.
But Laura's dedication and commitment to UBC Athletics goes far beyond her efforts in the pool. She's been involved with the Thunderbird Athletic Council (TAC) since becoming the swim team representative in her second year. Last year, she was Vice President, and this year she was elected President. That's an extra hour or two for the TAC's weekly meeting, plus an estimated five more on her own planning events and charity initiatives.
In recognition of her contributions in the pool and out, both academically and in the community, Laura was recently named the Canada West Swimming Female Student Athlete of the Year.
The savvy political science major is a natural leader, but she claims that this is the extent of her life as a politician.
“I love UBC, and I love being a Thunderbird. As TAC President, I'm trying to make everyone's athletic experience of being a Thunderbird the best that it can be.”
Swimming has always been her main sport, but as the daughter of a physical education teacher, she played many others growing up and is an avid sports fan. Aside from her duties as TAC President, she follows every sport, big and small, and is a regular at Thunderbirds home games. You can see her eyes light up with excitement as she talks about how our athletes and teams are doing and says “we're having an UNREAL year.”
And she's right. The Thunderbirds are having a tremendous year, winning three national championships so far. Yet, getting fellow students to take notice is a challenge. Recognizing that having full crowds would profoundly benefit the teams and create an exciting atmosphere, Thompson says that getting people to games is the goal of what she's trying to do.
It has to start with the athletes themselves, and this is where Thompson hopes to make the change. She knows that if the athletes don't care about themselves and each other, they won't be able to get the rest of the UBC population to care or get involved.
“Every year we come and sit down and talk about how we can get athletes out to games. But you kind of have the conversation and then drop it. This year, we're trying to integrate and get more communication between different teams. We're trying to get the reps to make connections and hopefully make the athletic community closer and more cohesive so that they support each other more” she elaborated.
Laura wants to encourage every Thunderbird athlete to become more visible on campus, more knowledgeable about the other sports, and promote the Thunderbirds as much as possible through social media. Many UBC students may not even realize that they have met a varsity athlete, despite that there are currently around 650 of them.
“I feel the whole UBC experience would be more enjoyable if every student got more involved and energized about our sports,” said Thompson.
Just as politicians seek to get the youth vote in elections, Thompson looks to the future generation of UBC leaders as she tries to promote UBC Athletics. By capitalizing on all the students who live on campus, especially first years, she hopes to create a new wave of energized Thunderbirds fans. “I'd like to have the executive and other athletes go to Totem and Vanier residences and get them engaged. In first year, you're young, and you don't know. If we get them interested in athletics, we can change the generation and change the trend.”
While Laura is passionately at work trying to change our university sports culture and bringing UBC's athletes and the community together, she remains just as focused in the pool. The women's swim team once again captured the Canada West crown last month in Victoria, where they easily defeated the second-place Calgary Dinos by over 135 points. A rematch awaits as the Dinos will host the 2013 CIS National Championships from February 21
st to 23
rd.
“Steve always tells us that you're not going to see the payoffs of his program until at least 3 taper cycles, and I didn't even get 3 taper cycles in last year. So really, I have unfinished business.”
