While students away from campus toasted in the new year, Cabrini’s swim team continued a tradition. The team traveled to Florida for its annual winter training trip, a program staple for nearly a decade.
But this year looked different, in more ways than one.Not only is the team dealing with the school’s impending closure, but it also has the smallest men’s and women’s roster since the program’s inception in 2008.
Seven swimmers make up the 2023-24 Cavaliers: five seniors, one sophomore, and one freshman. It’s a change in size, but not a change in attitude. “Going into this year I thought [the size of the team] might leave a lot of things missing,” said head coach Cindy Ikeler. “But it’s been the complete opposite.”
Training in the Sunshine State
Ikeler took over as head coach of the Cavaliers in 2012. She embarked on the inaugural winter training trip her first year, taking the team to Naples, Florida. The team traditionally spends a week away from campus early in January participating in intense workouts and team activities to prepare for the final stretch of their season.
In recent years, the team trained in Orlando, where the swimmers stayed in housing separate from their coaches. This independence helped them grow closer as a group. For 2024, the small roster gave the team room to tweak its traditional structure.
Cabrini swimming spends much of the year raising money through various endeavors. Coach Ikeler sponsors swim lessons with her business Swimfast, and rents out the Dixon Center’s pool to local swim clubs year round.
“We’ve always worked hard fundraising wise,” said Ikeler. “Budgets rarely change, but roster sizes increase. Without knowing what was going to happen to Cabrini, we found ourselves with quite a bit of fundraising money. We wanted to make sure we used it on the team to give them the best experience this season, especially for sticking with it and hanging on when they didn’t have to.”
The extra money allowed Ikeler to make some changes for the better. Instead of seven days in Orlando, the trip was extended to nine. Past years only saw around half of the trip’s cost covered for the swimmers, this year it was free.
The trip’s purpose didn’t change, but the extra days allowed them to divide it into segments. Three days in a row brought double training sessions followed by a day of relaxation.
“It was nice to break up the trip the way we did and give them complete days off,” said Ikeler. “I felt like we could really capitalize on the time in the water, knowing they were going to have a recovery day.”
Senior business management major Michael Gray said the training portion of the trip is extremely valuable to the group’s overall success.
“Going into training of that intensity, especially coming off of winter break, is always tough,” said Gray. “It helps with getting back into shape quick and making up for time spent outside of the pool. We also understood that this is the last Cabrini training trip ever, so we made it a mission to go out and do as many things as possible together.”
The team’s first day off consisted of a trip to Discovery Cove, where the highlight was a swim with dolphins.
“When we got there it was chilly and pouring rain, but we still wanted to make the most of it,” said senior secondary education major Belinda Hedden. “Swimming with the dolphins was a crazy experience. Eventually the sun made an appearance, and it was just the best day. We really had a great time.”
The next recovery day brought a visit to Walt Disney World. The swimmers were dropped off with their tickets, free to control their entire day.
With other team activities including stops at Top Golf and Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, the trip was a unanimous success.
“The trip highlighted that everybody on the team has what it takes to be successful,” said Gray. “Everybody had to wake up at 5 a.m. seven days in a row, get in the pool for two hours, and then jump back in four hours later. Everybody went through the same day to day activities and we all came back better because of it.”
Ikeler agreed. “They never hit a wall where I thought, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t have extended it,'” she said. “They made it really easy because they worked so hard when they needed to work hard.”
The all-in approach
The hardest part about going to Florida in January is the reality of coming back to Pennsylvania weather and the start of the second semester. But the team picked up momentum from every aspect of their time down south that they hope will carry them through the rest of the year.
Saturday, Jan. 27 was the final home meet for Cabrini swimming. With the AEC championship meet on the horizon in mid-February, every day is one step closer to the end.
“I’ve adored working with this group,” said Ikeler. “I’m honored to work with them everyday… They were given the opportunity to walk away and not have a season, but they decided to go all in. I hope that we check all those boxes so they can feel super satisfied with putting in the time and the effort that they did this year.”
Ikeler mentioned something one of the swimmers said earlier in the year about what this experience really means for the student athletes: it’s not the times or the races that will make this year special, but the experiences that they share together.
Hedden said, “I hope we are remembered for our ability to find so much joy this year and embrace having a weird season.”
Cindy is an incredible coach and administrator. She took a program that was floundering and turned it into a supported, competitive program with full rosters that challenged for conference championships. Moreover, she created a program that developed great young people. There are people, especially in athletics, who define excellence by what happens on the field of play. Anyone who knew Cindy, knew that excellence was a lifestyle and swimming was a tool used to access and hone it. Cabrini was blessed to have her, and all those who swam for her are better for it.
Thank you, Jason, for this article. It’s easy to think of the closing at a macro level, and consider the poor decisions that brought it about. There are, however, much more meaningful stories all across campus reflective of the core of what we are losing. I hope many more of them can be told before the curtains close.
I loved reading about this trip. I love the “all in” attitude. I will miss seeing Cavalier Blue and White on pool decks.