The sound of UCLA swim coach Cyndi Gallagher’s “Ready, go!” rings out through the Spieker Aquatics Center like clockwork. She reads off the times of her swimmers and gets right back on it: “Ready, go!”
Every day at every practice, Gallagher unleashes her exclamations throughout the session, like a seemingly tireless steam locomotive.
“They get out, I tell them what the set is, they jump back in,” Gallagher said.
At its usual Monday practice, the UCLA swim team worked as tirelessly as its coach by going through individual medleys, which consist of all four strokes.
“(Practice) was IM, so it wasn’t really what I do, but I enjoy it because Cyndi makes us mix it up, so we work on things that aren’t our strong suits,” said junior Katy Campbell. “We become overall just better swimmers and more able to handle any challenges that get thrown in our races.”
It’s this kind of willingness to keep going and this level of dedication to a team that make a national team coach.
Earlier this year, Campbell won the 1500-meter freestyle championship at the Phillips 66 National Championship, qualifying for the U.S. national team under the 800m freestyle event. This automatically meant that Gallagher became a national team coach.
“It’s really an honor. It’s an honor that Katy made it – she deserved it. Last heat of the 1500 was just a perfect race for her,” Gallagher said. “It’s been her dream to be on the national team, to make the Olympics.”
Despite having had so many accomplished swimmers under her tutelage, however, Gallagher is not the kind of coach who focuses on times or on winning. She stresses “taking ownership of your race,” in that she wants the swimmers to be in control of how they train and how they compete.
U.S. junior national team swimmer sophomore Linnea Mack is a testament to this approach as well. Mack swam at the same championship as Campbell, qualifying as an alternate for the junior team in the 100m freestyle.
“Cyndi’s really good at kind of adapting to what people are used to, like their own style of training. (She’s) good at working with you and figuring out something that makes you go faster and obviously it’s worked for both (Campbell and Mack),” Mack said.
Gallagher watches her swimmers for their personal improvement to ensure that their work in practice is paying off. She admits that sometimes she doesn’t know if UCLA has won a swim meet until the end of the day, because her “tunnel vision” prevents her from noticing the other team at all.
“It’s all about the journey,” Gallagher said.