As the semester winds down, most students have an end in sight. But for the Oswego State swim team, the end of finals marks the start of the most intense training of its season.

Following the Hamilton College Invite, which runs Dec. 4-5, the Lakers go home for the last three weeks of 2015. However, they will not be resting.

Head coach Mike Holman sends his teams, men’s and women’s, home counting on the athletes to keep themselves in shape. The sport is based heavily around training and too many days off at a time are detriment al to the individual.

“It’s on them to work out,” Holman said. “We give them their workouts and give them the expectations, as far as ‘This is part of our plan’ [and] ‘This is what you need to be doing.’ But we can’t watch over it. It’s not counted toward our season, so we can’t really demand it either. They’ve got to want to do it.”

At times, a bigger challenge for swimmers than keeping up with their workouts is not being able to find a pool. Luckily for the Lakers, most of their swimmers have close relationships with coaches from club teams they swam with growing up. That being said, the time away from their coaches does not get any easier.

“It’s unrealistic to have a similar training regiment while we’re here, but I try to get as close to it as I can,” senior Austin Nau said. “If I don’t have access to a pool, we have dry land exercises we can do, so at least we’re not sitting around doing nothing for a couple of weeks. We’re at least active and trying to maintain as best we can.”

Consistency will be crucial for the team’s newcomers. The Lakers added 12 new swimmers this offseason.

“I swam high school and club so, for me, it was a little different because I never had an offseason,” freshman Abby Mullett said. “But, still, it’s weird because we’re going to be training for so long but no meet, so we won’t really be able to see where we’re coming along. That’s definitely going to be interesting to see.”

In order to mix things up after New Year’s, when the team returns from its break, Holman is going to St. Petersburg, Florida, for 12 days before the team’s first dual meet of 2016 against Buffalo State on Jan. 16. Holman has brought the team to Florida in each of his nine seasons as head coach, something his coach did not do when he swam for the Lakers from 1992-1996. This will be the team’s eighth year at the St. Petersburg Aquatic Center.

“If we just came and stayed here, that’d be four weeks in Oswego in the winter with nothing going on and no one around. It’s tough,” Holman said. “When I swam, I did that and it was tough. Most swim teams go somewhere a little bit warmer for a couple weeks to hopefully make the training and the work a little more bearable.”

The warm weather is a plus during the frigid temperatures Oswego is famous for in January, according to Nau. But the practices also get much tougher. Holman views the trip as the season’s most crucial training period and plans practices accordingly.

The aquatic center’s pool is 50 meters, as opposed to the 25-yard pools the Lakers usually swim in, both at home and on the road. The longer distance keeps the swimmers from getting too comfortable in their training regiments and , more importantly, helps cut times.

“When we jump into the shorter pool, it seems like we’re going much faster just because of the distance change,” senior Dylan Tiefenthaler said. “Usually with how tough the practices were down there, we are generally faster.”

An added motivation this season will be provided by the team’s early season success. Both the men and women are off to 4-1 starts, riding four dual-meet winning streaks. For the men’s team, this is their best start under Holman, while the women are off to their best start since the 2010-2011 season. A key factor has been the immediate impact of the rookies, which Nau does not see being slowed by the time off.

“We do have that really good group of freshmen that are competitors. It makes it easier for everyone, coaching staff included,” Nau said. “We’re all on the same page. They know the expectations.”

The possibility of improvement when the SUNYAC Championships come around in February has the team motivated, according to Nau. The chance to do something greater has Oswego State focused on more than the dual meet victories it is enjoying now but, even as its looks forward, there is still a core focus on getting better each day.

“Every time you get in the pool, you just want to think about the next race, what you can do to improve it, how you can fix your stroke, how you can fix anything just to even drop .01,” Mullett said. “It makes a huge difference.”