By Justin A. Rice/Daily News correspondent
While North coach Kirsten Tuohy always asks her swimmers to count their strokes so they can work on reducing the number of strokes they take per length, she especially likes to reinforce that point at the Perkins meet - during which she blacks out her team's goggles with duct tape.
``You can really tell whose stroke is absolutely mechanical and maintains the same stroke count, and you can tell who swims with feeling, who swims emotionally vs. methodically,'' North senior captain Caeden Brynie said. ``Those swimming with a lot of emotion run into lane lines, whereas people counting strokes every flip turn is exactly the same, and they are usually in the middle of the lane.''
But, as always, the meet, in which the two schools race about 20 heats of the 50 freestyle, is more about making friends and realizing that the swimmers have more in common than they realize.
``No matter what disability someone has they are still a person and you still want to have a conversation with them about their favorite chocolate, whether they like milk chocolate or dark,'' Brynie said. ``Making friends is a universal thing. It's great lesson to learn.''
The swimmers are paired up before the meet starts and everyone introduces themselves to one another before anyone jumps into the pool. Afterwards, they share a pizza party.
``We just finished eating 25 pizzas,'' said Tuohy, noting that the Perkins team out of Watertown consists of about 30 swimmers. ``The first year they might've had 10 or 11 kids and now they have, consistently, right around 30 because they have the opportunity to swim against a regular high school team.
``It's a wonderful experience. I have students over the years head off to college and tell their coaches this is something they'd like to do.''
Tuohy doesn't exactly remember how the annual meet first got off the ground, but recalls a social worker in the school district setting it up.
``I had done volunteer work for the Easter Seals for 10 or 12 years and loved doing that, so I thought it would be a fabulous experience for my girls and, indeed, it was.
``It's a challenge for everyone. Certainly for my swim team it's a challenge not being able to see. It's something the girls haven't done before and it's very disconcerting. It's such a positive experience. I have people come back year after year to watch.''
For Tuohy, she gets a thrill out of seeing the Perkins students progress from year to year.
``It has evolved because their students are with them so long,'' she said. ``Some of their students are 8 or 9 years old, competing against a high school team. We watch them grow up, which is a lot of fun. We look forward to hearing things from them, seeing them move on and getting involved with different things and other sports - just getting to know them over the years.''
For North, which has one more dual meet left on Tuesday against Weymouth, the meet is also a chance to let their hair down before the stress of the postseason, which begins on Nov. 8 with the conference meet.
North has qualified all three of its relays for Sectionals and two of its relays for States. Hunter Hedenberg and Stephanie Brown qualified for Sectionals and States in diving, and Thao Bach has qualified for Sectionals and States in the 200-yard IM and in the 100 breaststroke. In the 100 fly, Zoe Talkin qualified for Sectionals.
``It's a fun change in pace and great social experience,'' Tuohy said. ``It's fun to see what other people are capable of doing and what kind of challenges we can step up to.
``It's really hard to maintain intensity, so this is a break and gets them excited, and gets them thinking about someone else. Typically, it is a little bit of a break and it's nice that this is still swimming.''
If the Tigers needed a reminder that they weren't only swimming for fun yesterday, they just needed to take a poll of who was counting strokes and who wasn't.
``I run into lane lines, I'm not gonna lie,'' Brynie said, ``but the thing is you have to realize to go slowly to go in a straight line, so I get the concept. In theory, I'm not as bad as some, certainly I'm not straight down the middle. ``It is a lesson about swimming and about seeing how much swimming is muscle memory and how we can do it without seeing.''
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