UNO coach shares his knowledge with local youth swimmers

Steve Kodad, McCook Daily Gazette University of Nebraska-Omaha swimming coach Todd Samland demonstrates proper stroke techniques with members of the McCook youth swim club during a clinic at the Ed Thomas YMCA pool last Monday. Samland recruited Bison senior standout Whitney Korgan to join the UNO women' s swimming program next fall. [Click to enlarge]

Todd Samland is not afraid to share his knowledge.

The University of Nebraska-Omaha swimming coach spent Monday evening in McCook working with a group of current and future Bison swimmers during workouts at the Ed Thomas YMCA pool.

Samland made a connection in McCook earlier this year. He persuaded Bison senior standout Whitney Korgan to accept a scholarship offer to join the UNL swim program next fall. Korgan signed the UNO letter of intent earlier this year. Coach Samland could not be present for the signing, but he was very happy to be able to come to town for Monday's clinic.

"When we first got Whitney to come and swim, they wanted to know if we could come for the signing, but that breaks NCAA rules," Samland said. "Whitney's important to me and to our program, and so I wanted to give back a little bit, and I've done this for other girls in our program, too. I said 'If you want me to come and do a clinic for your team, summer team, or club, let me know. I talked to Whitney's mom, Kim, and she said, sure, why don't you come on out?"

Samland observed both the McCook High School teams and the local youth club team during workouts Monday. His mild manner drew the undivided attention of the local swimmers as he conducted clinic drills. He offered insight into the various swim strokes, workouts, conditioning and other facets of the sport.

Samland has conducted similar events at the former high schools of his UNO team members, including a Tuesday session at Samland's alma mater, Omaha Central High School.

Specialization yes or no?

The trend for young athletes might be specialization -- focusing on one particular sport. But Samland thinks the key to success for kids is to gain a wealth of experience.

"What I would tell (kids) is, you do a lot of things," he said. "Don't just swim -- play hockey, play baseball, wrestle, do all kinds of sports, to really enjoy a lot of different things. I think that's real important.

Samland would share the same knowledge with parents of young athletes.

"What do you tell the parents?' he said. "Because the kids, they just want to have fun. So the more you can make it fun, the more different things you can do, the more you'll keep them involved in swimming. Especially boys, when they hit junior high and middle school, you can't just swim, you've got to do other things so they enjoy it. The hard part is the parents and having them buy into you doing more than just swimming. You go and play Dodgeball on Friday nights. You go out and play a different game that isn't swimming. But what happens is that it's athletic, they are putting things together, their bodies are connecting. That's going to eventually spill over (to swimming).

"Sometimes when parents have their kids on a swim team -- and I'm not talking about McCook, I'm talking about where I live (Omaha) -- they expect kids to be in the pool swimming. Well, I think sometimes, from what I've seen, they need to have fun outside the water a little bit.

"Burnout to me is not swimming too much. Burnout to me is not keeping it fun and not engaging them to try and move to the next level, or to incorporate a new learning thing. That's what I think causes burnout more than anything."

Samland said while his UNO team members will be focused solely on swimming in the coming years, he likes to recruit three-sport athletes like Korgan who have a broad range of athletic experiences. Korgan also competes in volleyball and track and field for the Bison, and she considered running track in college before settling on UNO swimming.

The UNO coach is very happy to have Korgan joining the program next year.

"Whitney definitely does have talent in her swimming, but there's three things that come with Whitney as a total package," he said. "One, she's very good in school, two, she has a great ACT score, and three, she's a good person, and so that's what we're looking for.

"A lot of swimmers will come and visit us, they'll interact with the girls, and I'll ask the girls and they'll say thumbs up (or down), and that's what happened with Whitney. It was a match."

A future star?

Samland expects Korgan to spend her freshman year at UNO getting acclimated to college life, academics and collegiate swimming.

"We aren't going to expect a lot this next year with Whitney, because she's going to be learning a ton," he said. "Her head's going to be underwater for awhile, because all this stuff is being thrown at her.

"Like tonight (at the clinic), we threw Whitney (and her Bison teammates) a warmup, and it was our simplest warmup, and they're like, 'What, I didn't understand any of that.' Our girls (at UNO) hear that and they're like, 'OK, let's go.'

"But I think after the first year, that's when they start understanding our weight training program, they start understanding our dry-land program, they start understanding how to swim, and then how to swim fast. Whitney will improve the first year, but her sophomore and junior year, senior year, that's where she'll be gold."

More than freestyle for Korgan?

Korgan has excelled in the sprint freestyle events during her high school swimming career. Coach Samland expects Whitney to excel in other events.

"We have a tendency to bring swimmers in and find something else they can do," Samland said. "And we've done that notoriously since abut 1999."

He used former UNO swimmer Jamie Hafebier of Grand Island as an example.

"Jamie was a freestyler, just like Whit, the 50 and 100," Samland said. "By the time she was done, she was able to swim the 100 breaststroke in 1 minute, six seconds, and the 100 butterrfly in 57 (seconds). Now, if somebody would have said, 'Why don't you recruit her as a breaststroke-flier?' I would have said, 'Are you crazy? She's a freestyler.' But Jamie learned so many things over those four years, that she became very, very competitive.

"We don't pigeon-hole any of our swimmers -- it's not going to happen with Whitney, we don't do that. When you come in, we work on all the strokes. For six weeks we work on IM -- everybody's learning how to do that. We've got to teach and coach everything. To tell you the truth, tonight we practiced butterfly (with Korgan), and that butterfly looked pretty good, so there's some good promise there."

Long time at UNO

Samland has been involved with swimming at the Omaha college for many years. He spent his sophomore and senior years of high school at Central, with his junior year spent in the Philippines.

"My dad was military," he said. "Clark Air Base, you just can't pass up going to the Philippines for a year. It was fun."

The UNO coach studied at the Omaha campus doing undergraduate and graduate work there along with competition on the UNO club swimming team.

"We created a Masters swimming program there, and that grew into a full-time job," Samland said. "We started that in 1983 and it just grew and grew. The athletic department approached us about starting a women's swimming team to balance the number of opportunities for female athletes, and asked if I would be interested in building that program, and I said absolutely."

Equal opportunities

Samland praised the Omaha university for its insight administrating the Title IX programs providing equal opportunities for female student-athletes. UNO does not offer a men's swimming and diving program.

"UNO is just a great university in that when Title IX started and everyone said, 'We've got to cut (programs).' UNO said 'No, we're adding,'" Samland said. "You can look at this problem two ways -- you can be negative about it and hurt somebody (cut programs), or positive about it and add something on."

It's just an awesome campus. I've been there since 1981, it's been very good to me. It's a very open-minded campus."

Samland said he enjoys working with college student-athletes.

" You learn so much in your college years," he said. "Your mind starts opening up. You're trying new things, you're seeing different perspectives. It's just awesome to coach college kids. It's really a lot of fun."