Judge swimmers adjust to style of a new coach

A familiar figure has been missing from the pool deck at the South City Campus of Salt Lake Community Campus this fall.

That's the site of Judge Memorial High swim practices, and the absent person has been Gail Meakins.

As head coach of the Bulldogs, Meakins guided Judge to the last three boys and girls state championships in Class 3A. She left, however, over the summer to become an assistant at Cornell University in New York.

Coach Matt Finnigan, who was an assistant for Meakins two years ago, has taken over the program, and as you'd expect, things have been, well, different.

"It's definitely been a change," said Ashley May (freestyle events). "It's been weird not having (Meakins) around. The (two) coaches are totally different people."

Finnigan's been implementing his own style, which has included the addition of things like yoga and medicine balls.

"We love him," said star swimmer Liz Caravati. "We miss our old coach, but who could blame her? I mean, Cornell.

" . . . He just does things in a different way. Definitely, he's one kind of person and she's another."

May and Caravati help anchor a deep and talented girls squad that will likely cruise to the 3A state championship. Meanwhile, Finnigan's got plenty of work to do on the boys team. Although the boys squad did take state last winter, Finnigan inherited a team that lost eight crucial seniors to graduation.

Combine that with the fact he's got only a handful of sophomores, and you can see why it will take plenty of work to restore the boys team to dominance.

Unlike Class 5A, where almost all the top swimmers concentrate solely on swimming, lots of 3A coaches have to share their swimmers with other sports throughout the year.

That's especially true at Judge, and May and Caravati are prime examples of it. Each of them play other sports throughout the school year.

May, a senior, played soccer and swam through her junior season, but an ACL tear prevented her from participating in soccer this fall.

That tear occurred while she was playing for Judge's club soccer team in the spring. Swimming helped quicken her rehabilitation.

It also gave her something to shoot for during the beginning stages of rehab.

"I wasn't excited about tearing my ACL," said May, "but it gave me the chance to focus more on swimming."