Out to Make the Team Believe What She Sees
Friedrichs wants her squad to recognize it is better than what it has shown
Kristina Friedrichs is a young lady who knows what she is after.
What that entails for the senior is not all about her, however. It’s for her team, one she is very proud of, but it’s a Colorado State women’s swimming and diving squad she thinks should expect more than a fifth-place finish at the Mountain West Championships.
The Rams have done so two years in succession, and each time she’s felt in her core they could have done more. What she also felt was the team, as a collection, didn’t believe in itself.
What she sees as an ill-begotten notion is something she’s out to change in her final season.
“The big overreaching goal is our team believes in themselves,” she said. “I think sometimes we don’t truly realize how powerful we are as a team and what we’re truly capable of. I think once we realize that, I think we’ll be able to make that shift to not only a winning attitude – because I do think we have that – but a fierce, determined, execution-type of attitude where we can go and we can execute and we can achieve those goals this year.”
It’s a very admirable start to the conversation, but coach Christopher Woodard always has a follow-up question for any swimmer who enters his office and says they want something.
It’s a simple request: Is it a want, or is it a need? They can seem similar on the surface, but there’s a big difference.
“Everybody wants something. There are 180 other girls in the conference who are all going into their coach’s office and saying they want something,” Woodard said. “Wants and needs. Wants are great. Now you have to tell me how to put it into action. If you put it into action, then you’re telling me you not only want it, you need it. You have a plan for it. I hope they don’t want it, I hope they need it.”
Because Woodard and his triumvirate of captains – Friedrichs, and her roommates Madison Hunter and Katie Leonard – are all on the same page. The Rams have spent the past two championships accomplishing something they never had prior in Woodard’s tenure, and that is have every competitor in the lineup score. Of the 19 who scored in 2021, 17 scored in all three of their events, leading to a team-record point total of 925.
The Rams did so with two of their best athletes – All-Mountain West performers Maddie Ward and Skylar Williams – on the sidelines. There, they were joined by two other all-conference performers who didn’t compete due to injuries.
Still, it meant fifth place once again. Friedrichs needs more. She believes they were capable of even more the past two seasons, and what she’s set out to do is change the way the team views itself.
There are teams across the country she said who look at the schedule and pre-determine wins and losses based on traditional results. She wants to put an end to that. She has never beaten Wyoming, and she wants that to change. She points to Denver last year, as the win over the Pioneers was the first in 10 tries.
“It can be hard to overcome that mentality of we’re going to come in and we’re going to do things differently and we’re going to change the pace. I think last year with COVID it was hard, but it was a good example,” she said. “DU has always been a team that consistently beat us, and it had been a rough start to the season, but we didn’t let that stop us and we ended up beating them for the first time in a while. I think that was an exciting win for everyone.
“I think it’s really just setting the tone. I think that’s something, along with Katie and Madi, we want to change about this year, is going in with the attitude of we can do these things and we are going to accomplish them because we’re capable, as opposed to like, we’ve been working hard, we’re going to see how things shake out, maybe we’ll win this year, maybe we won’t. I know myself, I’m going to go in into every meet with the expectation of I have to beat the girl in the lane next to me and I need to score points for the team so that we can do our best and do things like beat Wyoming, goals like that.”
I think we’re capable of a lot more than we think. I think we can win more duals than we usually do. I think there are teams that have consistently beat us that we can beat this year.Kristina Friedrichs
She can use herself as an example. Coming in as a freshman, she had expectations, but she didn’t adjust to the different training so easily, and she placed 11th in the 100-yard freestyle that season.
She reflectively looked at herself, what she needed to do differently, and one of the main changes was to view swimming as a pleasure. She made practice a “get-to” instead of a “have-to.” Instead of bringing academic and social stress to the lane, she used it as an escape.
She put in the work, even when a sprained foot set her back early in her sophomore campaign. At the Mountain West Championships, she established herself as one of the best sprint freestylers, placing fifth in the 100 free, seventh in the 50 free and 11th in the 200 free. Her junior year only further cemented her standing by taking third in the 50 free, fourth in the 100 and 12th in the 200 free.
This year, she says she’s determined – “A feisty determined” – and Woodard is all for it and what it can mean for the team.
“Sassy. She’s got spunk, but we know it,” Woodard said. “I think that’s a good thing. We have gone toe-to-toe with each other, and occasionally she’s upset with me for something, or asking me for something that I don’t think is pertinent. There’s a little bit of that give-and-take, but that’s a healthy thing. I’m all for her spunk, sass, feistiness, whatever she wants to call it.”
She’ll also call things as she sees them, as her teammates have learned. She doesn’t lose sight of what it means to be a swimmer, the good days you thrive under in training, the bad days you can’t seem to get going. Those are different than the days where somebody is just not putting forth the effort, and there is magic being able to distinguish the two.
One calls for a subtle hand, the other for a more stern voice.
“Over the course of the past four years, I’ve seen her develop into more of a leader,” Hunter said. “I’ve heard her say several times, sometimes when she can’t do it for herself, she’s found a way to do it for the team. She really does care about this team so much, cares about the success. Our motto a few years ago was ‘All In,’ and I think Kristina truly exemplifies that. She wants to push this team to its full potential.
“I think for one she’s really encouraging. Apart from being just that very vocal leader, she really does lead by example, too. Her work ethic and the energy and grit she brings to practices, people see that.”
The team will have been in the water for a month when they head to the Intermountain Shootout at Colorado Mesa University starting Friday, and Woodard has already seen her bring an encouraging and uplifting vibe to the sprint group.
He’s also seen her throw the hammer down when needed.
“We were talking about an instance earlier, where one of our swimmers who had asked someone in another lane to come over during a kick set and lead the lane,” Woodard said. “Kristina interrupted and said, ‘no, no, no, no, no, she’s not leaving her lane. You need to lead this,’ and she did, and the swimmer came to her after the session and thanked her – ‘You’re right, I absolutely am capable of doing that, you saw that and I needed to do it.’
“What she says sometimes, it’s comfortable truths. That was one of the things the staff was getting back on her for last year for a lot of holding hands because we were all terrified to say some uncomfortable truths.”
She has a solid backing in moving this plan forward, too. Naturally, the coaches are all on board. What she’s feeling is what they felt two years ago, but the pandemic hit, training came to an end for most swimmers around the country and a hard pivot had to be made.
This year, with the pandemic still looming, times have started to come back more to a normal routine. The team is practicing as it did in the past – seven hard training sessions a week with some strength and conditioning on the table.
Pulling off a plan is best when the captains and coaches are all on the same pages, and implementing it can be easier when all three captains are not only healthy and competing (which wasn’t the case last year), but they also live together.
Woodard cautioned them about work-life balance at the home, but they’re loving the idea they can share ideas and set forth actions while enjoying dinner on the couch.
“I think because we are so close and we’re such great friends, we all share a lot of the same ideas,” Hunter said. “Living together, for us it makes it a lot easier to bounce off ideas and I think it all helps us be on the same page. It makes it easier to communicate with the team and unifying the diving, distance and sprint groups. I think it’s going to be a great thing for the team, and I think it really is our relationship with each other and that unity will translate into the team aspect to.”
Because in order for this change to take place, the entire team needs to be in the same mental place, not just the captains and coaches. They also need to see somebody living up to what is being said, and Friedrichs is definitely one of those people.
She’s always been a good teammate, and an attentive one. She may be doing her thing in Lane 1, but she definitely knows what’s happening across the pool. She has her goals, and she is in tune with what her teammates are seeking out, too. In Friedrichs’ three main events – the freestyles she swims at conference – she ranks in the top three all-time in program history. Her 22.79 in the 50 ranks third; her 50.07 in the 100 is fourth; and her 1:49.42 in the 200 sits second. Moving up will be no easy task, but she’ll give it a run in the best possible way she knows.
“You know, I just want to … I mean, a lot of those events above me are Amy Van Dyken, so I think it’s just kind of seeing what I’m capable of for my last year,” she said with a smile. “I just want to make this one great. I just want to have a good time and enjoy it and finish it out with the people I started it with.”
When she excited her meeting with Woodard, he understood exactly what Friedrichs was asking. It wasn’t just one meeting, but multiple. Some scheduled, some held impromptu on the deck after a workout. She didn’t wait for the official season either, but the conversations were taking place soon after the 2021 championships and carried over into the summer.
There was a drive about her – not that it was new – but gears were changing.
“It’s funny. I do think over the years I started to take a more aggressive approach or just be very adamant about how I feel about certain things,” Friedrichs said. “But it all comes from I kind of took some time to think after my freshman year and I realized I was putting all of this pressure on myself that just didn’t need to be there. I think I heard Jennae Fredericks say it every day her senior year – ‘swimming is just a fun thing we get to do’ – so, instead of coming into practice and worry about what set we were going to do, or if it was enough, or if I was doing the right thing for me, I just decided as long as I show up to practice and No. 1, give it all that I have, but No. 2, have a good time doing it, then I’ve done what I can for myself. That helped me show up every day with a renewed energy and excitement for the day instead of with dread for whatever crazy set Woody had made for us.”
And from that enlightenment, she’s come to expect certain things from herself, and the results have played out in a positive way for her, and, in turn, for the Rams.
The next step is to spread the belief, which both she and Hunter already feel has started to take hold. The amazing doesn’t have to come this initial weekend, but it does has to start there. The fight to the wall and the desire to beat a girl next to you who wears a different colored cap.
“I think we’re capable of a lot more than we think,” she said. “I think we can win more duals than we usually do. I think there are teams that have consistently beat us that we can beat this year. I think we could go for a top-three, top-four finish at conference instead of being dead center in fifth."
Woodard is thrilled to hear his team leaders speaking in this manner. Better yet, he knows this isn’t something Friedrichs wants.
No, this is something she needs.