Partnership With Avidasports Has Andover Swim Team On Cutting Edge

The Andover High School swimming program isn’t running away from technology, it’s embracing it.

In a unique partnership with Avidasports and the Avida University Program, swimmers from the Barons' girls team this year used the company’s patented athletic telemetry system.

Swimmers wore five wireless micro-computers during every practice – one on each wrist, one on each ankle and one in a special cap that also has an earplug for each swimmer's ear. 

The computers measure six different performance metrics at one time and sends that data to coaches almost instantaneously.

"We are tracking a whole bunch of stuff," said. "As the kids swim, there is a computer and it’s tracking all sorts of data live – stroke count, kick count, your tempo, your speed and the lengths you’ve done. It’s smart enough to even know what kind of stroke (the swimmers) are doing."

Zulkiewski sits poolside with his laptop and can view the data while watching practice. Through the swimmer's headset he can actually communicate with his swimmers while they are in the pool.

"The fact that I can talk to them instantly, I don’t have to stop them during a set, means they can make changes on the fly," Zulkiewski said.

He has used the data to help swimmers improve in a variety of ways. Imperfections in individual swimmer’s strokes are more clear. And the computer is smart enough to count strokes and gives him two numbers - the stroke number and a number for strokes that aren’t in rhythm.

The second number allows Zulkiewski to watch the swimmer and find out where the imperfections are.  

Initial Hesitation Doesn’t Last Long For Girls Team

"The toughest thing (initially) was getting kids to buy into it," Zulkiewski said. 

Ten girls used Avida’s system in the fall season, including all six swimmers that had qualified for the state finals in 2010. They had to wear the bracelets and specialized cap during every single practice.

"At first, I really didn’t like (the bracelets)," sophomore Sarah Kilbride said, laughing. "They felt so weird and different when I was swimming."

Kilbride said the bracelets weren’t the only thing that she had trouble with. Initially, she struggled with her coach calling her as she was swimming. 

"It’s kind of a distraction when he calls you," Kilbride said. "At first, I would slow down to listen."

But the more the girls trained with the system, both the bracelets and underwater phone calls became easier to handle.

"I got used to them," Kilbride said. "I felt they were weighing me down, but they actually weigh less than an ounce each. It was literally in my head, I learned to like them."

System Helps Barons Swimmers Improve

As a freshman, Kilbride qualified for the 100 yard breaststroke and the 200 yard individual medley. Her time in the 100 yard breaststroke at the state finals was a 1:11.52 and in the 200 yard IM was 2:18.98.

She qualified for both races again this year and improved her time over a second in the 100 yard breaststroke (1:10.39) and over two seconds in the 200 yard IM (2:16.10).

"The data helps you," Kilbride said. "Last year, I thought I had good breakouts and turns, now that I had this data I realized they could be so much better."

Tegan Servo improved her times in the 500 yard freestyle and 200 yard freestyle. The junior’s times at the state finals this year were better by four (5:26.35  in 2011; 5:30.36 in 2010) and two seconds (2:02.29 in 2011; 2:04.37 in 2010) respectively.

Junior Stephanie Fotouhi improved her 100 yard backstroke time by nearly two seconds as well (1:03.87 in 2011; 1:05.35 in 2010).

Zulkiewski hopes it will help the boys will be able to use the program and see similar results.

"I’m looking to infuse it into the boy’s season as well," he said.

Company Has Bloomfield Area Roots

"(Avidasports) was conceived at the pool deck at Cranbrook Schools," Vice President of Operations Scott Hedges said.

Back in 2006, Hedges was the head coach at Cranbrook when Bruce J. Burton, a parent of one his athletes, started talking about training.

"He’s (Burton) very competitive and we started down this dialogue path of how do you train swimmers and what kind of tools there are for training," Hedges said. "It kicked off this whole genesis of what we have today."

Burton, who made the Olympic sailing team back in the ‘80s, was an entrepreneur with a background in engineering. He and Hedges worked together to develop the technology that would power Avidasports for the next four years. Testing for the system was done at Cranbrook. 

"A lot of work went into those four years about how best to do it," Hedges said. "Once we really figured it out that’s when I left Cranbrook in 2009 and we formed a company and put the finishing touches on it."

The first installations were done in May at a variety of colleges including the University of Southern California, University of California Berkley, Tennessee and Harvard.

Now, the company is focused on getting more swim programs to sign up.

“Since we are a brand new technology and a brand new player in this market of competitive swimming, we have a sales force on board and they have been out there tasked with the goal of spreading the word and a lot of traditional door-to-door sales,” Hedges said.

Partnering With Avida a No-Brainer

When Hedges left Cranbrook, one of the first coaches he met to discuss Avidasports with was Zulkiewski.

The two got to know each other over the years and Hedges knew that the Andover coach was into two things – numbers and technology.

In his office, Zulkiewski has filing cabinets full of old results and data. He said he has times from every workout he’s ever coached and results from Andover swimming all the way back from 1969.

"I have it all," Zulkiewski says, laughing. "I love numbers. I crunch numbers like crazy."

And the Andover coach has always looked for ways to get even more data. When the school purchased a new scoreboard he pushed for the addition of new touch pads for the starting blocks that gave him more information about a swimmers reaction time.

For Zulkiewski, partnering with Avidasports was a no-brainer.

"It’s awesome," he said. "When we get our new building this is something that we have to have, not it would be nice to have, but we actually need."