Page 62 December 2014 ARCADIA SPORTS By Nicholas Smith The night before the biggest moment of his swimming career, Connor Earnest is relaxed. One might expect a senior in high school to have some real nerves before the state meet, but Connor isn’t scared. In fact, he’s thrilled. “I’m just really excited that I get to go,” Earnest said. “I wanted to make it to state in the 50 freestyle. That was my goal all year. But I made it in the 50, and also in the 200 [freestyle] relay and the 400 [freestyle] relay. So this is beyond what I’ve ever hoped for.” Earnest had an interesting path to the state meet. He began competitive swimming at an early age, as many successful high school swimmers do. But instead of continuing to swim through high school, he quit before his freshman year. “I was honestly burned out,” he said. “You have swimming practice twice a day and I wanted to try some other sports like football and baseball.” After two years free of swimming, Earnest had some friends who were going to be on the swim team his junior year. He wasn’t enjoying the other sports as much and knew that his years of swimming experience would make it easier for him to By Tina Tombs Happy holidays! This month’s tip is guaranteed to make you better. Today’s tip is about set up. Your set up can often be either a huge confidence builder or a source of extreme frustration. Let’s focus on basic tips that will help you improve your set up on the golf course, as well as your performance on the tee box, so you can have a great round of golf. Set up consists of posture, grip, stance, ball position, aim and alignment. Good players never lose their golf swing! They lose their set up! Lets start with posture. Find your posture by placing your hands on top of your thighs. Bend forward from your hips and lower yourself, softly flexing the knees until your hands touch the tops of your knees. Once you have that, you have achieved perfect athletic posture. Posture guarantees balance throughout the golf swing and the plane on which the golf club will swing. While standing with your established posture, let’s find your grip. How your left arm hangs is how you’ll place your left hand on the club. The right hand covers the left thumb and then wraps around the grip so that they marry each other. Now we’ll find your stance. The stance width is a position that you would have in Tips for the perfect set up a standing vertical jump. If the stance is too wide you will negate your power source. You want to have a stance somewhere between hip width and shoulder width. In this position, you will jump straight up and where you land will give you your most athletic stance width. Ball position will affect aim and alignment. Aim is the clubface and its relationship to the target. Alignment is your upper body to the target line. We want our ball position in line with the left side of our face. If the ball position is correct, when we set the club down and raise it to waist high, it points straight ahead. If you raise the club to waist high and it points to the left, ball position is too far forward. With the ball position forward, my shoulders tend to open, causing an out-to-in swing. Check if the ball is too far back in your stance by raising the club to waist high. Ball position is too far back if the club points to the right. This tends to cause my shoulders to close and create an in-to-out swing. When the ball position is correct it will take care of your aim and alignment. Now that you have successfully completed your set up, you should expect to hit a better golf shot and improve your round of golf! Tina was just selected as The LPGA 2014 Central Section Teacher of the Year and LPGA 2014 National Teacher of the Year. You can contact her at tina@tinatombsgolf.com. No fear under big pressure jump back in the pool. “I love being on the team with my friends,” he said. “What I love about swimming is that when you’re in the pool, you’re not really [in] competition with anyone else. You’re competing against the clock.” Earnest notes how proud he is of how the team has performed this season. Arcadia is a Division I school and they will compete against some of the biggest and most talented schools in the state. But according to Earnest, they’ve held their own. “We’ve done really well this season,” he said. “The girls’ team has done really well and I think the boys’ relay in particular has been insanely good.” Arcadia’s swimming team is a mix of lifelong swimmers and those who have picked up the sport recently. As someone who has been in the pool since an early age, Earnest takes time to help those on the team who are new to swimming. “We’ve got a real mix of different personalities on our team,” he said. “But everyone works together really well and we all help each other out.” Earnest is considering swimming in college as well. He plans to major in engineering and is hopeful he will find a school that can mesh his educational future with a swim team. 2902 N. 68th St. (68th st. and Thomas) 480-773-7706 giantscottsdale.com Introducing the bike that will keep up with your child’s growth spurts. “grow with Giant” technology allows the bike to “grow” as your child grows See the new Giant Amplify and Blossom bikes today Both boy’s and girl’s models available Includes training wheels Available in store now Easily accomodate riders ages 4-9 in just 5 minutes Alana, age 6 Kirsten, age 9 Connor Earnest (left) and Matt Anderson

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