It is Wednesday, July 21 and pushing 8 a.m. at the Glen Rock Municipal Pool on Doremus Avenue, and dozens of teenagers have been up since before 6 a.m.

"They get up at 5:45 a.m. to be here," said Kathy Kallman, the coach of the Wykcoff YMCA's Shark Program. "They must put in about 27 hours of swim practice and exercise a week." 

In the middle of July, when most teenagers and high school students are sleeping through the summer break, these young adults are preparing for the 2010 National YMCA Long Course Swimming Championship, which will be held from July 26 to July 30, 2010 held at at the University of Maryland's Eppley Recreation Center.

"We will be leaving here at 4:45 a.m. on Sunday to travel down to Maryland," said Kallman.

Because the Shark program is all year round, Kallman said the swimmers are used to the early hours. But the Glen Rock pool has become as familiar to them as the Wyckoff YMCA pools, located off of Wyckoff Avenue.

According to Francesco Peta, another coach with the Wyckoff Shark program, the team practices in Glen Rock because a 50-meter pool was needed. 

The practices have paid off, because he points out that the real milestone the Wyckoff YMCA Sharks program achieved is the number of participants heading to the Long Course Competition.  

Peta estimated that 150 YMCAs will be participating in the event, but they will be sending as many five or six qualified participants to the event. 

"We will be sending 32 swimmers down," said Peta. 

Kallman confirmed that over 40 swimmers qualified for the event, which will feature some of the best teen swimmersin the country.   Unfortunatetly, the others were "unable to attend the event," Kallman said, though 32 is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

Peta said that teenagers in the program come from all over Bergen and Passaic Counties, which includes Tenafly, Ridgewood, Upper Saddle River, Glen Rock, Wayne, Oakland, Franklin Lakes, "and of course, Wyckoff," the coach added.

Many of those Sharks will be soon be taking their talents to college, at some of the premier schools in the country. According to Kallman, some of the teens in the Sharks program will go on to swim for universities like Villanova, Cornell, Fairfield and Boston College.

Although the student athletes are surely nervous and excited about their future opportunities in college, before they start up in the fall, the primary focus is on the competition next week, on the national stage.

"We are very proud of these kids," said Kallman. "They have worked hard for it."

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