No one has to tell Fort Gibson grad Carly Miller how big a difference the college athletics culture is. She’s lived it.

Swimming circles around high school competition was nothing like this.

“We’re in a grind right now,” she said, describing a period of four consecutive weekends of meets. Before that, there was the week-long Christmas holiday team trip to Tampa, Fla., during a period of what’s called “bulk training.”

Bulk training? She describes:

“In Tampa, we had morning and afternoon workouts for two hours each, then weights every other day or dryland work,” she said.

“Dryland work” is pushups, situps, pull-ups and just about any other exercise you can do out of water, especially for abdominal and shoulder work. But in water or out, Miller looks to be doing just fine in her junior year at Rice University, already having turned in a pair of strong years in the pool — she’s working on a third — and hitting the books in one of America’s toughest academic institutions with a major in sports medicine and a minor in business.

There’s probably a lesson there in those textbooks about the type of approach she and the other Rice swimmers take.

“We try to overload their systems without burying them,” Rice coach Seth Huston said. “They’re doing maybe eight training sessions a week and competing one or two days. That’s a lot of racing and training, weight lifting, strength-training stuff.

“It just piles on. Right now we’re in an intense phase, we’re looking at less and less training, more and more recovery and by the time of the conference meet, they’re sharp.”

Last year, Miller earned the Catherine Hannah Award as the Owls’ most outstanding swimmer of the season. She was third at the Conference USA championships in the 50-meter freestyle with a career-best time of 23.31 seconds. Her fifth-place time in the 200 freestyle (1:49.41) was the fourth-fastest in school history. She was also the anchor of the 400 medley relay team, the first relay conference champion in school history. As a freshman, she reached the C-USA championship in both the 200 and 500 freestyle.

The freshman year was the adjustment phase coming out of high school. This, her junior year, is another time of adjustment.

“It’s time to really get myself in gear,” she said.

Which, according to Huston, she has.

“She really hasn’t had the overall performances she had last year from a standpoint of consistent finishes, but she’s trained harder this year than she has in the previous two,” he said. “It’s weird because she’s not as consistent but she’s stronger and more powerful.

“Swimming is one of those sports, though, where you can only peak a few times a year. You want to be ready to compete each week but you may not be ready to swim as good as you’re capable of every week.”