The intrasquad meet on Friday is always a good way to get started each season.  You get a little bit of a feel for a meet, albeit a fast one against a lot of high schoolers, but it is still good practice for our actual meets during the season.  It is also nice to see some old teammates, the 9th graders, and also see George, since he will be the only 8th grader swimming with the Varsity this season.  George had a great debut for the Varsity.  He moved up from 10th to 9th on the STC MS all-time list in the 100 IM (about 4 seconds ahead of Olympic medalist Charlie Swanson!).  His 100 Back was close to a STC best, just .08 off his time from last season, which ranks him 11th on the STC MS all-time list.  He had a great relay anchor split as well, 24.55, a time that would put him 10th on the STC MS all-time list if he can replicate that from a flat start.  We look forward to seeing him move up the ranks in those events, as well as others like the 200 Free and 500 Free.

 

The middle school squad was 8-strong and produced 13 personal bests, as well as 4 additional relay split personal bests.  That is a pretty good day in my book, especially because almost all 8 boys earned at least one personal best.  The 50 Free was almost a clean sweep of personal bests as Blake and Patrick each broke 28 for the first time ever.  Levon had almost a full 2-second personal best.  In the 50 Fly, Jack was our lone swimmer and had to swim in a full heat with 7 other upper schoolers.  This likely helped him have a breakout race, dropping from 37.07 to 34.84 in the 50 Fly.  Following Tristan's personal best in the 50 Breast as our only swimmer in that event, the 100 Back and 100 Breast were excellent events for us last night.  All 6 swimmers in those two events had personal bests, and pretty substantial ones at that.  Patrick and Blake were well under the 1:20 barrier at 1:17 and 1:18, respectively.  That was about a 2.5-second drop for Patrick and Blake's first go at the event.  Braxton and Levon had a tight race with both in the 1:25s, a 13-second improvement for Levon and a (ridiculous!) 40-second drop for Braxton.  Jack kept his PR night going with a 5-second drop in the 100 Breast while Camden had a 13-second personal best.  In addition to this big personal bests in the 100, all 6 boys were close to having a personal best in the 50 during their opening split, with Levon actually pulling that off (by over a second)!  Despite the quick meet, we had great swims in the relay as one team was about 5 seconds under their seed time and the other was about 2.5 seconds under their seed time.  Camden, Braxton, Blake, and Jack all had personal bests in their splits on that free relay, with Cooper and Tristan right near their best times.  Jack's was substantial at almost a 3-second drop from 31.05 to 28.07.