First off, thank you to all the parents who volunteered so we could make this meet happen.  Thank you also to the boys for balancing choir commitments, coming to help us out from other athletic teams, and to everyone for putting strong effort into each swim this evening.  Although we did have 1 relay DQ and a few close calls to DQs, we amassed 18 personal bests over 7 events (the 100 Medley and 100 Free relays could not yield PRs due to us not swimming 25s normally and the backstroke relay had 3 guys starts from the block which is not normally done in backstroke).  In fact, 6 of our 18 personal bests came from our "guest swimmers" from their summer league times (converted).

 

The meet started off well with 10 personal bests in the first 3 events, and some big ones at that.  Every swimmer in the first event, the 200 Medley, had a personal best with James dropping over 2 seconds in his breast split and Jack dropping over a second off his fly split.  Woods (back) and Davis (free) each dropped about a second off their best as well.  James and Jack swam immediately after this in the crescendo relay, so another PR would have been a tough task for those two.  However, the tail end of that relay was strong as Levon dropped 3 seconds off his 100 Free and Braxton "pulled a Levon", earning a personal best in the 100 Free in his opening split of the 200 Free en route to a big 200 Free personal best by 20 seconds.  Much like Levon this past Saturday at Collegiate, Braxton was also around 2:40 for his 200 free time thanks to a strong opening and closing 50.  The 400 IM relay was the last event before the first break and Patrick (2.5 seconds), Blake (7 seconds), and Camden (7 seconds) all had impressive best times as Cooper anchored slightly faster than his IM this past Saturday.  This 100 IM was an especially tough task for Camden as he was not 100% this past week with a leg injury.  However, this IM kicked off an impressive night for him as he also did another 100 (Free), equalling his best time, and, although it was not a typical backstroke start, he crushed his 50 Back PR by 5 seconds before a speedy 25 Free in the final relay.

 

Due to our choir guys needing to leave early, Tristan and Ryland did not get in a relay before the first break and therefore had to double-up between the first and second break.  This was not an easy task as they were the second half of the 200 Free Relay and then the second half of the 400 Free Relay about 15 minutes later.  Tristan dropped over 2 seconds off his 50 Free, getting quite close to breaking the 40-second barrier (after starting last season just under 1:00!) and even took a second off his 100 Free time 15 minutes later.  Ryland was over 2 seconds under his converted 50 Free PR from the summer and although he has never done a 100 Free, was about 10 seconds under my estimated time for him.  Sandwiched between those two freestyle relays was a butterfly relay that saw a 2.5-second PR from Patrick and another converted summer league PR for Davis to anchor this relay.

 

The final segment of the relay meet had the backstroke relay and the breaststroke relay, as well as the 100 relays.  Although we can't count PRs for most of the swimmers in the backstroke relay, they were 10 seconds under my seed time in the event, which shows their improvement.  The breaststroke relay was right on their seed time with Patrick once again producing a 2-second PR to lead off the relay.  Ryland anchored his 3rd relay and earned his 3rd PR in this relay.  Our 100 Medley and 100 Free B relay teams beat their seed time and our 100 Free A team was tenths off their seed time, so it was a pretty good end to the night as well.

 

In the scoring department, it was a very different meet than Collegiate where we did not win a single race.  Tonight, we won 8 of the 10 relays, picking up a 2nd in one event and what would have been another 2nd in our only DQ'd event of the night.  Our only B team on the night, the 100 Free Relay, took 4th.  Going into the meet, based on seed times, it looked like we had a very slim margin over St. Edward's and St. Bridget.  Our improvement tonight and St. Bridget's two DQs helped offset our one DQ and propelled us to an historic win as we have now won all 8 years in the history of this meet.  I realize that it may seem like using 3 outside swimmers was the reason for this, but looking at it, I think having James and Jack the whole meet and avoiding that 1 DQ still gives us the win.  And, even one of those happening may have even been enough.  Still, I know the 9 swim teamers enjoyed having Davis, Woods, and Ryland join us tonight, not just from a scoring standpoint, but from an enjoyment standpoint with our 8th-grade-only swim team.  Maybe we will see if these "guests" want to jump in another middle school meet with George in January and/or February!  Our 4 wins tonight pushes our record to 8-0 on the season, heading into our next meet about a month away on January 8th.