Another swimmer who earned some elite performances and more personal bests was Blake.  He had personal best 50 Free times in both relay split and flat start versions of the event and broke the magic 1:00 barrier in the 100 Free, all 3 of which were elite performances.  On the STC MS all-time list, he ranks 39th in the 50 Free and 32nd in the 100 Free.  He just missed the sub-2:10 200 Free "elite" time, but did have a 2-second personal best in that event.  He finished 7th in both his individual events.

 

The other two members of that 200 Free Relay that finished second, James and Patrick, had a good meet as well.  James almost broke 1:00 in the 100 Free, dropping .75 seconds to get to 1:00.75.  He was a few hundredths off his 50 Free relay split PR as the anchor on the 200 Free Relay and swam a solid fly leg to help the A medley team finish in 6th.  James was 9th in both his individual events, the 50 Free and 100 Free.  Patrick had a great start to the meet with a huge PR in the 50 Breast split of the B relay.  He dropped over 2 seconds to go from a 37.07 to a 34.83, which would have been an elite performance if it was from a flat start.  He ended the meet with a PR split in his 50 Free as the 2nd swimmer on the A 200 Free Relay team.  Patrick also earned double ribbons in his individual events with a 10th in the 50 Back and 12th in the 50 Free.

 

Levon had been having great practices the latter part of the season and even came to both optional ones last week.  This paid off in more personal bests yesterday.  He had yet another 200 Free PR in his 3rd swim of the event this year.  This was the first time he did not have a personal best in the opening 100 Free, but he came back strong to drop 2 seconds off his best 200 Free time.  He led off the B medley relay with a 1-second PR in his 50 Back and also picked up a relay split personal best in the B 200 Free Relay.  His individual 50 Back was a 2nd best career swim, just behind what he swam in the relay earlier in the meet.  Levon also scored in all 4 of his events.

 

Braxton had 2 relay personal best splits and slid in the penultimate scoring position in the 50 Back, an impressive feat for someone who basically began swimming last year.  Camden was on standby as our top relay sub, but certainly made the most of his individual swims.  He had a big 6-second PR in the 200 Free thanks to a 1.5-second PR in his opening 100 Free split.  It is always fun to see a double-PR in one event and Camden almost squeezed into the 16th and final scoring slot, finishing in 19th place.  He also swam his 3rd career best time in the 50 Breast.  Although Tristan did not earn a personal best, he swam his 2nd best career time in 50 Breast and 3rd best in 50 Free.  Jack was tenths away from his PRs all day, playing a key role on both B medley and B free relays and grabbing an 11th place in the 50 Back, 1 of our 5 scorers in that 50 Back.  Cooper also played an important part on relays and like Jack, grabbed an 11th place individual finish (50 Breast).  Cooper also had a 14th place finish in the 200 Free to go with it and closed out the day with a 3rd best career time in a 50 Free relay lead-off leg.

 

As I was tracking the scoring event by event during the meet, we kept slipping a bit from our pre-meet total.  This is somewhat to be expected, not as much from our side of things, but more from entries with NT or very inaccurate seed times from other coaches.  The good news was that St. Alban's was also slipping a bit and other teams did not have enough depth to catch us.  Much like we did to the Heights School last year, some of the pre-score buffer was made up, but it wasn't enough.  We made up 7 of the 10 points we trailed last year, falling 3 points short of 3rd.  This year, St. Alban's made up 19 of the 27 point buffer on us, but we held on to beat them by 8 points.  We went into that final relay with a simple goal of our A team needing to beat their A team and our B team needing to beat their B team, and we did just that.  We actually ended up with the same score as last year, 199 points, but moved up 2 places from last year.  Landon won by over 150 points, but it was a close 4-way battle for second (199, 191, 179, 176), and it was exciting for us to emerge at the top of that heap.  We may be small with just 10 boys, but we certainly showed that we were a mighty group of 10 boys.  We earned a record of 15-1 in this meet, pushing our season total to 40-1.  This wrapped up our 11th straight dominant season, pushing our record over the past decade to 391-8 since the 2015 season began (we even went 40-5 in 2014 too).

 

We have certainly had a lot of success in the sense of wins & losses (as seen above), middle school swim champs titles (we have 7 (could have been 9 without Covid) and no other team has more than 3), and 6 (could have been 7 without Covid) straight state championships on the Varsity level.  However, seeing the work the boys have put in and the growth they have made, physically and mentally, over these past two seasons on the middle school team, cannot always be quantified.  The coaches see drive, excitement, grit, support, and understanding that was not as visible when these boys started this journey 2 seasons ago (I know Daniel B and Woods T moved on from last year and we were happy to have Cooper join us this year).  I hope the boys see the value in the 2 years of work they have put in and are willing to put in 4 more years of that work in high school.  One of our strengths on the Varsity level is our depth.  We are able to get boys who are willing to put in the work in high school and have the patience that the cumulative effect of all those years of swimming will eventually pay off in a state cut or a scoring swim at a Prep League championship meet.  Although our middle school team status for next season is certainly up in the air with no current 7th graders on the team, we will try and find some boys to fill up that roster.  Our hope is that Varsity Coach Watson never has to do that with his Varsity team and that you all will continue to contribute to the swimming program as you shift to upper school swimming next year.