The day started in an odd way as snow snuck into the area out of nowhere, covering trees and sidewalks with a dusting of snow.  I was walking from St. Catherine's back to St. Chris to catch some of the track meet before the start of our swim meet and came upon 5 of our boys in the stairwell hanging out and eating pizza.  It made me smile a bit to see the camaraderie with more than half our team hanging out together.  After an extra warm-up, we started off with an impressive medley relay.  Cooper (breast) and Patrick (free) both had personal best relay splits in the A relay which just missed breaking the 2:00 elite performance time by 2 seconds.  Speaking of elite performances, George led off the relay with an elite performance in 50 Back and Cooper and Patrick's splits would have been elite performances if they were from a flat start.  On the B relay team, Jimmy Parker had a personal best leading off in the backstroke leg, Camden shocked the coaches on the side with his 4.5-second drop in the 50 Breast, and the coaches were also impressed by Tristan's anchor leg swim, dropping over 2 seconds off his personal best in the 50 Free.  The B relay was 10 seconds under their seed time, vaulting themselves into 5th place in the event.

 

Jimmy's attendance allowed our trio of 200 Freestylers to swim that event fresh.  Blake led the way for us in 2nd with a 3-second drop.  Braxton took 6th, but it was Levon's 3rd place finish that was most impressive.  He not only dropped 6 seconds off his best time, but also had a personal best in the 100 Free with his opening 100 split.  Patrick and Jack went 3-4 in the 100 IM, both just a few seconds off their personal bests.  George and Jimmy went 1-2 in the 50 Free with Camden sneaking in 9th place for 2 points, thanks to his almost full second improvement.  George was .01 from his best flat start 50 Free time in an STC meet, an event he ranks 14th all-time in STC MS history.  Tristan looked good again in the 50 Free with another 2-second personal best, just missing his relay split best by .05 seconds.  Much like the 100 IM with Patrick and Jack, James and Cooper went 3-4 in the 50 Fly, both just missing their best times by less than a half second.

 

After the break, George and Blake went 1-3 in the 100 Free.  George was a half second from his best STC time, with his 54.37 ranking him 11th on the all-time STC list.  Blake almost got onto the elite performance list, which is 1:00 for the 100 Free, with his 2-second personal best in 1:00.35.  He is certainly poised to break 1:00 at Champs in a few weeks.  In the 50 Back, we went 4-5, with Levon continuing his impressive night by dropping 3 seconds off his previous 50 Back.  Braxton just missed his best time by a half second, but had another sub-38 second time.  Patrick and Jack teamed up again, this time taking 2nd and 5th in the 100 Back.  Patrick dropped 3 seconds off his previous best while Jack had a huge PR of over 9 seconds!  In the 50 Breast, all 3 entrants scored as Camden beat his big personal best from earlier in the meet (by a few more tenths) en route to 5th place.  Jimmy was right behind him and Tristan, thanks to another 1.2 second drop, squeezed into 10th place, the final scoring position.  We took 2nd and 4th in the final individual event of the night, the 100 Breast.  Cooper edged out his time in the Varsity meet a few weeks ago, now just .49 seconds from an elite performance.  James obliterated his old PR by 12 seconds, dropping down from 1:32 to 1:20.

 

In the final event of the night, the 200 Free Relay, our B team once again took 5th while our A team got the best of Collegiate this time (by just .61 seconds) for the win.  George and James had personal best splits on the back half of that relay.  Cooper led off the B relay with a personal best of almost a full second.  Camden swam the second best 50 Free of his life on the C relay, just .5 seconds from his time earlier in the meet.  And, a special shout out to our guest swimmer, Jimmy Parker, for not only leading off the C relay, but also anchoring the C relay.  His presence not only helped our 200 Freestyle guys stay fresh for the 200 by skipping that first relay, but his free relay swims allowed two of our guys to get in a relay that otherwise would not have been in one.

 

All in all, we had 14 individual event personal bests over the 22 individual event swims, plus 5 relay split PRs to go with those other PRs.  In the overall score, our depth, particularly in relays, was too much for other teams to handle.  We scored 259 points to St. Bridget's 177 in 2nd and Collegiate's 171 in 3rd.  We beat all 8 of the visiting boys' teams, pushing our season record to an undefeated 25-0.