It was great having all grades 7-12 at the meet on Friday afternoon.  With 9 of the 11 senior boys having been on the middle school team before high school, I can only hope to see our current middle school team walking across the deck on senior night when they are in 12th grade.

 

Our goal for Friday night was to get as many personal bests as possible, and without relays or scoring in the back of our minds, the boys were able to focus on dropping time in individual events.  Coming off of a championship meet and swimming against a bunch of high school swimmers certainly made for a challenging environment, but the boys handled it well and earned 15 personal bests out of the 24 swims, plus 3 more within a few tenths or less.  In the 50 Free, we had 9 of 12 swimmers earn a personal best, including Tristan Litzenburg who broke 30 from a flat start for the first time.  Matthew Matthews was also under 28 for the first time from a flat start.  Brodie Schlobohm dropped exactly 2 seconds and is now less than a half of a second from breaking 30.  LT Nguyen was our top swimmer in the event, finishing in 12th out of 40 swimmers, but more importantly, he had a personal best in the process.

 

The improvement title on the night had to go to Miles Carlyon.  In the 50 Free, he dropped almost 10 seconds from his flat start personal best, 5 seconds from his personal best relay start.  Then, in the 100 Free, Miles went out a half second faster in his first 50 than he did in his 50 Free earlier in the meet!  This of course led to a big 16 second drop from his 100 time.  Way to go Miles!  We had 5 other personal bests in the 100 Free with Harry Byrd almost breaking 1:10, Trey Mallete dropping over 6 seconds, Levi Jones getting closer to that 1:00 mark (now at 1:00.10), and LT breaking 1:00 for the first time with a 4-second drop to 58.15.  After coming within a half second of his best 50 Free, and dropping a half second from last week, Townsend Sexton had a 2-second drop from his best "arm/wrist brace" 100 Free time last week, just .5 from his best 100 Free ever.  Will Franks was our top finisher in the 100 Free as he finished 11th out of 37 swimmers.

 

In other events, Matthew had a nice swim in the 100 Fly, just .5 from his best time.  He event went out his first 50 just .4 seconds over his best flat-start 50 Fly time.  Ben Franks had a solid meet for the Varsity squad.  He just missed his best 50 Breast split by .08 seconds as he helped the B medley relay team to 3rd (and outsplit our A relay breaststroker in the process).  He had a very good swim in the 200 IM edging out his teammate for 2nd and breaking the middle school record by almost a second.  Although a DQ disqualified that record, it showed he is capable of getting it at the last chance meet in a few weeks.  He took runner-up in the 500 Free to his teammate, swimming the 11th fastest time in STC MS history (he owns 4 of those top 11 times, including the record).  Ben also had a nice split as the 3rd leg of the 400 Freestyle Relay, helping his team to a victory in that event.