Despite only 7 days of practice since the break (1 of which ended early and 1 yesterday that was more like a warm-up), the boys swam great last night.  After a competition layoff of over a month, I could tell the boys were ready to get after it last night right out of the gate.  Both medley relay teams crushed their seed times with the B team dropping over 10 seconds off their seed time and the A team dropping over 4 seconds, breaking the very impressive 2:00 barrier at 1:59.25, just 4 seconds off the 10th best relay time in STC MS history.  In fact, 8 of the 9 relay swimmers had personal bests, with Max Dyshlevyi's 6-second drop in 50 Back being the top improvement.  If you are trying to figure out how 9 swimmers swam for STC with only two relay teams entered, R.T. Upson ended up joining a mixed gender Collegiate relay as they were short one swimmer and R.T. earned a personal best fly split in that relay.  Fletcher Stephens dropped 3 seconds in his 50 Free split while Tripp Schnell, like Max, had a good backstroke leg to lead off his relay, dropping 2 seconds off his best.  If Will Franks' 50 breaststroke split was from a flat start, it would rank him 4th all time in STC MS history in that event!

 

Following the relays, the personal bests kept coming.  Although Tripp was just off his 200 Free best, Matthew Harte Hackney dropped three seconds off his 200 Free and even had a 3-second personal best in the opening 100!  Max had a huge 10-second personal best in the 100 IM.  In the 50 Free, our trio of STC swimmers all had personal bests with Tristan Litzenburg almost pulling off the win en route to breaking 28 seconds.  Charlie Johnson almost broke 30 and he and R.T., like Tristan, had a nice personal best time.  The 50 Fly was the last event before the 10-minute break and Fletcher swam his first career 50 Fly and it was an impressive debut as he broke 40 seconds.  I think he may have found a new event.  Will had a tough draw in his 50 Fly, but he did get a personal best out of the deal.

 

After getting edged out in the 50 Free by a Fredericksburg Christian swimmer, Tristan got some revenge in the 100 Free, pulling away from this same swimmer in the final half lap to get a win and a 3-second personal best.  Matthew dropped even more time in his 100 Free.  After dropping 3 seconds earlier in the day, he dropped 2 more seconds in this swim.  In the 50 Back, we had some very strong swims featuring 2 big 6-second drops from Max and Charlie as well as a strong finish from Tripp to just miss his relay personal best from the medley relay earlier.  In the final individual event, Will and Atticus Morgan shaved off a little time to give us another event with multiple swimmers who earned personal bests.  In the 200 Free Relay, we had 3 swimmers from our A relay alone with a personal best, as well as one on the B team.

 

Despite these personal bests, we are still looking to iron out all aspects of the meet: timely arrival at the meet, limiting phone usage, and unfortunately we had another meet where we had at least one DQ and one missed event.  Hopefully we can iron all that out at Champs next Saturday.

 

In the score, it was another solid win for the Saints.  Thanks to both relay wins and solid finishes by our B teams, as well as individual wins in the 100 Free, 50 Back, and 50 Breast, we amassed 360 points, 126 higher than runner-up Goochland Middle School with 234.  We beat all 9 boys teams to move to 20-0 heading into middle school champs next weekend.