After a two-week hiatus from competition due to the Holton-Arms postponement, I could tell the boys were ready to get back to competition last night.  Part of the reason we go to this senior meet is to support the seniors, many (Robbie Joyner, Bennett Long, Nathan Parker, and Aaron Mansfield) of whom started STC swimming in 7th grade and have done all 6 seasons.  I hope to see as many of this year's middle school swimmers as possible standing on those blocks when they are seniors.  Nathan and Bennett in particular are great examples of two swimmers that only swim in the winter at STC and summer league (at Westwood), but still have hit multiple state cuts, make contributions to the team, and serve as team leaders.  Some feel like Varsity only has a place for the year-round swimmers, but that is just plain untrue.  Think about the cumulative effects of 6 years of swimming from 7th-12th grade.  There is much more yet to come for our middle schoolers and I hope you all will stick with it to see what you can do after years of pushing yourself.

 

The other part of doing this meet is the ability to simplify the meet to two individual freestyle events with a large amount of rest in between them.  We are not trying to accumulate points to win a meet, so the focus just becomes going for personal bests.  Speaking of which, we had a great percentage of personal bests last night and no one missed their event or DQ'd.  Will Franks was actually the first middle schooler in action swimming the 200 IM for Varsity.  He finished in 4th place and swam near his personal best of 2:12.84, hitting the state cut by over 5 seconds and logging the 12th best time in STC MS history and putting him 7th on the all-time list.  Will was also just .28 seconds off his best 50 Fly in the opening fly leg of this 200 IM!  Will also swam the 14th best 100 Breast time in STC MS history, lowering his previous best by .14.  He still remains the 5th fastest at this event in STC MS history.

 

In the 50 Free, we had some impressive performances and almost all personal bests.  Atticus Morgan and Tristan Litzenburg both broke 27 for the first-time ever, getting on our all-time list in that event.  Atticus was even close to breaking 26 with his time of 26.11.  Tripp Schnell broke 29 for the first time and Charlie Johnson and Fletcher Stephens broke 30 for the first time.  Lowndes Peple was close in 30.15.  Matthew Harte Hackney had almost a 2-second drop while Chris Rauchle had about a 2-second drop from his season's best time.

 

The fireworks were in the 100 Free where there were some ridiculous drops in time, many having not swum this since our time trials in November, or, in the case of Burn Bradshaw, never having swum in it (automatic personal best!).  Atticus, Tristan, and Tripp led the way for us again with Atticus dropping 2 seconds to get to 1:02, Tristan dropped a few tenths, and Tripp dropped about 2.5 seconds.  Max Dyshlevyi and Chris each dropped 4 seconds, with Charlie at 8 seconds of dropped time.  Fletcher and Lowndes were the big drops on the night with Fletcher dropping 13 and Lowndes dropping 24!

 

It was certainly a great night for the middle school teams as St. Catherine's also had quite a bit of time dropped.