After just 6 days of practice for most of the team, less for a few boys, 12 of our 16 boys took to the pool for our first "meet" of the season.  Although our first official meet of the season will be at Collegiate on December 7th, this was a good first step for the boys to experience what a meet will feel like, especially with 3 meets in our own pool during the season.  Although this meet was much quicker with only about 70 swimmers participating (we will have about double that at each of our home meets this season), the boys did a great job achieving most of our 5 goals for every meet: 1 - Sportsmanship, 2 - No missed events, 3 - No DQs, 4 - Be a supportive teammate, 5 - Try to get a personal best.  As I noted before the meet to the boys, winning is not in our top 5 as I feel that if we take care of these 5 goals, we have done all we can to win a meet.  And, if we happen to get beat, we can certainly hold our heads high knowing we have achieved these 5 goals that we can control.  I think we could have done a better job with #4 as there was a lot of sitting on the team benches instead of cheering on the side or end of the pool.  Part of that may have also been related to the quickness of the meet and lack of time between events to cheer, so I am hopeful we will be better at this on December 7th.

 

The 5th goal is always a big one, and one that can be tough to do at this intrasquad meet, right on the heels of our opening time trials.  That being said, we had 10 of our 12 swimmers achieve at least one personal best, with Daniel Basmajian and James Pickren earning 3, thanks to quick relay splits.  And, after going 5 for 5 in personal bests during our opening week of time trials, Patrick Santangelo technically pulled off 4 more personal bests on Friday night during his 3 events, thanks to his opening split in the 100 Back.  His opening 50 of that 100 Back was 38.22 and we hand-timed him at 38.19 during Monday's time trial.  Since you typically treat hand (stopwatch) times as about .24 faster than touchpad times, Patrick technically earned a personal best in his 50 Back en route to a big 8-second drop in his 100 Back time.  He ended the meet with a personal best for his 50 Free relay split and opened up the night with a 3-second drop in his 100 IM.  That 100 IM was a great event for us with Max Dyshlevyi dropping over 4 seconds from his best time, while James Pickren and Blake Reed logged solid times for their first 100 IM time ever (NEPR).  James also had a first-time swim in the 100 Breast as did Jackson Gardner, while James and Blake each joined Patrick with a 50 Free relay split PR.  Daniel Basmajian had a pair of 3-second drops from his time trials earlier in the week in both 50 Free and 50 Breast.  He also shaved off another tenth and a half from his 50 Free time earlier in the meet when he anchored the winning middle school Free relay to a win over the high school team and the other two middle school teams.  Among our 20 personal best times, other notable time drops included: Levon Morgan's 2-second drop in the 50 Free, Chris Rauchle's 1.5 second drop in the 50 Free, Jack Bodt's 1-second drop in 50 Free, and Woods Taliaferro's 1.5 second drop in 50 Free.  I mention Wood's time last as he was the closest swimmer to earning an "elite performance" in an event as he was .47 seconds from breaking 27 seconds in the 50 Free.  The elite performance lists are located in the downloads sections of our team page on Saintsnet for anyone that would like to check them out.  It is particularly amusing to see Charlie Swanson's name as 13th all-time on the 100 Breast list, despite going to the Olympics in that event this summer and picking up relay gold and silver medals.  It just goes to show you what cumulative effects of training can do for you!  Results and meet recaps will also be posted there after meet recap emails are sent.