It was nice to get in a solid two weeks of training since our previous meet and that hard work once again showed itself tonight.  Although we missed Daniel, and Braxton as a swimmer, we were happy to have Braxton there as a supportive teammate!  We almost had all 15 swimmers earn a personal best, just a tenth or hundredth of a second would have given us that perfect 15 for 15.  Nevertheless, there was some great energy at the meet.  In fact, one might say it was an "elite" night of performances.  Just about every event had either an elite performance or a close call to an elite performance time.

 

The medley relays always seem to start things off well and this meet was no different.  We had 5 of the 8 swimmers earn a personal best, including Max Dyshlevyi who was .74 from an elite performance in 50 Back leading off the A relay, and Charlie Johnson had a big 2-second drop in the 50 Breast on the B relay and was .76 away from an elite performance (if his time was from a flat start and not a relay).  George Estill also had what would have been an elite performance in the 50 Fly leg of the A relay, had he gone from a flat start and not a relay start, breaking 29.  Speaking of Max, Charlie, and George, this trio had a heck of a night.  George earned 2 personal best elite performances moving up to 10th in the 100 IM and 11th in the 100 Back on the STC MS all-time list.  Both A Medley and Free Relay teams, of which George was a member, were close to elite performances with each relay about 2.5 seconds off that magic number.  Charlie followed up his fast breaststroke split with his first flat-start sub-28 in the 50 Free, .71 seconds from an elite performance.  He also had a great PR debut in the 100 Back, and found an extra gear in the free relay as he went under 27 for the first time.  Max had an odd night doing the first two events and then the last two events.  After that great relay backstroke, he took off a few seconds from his 200 Free PR, despite only a few minutes of rest following the relay.  Max was less than 2 seconds from the elite performance time of 2:10 in that 200 Free.  He opened up his 100 Breast with a 50 Breast PR in the first 50 and kept it going in the second 50 to earn a personal best in the 100 Breast.  He was just tenths from a personal best in the 50 Free split on his relay, which would have been his 5th personal best on the day.

 

Another swimmer who had a string of personal bests was Blake Reed.  Much like a young Coach Carrier, Blake has gravitated toward the distance free events and has really made them his forte, especially that 200 Free, an event most middle school swimmers try to avoid.  Blake was aggressive from the gun in that 200 Free, going out in his 100 Free just .17 seconds off his personal best.  This helped lead Blake to a 7-second personal best and his first time under 2:30.  Blake and I talked about breaking 2:30 (200 Free) and 1:10 (100 Free) tonight and I think the excitement of that 200 Free helped carry into the 100 Free where Blake had a 5-second personal best, 2.5 seconds under 1:10.  Blake even broke 31 for the first time in a flat-start 50 Free while leading off the C free relay.  Much like we saw from his 50 Fly at the last meet, Jack Bodt has been making some big drops in most of his events.  Last night, this included a 15-second drop in the 100 Free, a 4.5 second drop from his flat start 50 Free, and a second and a half from his relay split 50 Free.

 

There were a lot of 2(or more)-second drops from other swimmers.  Tristan Dunston had a 2-second drop in 50 Breast, Lowndes Peple had a 2-second drop in the 50 Back, James Pickren had a 2-second drop in 100 Breast and 3 seconds in 50 Fly, Chris Rauchle dropped 2 seconds in 50 Breast to break 40 for the first time.  The 100 Free also saw Camden Stanley drop 4 seconds and Christian Smith drop over 9 seconds from his previous best and just about 5 seconds from an elite performance.  And, after just missing some personal bests in individual events, it was nice to see Levon Morgan break 35 for the first time in that final free relay and Patrick Santangelo, who did have a PR in the B medley backstroke leg, break 29 for the first time on that final free relay.

 

The score was an interesting one.  When I went up at the break to check on everything at the head table, the meet had been scored through the 50 Free at that point and Collegiate was beating us 99-98.  However, knowing that they had just put their 4 best swimmers in the 50 Free and did not load up their final relay, nor did they have a B relay, I knew our depth would eventually allow us to pull away.  From that point in the meet, we went 5-6-7 in the 50 Fly to take the lead and never looked back.  We outscored Collegiate 176 to 60 from the 50 Fly on.  The relays are always big for us and the 2-3 finish in the medley and 1-3 finish in the free relay certainly helped us.  In fact, other than our free relay win, we only had two other wins on the night with Chris Rauchle in 50 Breast and Max Dyshlevyi in 100 Breast.  Woods Taliaferro was close in the 50 Back, just .01 from the win.  We did tighten up the scoring this meet from top 16 to top 10, so we didn't quite double-up the second place team, but it was close.  We had 274 to Collegiate's 148.  Goochland was a close 3rd to Collegiate with 144.  It was an 8-0 night for us, pushing our record to 25-0 on the season as we head into Champs.  Champs will certainly be a different story in terms of scoring for us, but let's enjoy this victory and get back to work on Monday to have a strong "final" week of practice.