The boys looked strong in our opening relays with a slew of personal bests.  In fact, 11 of our 22 personal bests occurred in the first 3 relays of the night.  This number of 22 personal bests was pretty impressive given that 3 of the relays can't really produce personal bests (the 100 Medley, 100 Free, and the 2nd/3rd/4th swimmers on the backstroke relay).  It is clear that the hard work the boys have been putting in during practice is paying off.  In terms of our 5 goals for the meet, we had a DQ in the 200 Free Relay, almost missed the 200 Fly relay, but did do a great job amassing personal bests and cheering on teammates at the shallow end of the pool.

 

The Patrick Santangelo improvement train kept going this meet with another perfect 3 for 3 (no splits in his 4th event, the 100 free relay).  He dropped over a second from his 50 Breast, over 2 seconds in his 100 Free, and over 3 seconds in his 100 IM and was the only swimmer to earn 3 personal bests tonight.  Six other boys did earn two personal bests, which was also impressive.  Jack Bodt dropped almost 3 seconds in his 50 Free split while Braxton Moore dropped 2.5 and Charlie Johnson dropped a second and broke 28 in the process.  Braxton grabbed another personal best in the 50 Back, with he and Blake Reed each dropping a second off their previous best.  There were 5 personal bests in the 50 Breast.  Along with Patrick's aforementioned drop, Charlie had his first split under 38 and Chris Rauchle dropped 2 seconds to break 40 for the first time.  Daniel Basmajian and James Pickren also dropped about .5 seconds each.  Lowndes Peple had a 50 fly relay split that was almost 3 seconds faster than his best flat start 50 Fly and Christian Smith logged his first 50 butterfly in a really long time, making him the 2nd best swimmer on the team in that event.  In the longer events, Daniel was our lone personal best in the 200 Free, dropping 6 seconds and breaking 3:00 for the first time.  The whole 400 IM relay squad had a personal best.  Along with Patrick's 3-second drop, Max Dyshlevyi dropped over 2 seconds, Woods Taliaferro dropped over 4 seconds, and Christian crushed his previous best by 14.5 seconds.  In the 100 Free, James dropped over 2 seconds to break 1:10 (and 1:09) for the first time ever and his counterpart in the B crescendo relay, Camden Stanley, dropped 4 seconds.  Patrick was the other swimmer to earn a personal best in the 100, as mentioned earlier.

 

As we have done during the first 6 iterations of this meet, we once again dominated the field, winning the title again to make it a perfect 7 for 7 in team titles since this meet began in 2017 (I am sure we would have won in 2020 too if Covid hadn't prevented the meet from taking place.  A DQ in the first relay for Millwood allowed us to earn the victory in that event and we then proceeded to "run the table" and win every event on the night.  Thanks to our B team picking up points in 5 of the 10 relay events, we amassed a near-record point total of 183 points, just one behind the record of 184 back in 2021.  We did, however, set a record for margin of victory, scoring 110 points more than the runner-up team of St. Edward's, beating the 2021 team's 105-point victory also over St. Edward's.  Although we did not get any meet records tonight, our depth was on display once again, pushing us to that dominating win.