We were asking a lot of the boys on Saturday morning, so I think it is important to acknowledge that.  They had to wake up with a 4 still on the clock in the hour position, something they have likely not done ever, or very little, in their life.  Then they had to ride two hours to another state, stay in a (not-so-warm) gym, and swim in what one would argue is a hazardous warm-up situation with 1 lane and almost 20 swimmers.  In addition to all of this newness, we are at a meet that has more than double the size of our meets in terms of competitors, which can certainly be overwhelming, and also lasts twice as long as our typical meets.  As if this was not difficult enough before the meet even started, we have only had 2, yes 2 (February 10th & 12th) (3 if you came to the optional practice last Tuesday), regular practices since February 6th, over two weeks before the meet.  A meet on 2/7, snow on 2/11, meet on 2/13, water polo on 2/14, president's day on 2/17, snow day on 2/19, and spring sports on 2/20 (snow day) and 2/21, all pointed to us really having an uphill battle at this meet.  In addition to asking boys to somehow earn personal bests with all this adversity, we were also trying to make up a 10-point deficit on a team in order to leave with a 3rd place trophy.

 

Despite all of these challenges, the boys had a great day.  It sounded like several were bummed not to get as many personal bests or move up into that 3rd place team position, but we certainly put up one heck of a fight.  We actually did close the gap on that 3rd place team (more on that later) and we still had 15 personal bests, including 5 boys with 2 personal bests each and 5 more with 1 personal best each.  In fact, not including relay splits, there were 20 swims that did not yield a personal best, but 7 of these were within .50 seconds of a best time, 5 more were within 1 second of a best time, and 3 more 100 or 200 Free swims were within 1-2 seconds of a personal best.  Given all that time off from swimming, these are impressive non-personal best numbers in my book!  George Estill, Daniel Basmajian, Braxton Moore, Patrick Santangelo, and Charlie Johnson all had 2 personal bests each.  Daniel dropped 3 seconds in his 50 Fly, Max Dyshlevyi dropped 3 in his 200 Free, George broke 26 for the first time in free on a relay split, Charlie had a double-PR in the breast (both relay start and flat start times), Braxton dropped over 2 seconds in his 50 Back, James Pickren broke 28 for the first time in free on a relay split, Chris Rauchle broke 30 for the first time ever in 50 Free (first time under 31 too!), and Patrick, as he has done all season, had another big drop, this time it was 7.5 seconds in the 200 Free.

 

Max earned his first two "elite performances" and now ranks 25th all-time STC MS in the 100 Free (57.95) and 21st all-time STC MS in the 200 Free (2:08.53 - ahead of Charlie Swanson).  George had already earned an "elite performance" in 5 events earlier this season (100 & 200 Free, 50 & 100 Back, and 100 IM), but improved his ranking in both 50 Back and 100 Free on Saturday, as well as getting on the 50 Free list with his opening split of the 100 Free.  He now ranks 36th in 50 Free, 18th in 100 Free, and 14th in 50 Back, all to go with his rank of 20th in 200 Free, 11th in 100 Back, and 10th in 100 IM.  With his 8th grade year ahead of him, stay tuned for his movement up the ranks.

 

The score was an interesting one for us this meet.  We knew St. Alban's and Landon had way too much power, as indicated by the fact that 5 of the 8 A Free Relays swimmers on these two teams went under 24 seconds (and 2 more were in the 24s).  However, we had a shot to get The Heights School for 3rd.  I was following the scoring as each event was completed (and Woods' mom sent me images of the posted results) and things looked good early for us.  We were down 6 and they were up 4 from what we were seeded to score after the medley relay.  Although this was not a good start, they ended up 9 below seed in 100 Free and 24 below seed in the 100 IM, opening the door for us to make up that 10 point deficit in the overall pre-seeded score.  We were 2 off in the 100 Free, but ended up 15 off in the 50 Free.  Part of that was on me for some aggressive seeding of a few of our boys (entering a faster time than their actual flat start time to have an entry time closer to their best relay split) and also going against my usual rule of thumb which is avoiding the 50 Free at this championship meet because people seem to always come out of the woodwork and a bad turn or start for one of us can mean all the difference.  The next two events also looked good for us with them 6 below seed in 50 Fly and 11 below in 200 Free.  We were actually 1 up in 50 Fly and only 3 down in 200 Free.  They ended up 1 for 50 Back and Breast while we were 5 down in those two events, sending us into the final relay 5 points behind.  They ended up scoring 4 points more and we were 4 points below our seed, giving them the 3 point edge over us for 3rd.  Oddly enough, it was the first 4th place finish we have ever had in meet history (we had a few 7ths and a 5th in there too).

 

Although we don't have a middle school state meet in Virginia, this "tri-state" battle of VA, MD, and DC private schools is essentially our championship meet and we have treated it that way for years.  In the 26-year history of the meet, a Richmond team (STC, Collegiate, St. Michael's) has won more than half of the titles (14 total - we have 7), and we would certainly have 2 more during the Covid years with the powerhouse team we had back then.  We certainly enjoy winning a lot against our local teams during the bulk of the season, but this is a good test for us to head up to Holton-Arms every year.  Better teams search out better competition, not to get knocked down and make us think we are not any good, but to push us to be better.  We have such a 7th grade heavy team, that 10 of those 7th graders now have the experience of this meet under their belt for next year, not to mention one year of middle school swim team training.  More imminently for the 8s, but also the 7s down the road too, this meet is a good preview of the state meet experience in high school - the need to travel several hours, handle unfamiliar warm-ups, be surrounded by way more people than a normal STC meet, and know that their are some fast swimmers out there, but you still have to execute your race.