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Reports of WSY National Team YMCA Nationals College Park Maryland written by Coach Mike
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Saturday, August 1, 2009 (3pm) -
Friday night at Y Nationals is always the night where we see the great endurance
of the WSY athletes.
There
is always a certain amount of pride at WSY about being able to swim a tough
schedule of events over the course of a five (5) day meet, and then shift to a
higher gear on the final
night.
During the year, when we are doing all of my favorite 300 and 400 freestyle's or
200's kick plus a 200 fast IM, I hear the swimmers telling me about how hard it
gets, but I also know they have great pride at Nationals knowing they are well
conditioned athletes, and so very glad they put in all of the work during the
year. Last evening was no exception. As has become a "WSY Motto", we
have "Last Day/Fast Day", which is brought up every year. On the pool deck
last night supporting the team were WSY Alum Tricia Weaner, and Kayla Zeller,
who joined early guests Meg Soisson, and Justin "JB" Beegle. We are always
thankful when our alum come back to support the team at any of the meets.
Prior to last night's session, Coach Scott and I looked at the team scores, and
knew we would have to have a great night of swimming to remain in 3rd place as a
girls team. [Final
Scores are here]. At the end of the night, the girls remained in 3rd
place, the men's team was listed as 17th place, and we had a team score of 4th
in the combined team scoring. After a successful finals session, we went
to Dave and Busters for our team dinner. It was an early rise today
(Saturday) as we traveled back to WSY. I know everyone had an awesome
week, with many highlights. Here are some of the highlights from Friday
evening:
Carly's 800 free [video],
first part of the Final Night double. Carly's theme for the night is "Put
your Hands up in the air and dance. 21 minutes after Carly swam
here
800 free, she took her turn at what is becoming a common goal for WSY swimmers,
the
200 fly/800 free double. Showing her great endurance background, Carly
was able to shift gears on the final 50 of this 200 fly [video]
to capture a win in the "B" final. The guys also got into the Friday
not scoring with their
200 free relay. [Video]
Performing a triple on Friday night, along with Steph Kinsey(200
free relay, 50 backstroke [video],
and
400 Medley relay [video])
was Madie Hoch. Madie swam the
200 free relay [video], the
200 fly [video],
and
400 Medley Relay [Video].
Carrigan Eckels swam her 800 freestyle earlier in the day and got 12th place for
more team points. Not to be outdone by the girls, Travis Bohn dropped a
great 50 backstroke [video]
to give the men's team a few more points. Emily Weaner got her hands on
the wall to help both of the girls relays this evening, both the
200 free relay, and the 400 medley relay, having the fastest 100 fly split
out of the entire field in the heat. Caroline Finkbeiner also was able to
show some sprint speed this evening with a great split adding to the great swims
in our
200 free relay, and Morgan held down the breastroke leg of our
400 Medley relay on our way to winning the "B" final heat in that event
Prior to the swimming on Friday evening, Lauren and Adri led our Thought of the day as this was their last National meet, as both will be departing for college in a few weeks. Thanks to both Adri and Lauren for their great leadership this past week. This means out of the 20 WSY athletes on the trip, 18 will be joining us in Fort Lauderdale in the Spring. How many more WSY athletes can we add to the 18 that will be on the trip? The challenge is out there.....will you be joining us?
Thursday,
July 30, 2009 (11pm) - Today was a a big day for us, where we made up
many points in the
total team standings. The day started with a great Team
Meeting
"Thought
of the day". Then we went into one of our best finals sessions of the
week. Travis showed his back half speed with a great
200 backstroke [video],
winning the "B" final. We also saw a first for WSY.....five (5) girls
scoring in one event (400
IM). Jess, Adri, Morgan, Carly, and Madi scored major points in this
event. [A
Final video] [B
final video]. This event really
showed
our style of training. Moving on to the sprint events, Steph Kinsey dipped
under the 1:00 mark in the
100 free, going a lifetime best time. [video].
Adri showed us her versatility, and turning a tough double, and swimming a very
strong
200 backstroke [video].
The girls added a second place finish in their
800 free relay [video] with some very strong splits.
Here is a great video of the girls from Middle Tyger being excited after
breaking the WSY National record from last year.....
It was great to see as the meet moves into the last day, that WSY swimmers continue to swim fast. The meet concludes on Friday, and after finals we will make our Annual trip to Dave and Busters, and then up early on Saturday for the return trip home. More later.......
Wednesday,
July 29, 2009 (10pm) - Tonight was a very interesting night. We
had some great swims, starting with
Morgan's 200 breastroke, where she had a very strong effort [video].
It was during the mens 200 breastroke where we experiences almost an hours long
timing system delay. After the University of Maryland
staff
was able to get the situation under control, we were able to get into the
200 freestyles. Emily had a very strong 200 freestyle [video],
bettering her time from this morning. Caroline was in the "B" final, where
she also had a bit of time improvement from this morning [video].
Maddie was in the "A" final where she strong a great 200 free, [video]
show some awesome promise for the WSY girls 800 free relay team tomorrow
(Thursday). Big Luke Trimmer was up next for his
200 free [video],
continuing to swim great throughout the meet. Keep in mind, preceding
these 200 freestyle swims, the athletes had to "sit around" for almost an hour
before they got to swim due to technical difficulty. They also knew they
would only have about
20
min to warm down until they had to get back in the water and represent WSY on
relays. Overall, everyone seemed to get through the adversity great.
As mentioned previously, based on their swims earlier today, Luke and Ryan
scored in the Top 16 in their
800 freestyles, improving the men's team point totals. Next, it
was relay time. After a quick warm-down, 3 of the 4 WSY girls turned
around for the
400 free relay. Maddie, Emily, and Caroline were about even with their
splits in the am, and it was up to Steph to race home for the final leg (58.37
final split) for a 3rd place finish. After keeping Luke Trimmer off the AM
relay so that he could swim his 800 freestyle, Ben Jumper filled in during the
AM heats and was very "key" in getting the WSY guys into the final. Ben is
a great team player in helping the men's squad continue to build the team
points. We placed Luke back on the relay
for the evening, and he gave us a great lead, followed up by Travis, Austin,
and a remarkable relay leg by Justin Stewart [video].
These guys fought tough, and WSY ended up winning the "B" final, which was a
HUGE step for our guys team, as we were uncertain if we would make this relay
back for a night swim.
Here is Tuesday Team Meeting. Here is our Wednesday Team Meeting
Tonight was a great evening of swimming, and it was
a great team effort. At the end of today [scores]
we are 5th place overall. Thanks to everyone for following.
The team is doing very well, and continue work together to make many
accomplishments......ok, early AM, so I need to sign off......until tomorrow...
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 (3:30pm) -
Last night and this morning prelims, we have had some outstanding swims. I
apologize for not writing more, and will make
a
big effort to give you more incite this evening. I have a few video's of
our team meetings to upload, as they have been great. You
can see the live webcast here from
SwimNetwork.com of every finals session......more later
Tuesday, July 28, 2009 (2pm) - Today
was a great day of swimming at the prelim session. Coach Kim and I were
just talking, and we figured we had
close to 90% lifetime best times at this session. Here is some video of
our "Day
1 Fun". We have many great swim coming back to swim finals session
this evening. You
can see the live webcast here. Coming back for 2nd swims are: 100
back: Steph Kinsey, Travis Bohn, 400 Free: Maddie Hoch, Caroline
Finkbeiner, Adri Phillips, Luke Trimmer, Ryan Turner, 200 IM: Morgan
Pfaff and Steph Kinsey, 50 free: Austin Bohn. We will also
recognize the 1500 award winners this evening. The meet begins at 5:45pm!!
Monday, July 27, 2009 (9pm) - Today
was the first day of the actual competition. In a changed format this
year, we are swimming the Metric Mile on the night prior to the "normal" first
day. Let me just say, we had three (3) swims, and three (3) lifetime best
times, and all three (3) swimmers scored points for the team.
Carly "CRUNCH" Munchel went into the night with a lifetime best time of
17:23.52, and ended up placing 3rd, going 17:08.59, only 2 seconds from a US
Open cut. Ryan "RT" Turner showed his back end speed blasting a 1:00 on
the final 100 of his mile, something only the great Harry Foster would do (we
call him "Save Up Harry").
Ryan's previous best time was 17:02.89, and
tonight he ended up
6th going 16:22.20. Our final swim of the night was Carrigan Eckels,
who was a late addition to this race, as she made her mile cut at the JO meet at
Penn State two weeks ago. Carrigan kept our streak going by swimming to a
18:01.17 (previous best was 18:23.42), which gave her a 14th place finish, her
first time on the medal stand.
Scores after Day 1 are here. Day 2 (Tuesday) Heat Sheets are here. It was a great night for WSY with our distance swimmers starting off the week with some awesome swims. We held our Team Meeting at dinner this evening, and here was the Thought of the day. We are looking forward to another great prelim session on Tuesday.......more in the morning
Sunday, July 26, 2009 (9pm) - After a
great Summer of swimming, at locations such as Bucknell University, F & M
College, Penn State University, as well as local Central Pennsylvania Summer
Leagues, twenty WSY swimmers have some together again for the Long Course
version of the WSY National Team. We have a few
"rookies" who are making
their first trip as part of our National Team, and Adri Phillips (Towson
University), and Lauren Schmittle (University
of North Carolina) are making their final trip with our team. The meet
is about 1,300 swimmers this year
and looks to be fairly fast on paper, however
based on some of the other swimming going on around the world, who knows how
fast the meet will actually be swum. At our team meeting tonight we
discussed taking advantage of every opportunity, and every chance we have in the
pool. We had a great "Thought of the day" today by Caroline, Morgan,
Emily, and Austin we they talked to the squad about working together as a team.
The meet has a slight change this year, moving to a 4.5 day format, where we will be swimming the metric mile on Monday (7/27) evening. Carrigan, Carly, and Ryan will be swimming the mile. As soon as we have the links to the "Real Time Results", we will them posted. Each evening, we will upload as much video as possible, and you can also follow us on the WSY Twitter Page. We will "tweet" as much as possible about the various WSY happenings at 2009 Nationals.
As like most National meets, I get to have Coach Scott as my "room mate". Most nights as I am filling out this blog it sounds like someone is mowing the lawn.....that is how loud Coach Scott snores. Perhaps I can get some recording this year so everyone can hear.......OK...enough for one day....more tomorrow
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