Good evening everyone,

Home meet practice schedule on Thursday, 7/2.

Thaaaaat was a CLOSE meet last night! 

Just a quick primer on summer swim league, meet points: 

Swim meets are a zero sum game, every point we win they lose, and every point they win we lose. Therefore, the 78 point loss to Nazareth last week sounds like a lot, but it really isn't because it's a 39 point swing difference. With a total of 609 points at stake, the winning team needs 305 to mathematically lock a win. So, the 39 points only represents 12.7% of what each team needs to win. Which is similar to an 80 - 71 basketball game; a good win for Nazareth but not a blow out (or similar to a 2-1 soccer game, or a 21-14 NFL football game). 

Our meet against Two Rivers? They won, 302 - 293, a 9 point difference! With a meet that close coming down to the last relay, and with so many close races that were photo finishes, we could swim them again tonight with the same line-up and win. 

As a coach watching this meet, it seemed more like a slug fest with body blows, instead of a chess match. In some close meets we put together a balanced line-up in which we piece together small advantages into a winning strategy. We earn 1st (5 points), they earn 2nd & 3rd (4 points total), but if we can gain just a few more 3rd place points, if we can anticipate where they likely will put their swimmers more often than they can anticipate against us, then we gain small advantages each race. OR, we can have an inside strategy for individual events, an outside one for relays, first half push, second half push, hold onto to just an extra 2nd place one extra time, then plan for just one strategic body blow by going 1-2 they can't recover from and we lock ourselves a win. Getting a 1st and 2nd (going 1-2) in the same event is like a body blow in boxing. It earns you 8 points to 1. If you do that just once, the other team needs to earn 7 first places to make up for the one time you went 1-2 (5 points for 1st, then we likely will get 2-3 for 4 points, which is a small 1 point advantage = the need to get 7 first places to make up for just the one 1-2). 

Yesterday against TRA, we won 31 first places out of the 61 events, which almost always gets you the win in the chess match. However, we also put together eight 1-2 body blows, again, which almost always gets you the win. With TRA though, we seem to be near perfect opposites of each other in terms of strengths and weaknesses. So, how did they win? They landed 11 body blows, eleven 1-2s, in one meet! Which is why it felt more like a slug fest. 

We'd jab, we'd jab, then land a hard punch, but only to receive 2 to 3 hard body blows knocking the wind out of us. Close to the half way point, event #28, we were down by 29 points. That's when we started the come back, piecing together small advantages at first, then Henry Hartman & Kayden Cullen went 1-2 in the backstroke, Zaria Fleming & Riley Devlin went 1-2 in the backstroke too; finally Alek Chen & Sebastian Sanabria and Deliliah Visone & Savy Collins went 1-2 in both their butterfly events, which brought us to within 1 point, 203-202! But... ugh...TRA then won 5 of the 7 remaining butterfly events (including two more 1-2s), rebuilding a 20 point lead going into the relays. Still within striking distance though. 

That's when our 8/u and 9/10 age group swimmers went to work, winning all four of their relay events and going 1-3 in two of them (relays score 7-4-2 for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place). Then... our 11/12 boys went 1-2 in their relay! I knew our "A" relay would secure first, but on paper the TRA team was seeded faster than our "B" relay, and we NEEDED that 1-2. I walked to over to our guys, showed them the paper, showed them how close the times were, showed them they were the underdogs, and they responded! Abdul Ferguson, Kevin Butrim, Liam Reid, and Nicholas Butrim, swam their hearts out, dropped 5 seconds from their seed time to get the 1-2 and give us a 258-272 lead with only 4 events left to go!! BUT... ugh...ugh... again. :(   TRA delivered two more body blows, first tying us at 278-278, then taking the lead 289-280. It all came down to the last two events, and as it was the whole meet, GPS' and TRA's 15-19 age group swimmers have been pretty evenly matched. In fact, the 15-19 TRA girls relay beat us by just .29 seconds to hold on for the win. That's not 2.90 seconds, but .29, as in less than 1/3 of 1 second, thaaaat close. And "thaaaat close" sums up this meet in a nutshell.

More than our kids and their swimming, you know what I'm proud of though? Every meet I say each time, "Pick up one thing before you leave". Yesterday was the first time in years I forgot, I didn't even think about it until I was picking up my backpack from our area, looked around and saw nothing but clean green grass :) . It's those kinds of things that make us the best TEAM in the league, we make things better, especially when we sit together. :)

Meet Highlights - Things noticed by the coaches. :)

• 50% Improvement Rate - two meets in a row with very high percentages in this dataset!
• 40 Swimmers qualified for PJSL Champs.

Team Spirit: For consistent and enthusiastic cheering

• Xavier Harrison, JoJo Visone, Aiden Vasquez, Henry Conover, Ella Schuetz

Sportsmanship: For demonstrating honor, fairness, and appreciation towards competitors. This could be from shaking hands after a race, to conversations overhead by coaches between competitors, to any other observed actions that may fall into this category.

• Itzi Flores Ceja, Sebastian Sanabria, Bella Zhinin

Excellence:

NEW TEAM RECORD: 11/12 Boys 200 Medley Relay - Henry Hartman, Kayden Cullen, Collin Casey, Aden Chen

Ebinum Oluku & Logan Hill: Both just moved from our purely Developmental Group to hybrid competition. Both swam really well in the 25 Free, both just learned relay starts that morning, and both helped us score points in the Free relay. They, along with the other 8/u girls & boys, gave us 14 relay points we really needed at the end.

Fran Berger: In both the Medley and Free relays Fran was our anchor, the last leg, and she started each trailing a TRA swimmer. In both she pushed off, started to catch-up swimming down the lane, closed the distance right at the flags, kept her head down, kept up a super strong kick, drove to the wall, and finished with an outstretched arm to secure two come-from-behind very close victories!!  

Reagan Van Horne: There is no holding back in 100 IM, it is 4x25 sprints, non-stop. You need to have the courage to go out faster than you ever have before, to push yourself beyond your comfort zone to get to that next level. On Thursday, Reagan did not disappoint. She went all out in the fly, all out in the back, all out in breast, got to the free and about 1/2 way down the last lap she was exhausted, but she still never gave up. She held on for the win by dropping 7.0 seconds and achieving a new personal best time.

Ayanna Elston: In the 50 Back, Ayanna knew she needed a good start. Standing behind the blocks she steadied herself, heard the long whistle, jumped in, and focused. At the starting beep she exploded and had one of her best starts she's had in a long time, nailed the tight, fast, powerful streamline, and came up ahead off that streamline. The TRA swimmer caught up near the wall, but Ayanna again nailed her streamline and held the lead. Again, the TRA swimmer started to catch up during the swim, but in the end Ayanna won in a close race. Thus, she demonstrated a key racing principle: It's the starts and turns with streamlines that win the sprints. AND... in summer swimming every race is a sprint.

"Three Swims, Three Wins" Swimmers: Nick Berger, Paige Nungester, Alek Chen

Full Results are attached.

See you on deck,

Coach Drake