Report from Poolside - NCAC Dual
(Quad) meet 11/15/09
This was
our first dual meet of the 2009-2010 season. 45 of our swimmers
made the journey up to the wonderful pool at White River Junction -
not a bad turnout considering illnesses, college visits and other
commitments. Congratulations and a big "Thank You" to all of
you! There
were several meet highlights for me. I can’t fit them all in
here so I’ve selected a few that stood out. If your swimmer
isn’t mentioned I apologize!
Joel
Copson had an outstanding meet, taking over 2 seconds off his 50
freestyle time and swimming a wonderful 200 IM too. Not to be
outdone, his sister Elena also starred.
Katie
Brink certainly deserves a mention. We had 28 girls competing
yesterday which meant that everyone got to swim a relay. All the
relays were medleys so we needed a butterfly swimmer in each one
and Katie, even though she has never raced 50 butterfly, said that
she would do it in a relay. Her team (Haley Miller(9), Sarah
Ward(9), Katie(12)
and Kaylee Champa(13) finished well behind the others (they were
swimming in the 14 & under age group) but to me their swim was
worth more than points.
FINS
dominated the relays with teams finishing first in 7 of the 10 age
groups. We may not have strength in numbers but we showed that we
have a great group of competitors.
As a
coach it isn’t always the winners that make me happy,
it’s also the look on the kids faces after they’ve
finished a swim. It’s usually the youngest swimmers that
manage the biggest smiles (I suspect that smiling isn’t the
thing to do when you become a teenager!) but there are always some
exceptions and yesterday these included Andrew Mahoney and Lorenzo
Dato who both swam the 100 fly and 200 IM for the first time.
Swimming should be fun so why not let people know that you enjoy
it? We do have some perennial smilers on our team - Julie Becker,
Caroline Shusta, Madison Sullivan, Robert Gosse and Amit Eshed to
name but a few.
Aron Reynolds deserves a
mention. He won all of his events. "As usual!" some might say, but
you need to think about the effort on his part that has lead to him
being as good as he is. He didn’t just turn up at the meet
and swim that fast, he turned up to the pool and worked hard at
almost every practice we had in the last couple of years, he even
swam on his own when we didn’t have practices. There are very
few kids on the team as dedicated as Aron - think about this when
you watch him swim next time.
Lastly,
we had five coaches at the meet and we certainly needed
them. Coach Liz
had her hands full with the youngest swimmers and I barely managed
to get the relays done in time. Thanks to Coaches Liz, Charlie,
Erik, and Mike for their efforts yesterday. Without these coaches
and all our other volunteers there would be no FINS
team. Thanks go
out to our timers too - hopefully it won’t be the same people
timing at every meet guys!
Once
again, GREAT JOB EVERYBODY and all you ill people had better get
better soon because you’re missing the fun and we’re
missing you!
IMPORTANT
NOTE TO PARENTS (from a desperate coach!): Parents can help the
coaches by finding out which events their kids are swimming BEFORE
the meet and writing these on their swimmers hands with markers.
That way the coaches only get asked for heats and lanes instead of
events too!
Coach
Chris
