TAHOE UPDATE--I could actually write a small novel about this meet and the activities of our little swim team, but in the interest of time and space I will keep it to a long short story. 51 of our swimmers made it up to South Tahoe for the annual mountain festivities, a new record for our team. I think I can speak for all in saying that it was a really fun experience and a great team bondng exercise as well. There has to be a fun element to this sport as there is so much hard work and sacrifice involved in order to have success. Our swimmers do practice hard and do sacrifice and deserve situations where they can get a bit crazy...this meet sure fits that bill.
Swimming at altitude is a challenge as there really is little margin for error when racing. I loved the fact that most of the swims were done with little regard to what the last bit of the race would bring. Aggressive, fearless racing is a great attribute and I certainly saw much of that this past weekend. I think it is a great thing for our swimmers to experience and makes racing at sea level that much better.
On the statistical scene, we had 4 high point winners at the meet who all came home with very cool bobble head trophies. Aoife Duffy almost had one, but fell about one tenth of a second short in a really good head to head race with another swimmer.
- Ro Duffy (8 under girls)
- Brad Cline (9-10 boys)
- Deborah Roth (11-12 girls)
- Stephanie Christofferson (13-14 girls)
We had 2 new board swims with Ro Duffy getting on the board in the 100 IM and Conner Evans making it in the 200 free. This is Conner's first board swim ever and it was also a Far Western qualifying time.
Another swim of note was Allie Masterson who swam a great 100 breast and made Far Westerns with her time. Maybe my favorite fast swim of the meet was William Breck showing some outside smoke in winning the 8 under backstroke. William has had a tendency to "dock the boat" a bit when finishing back stroke for fear of smashing his head. This time he came into the wall with a vengeance and won with a best time by about three seconds. Very cool.
Other highlights:
- Nicole Lung discovering great speed on the water on a skidoo --
she also discovered there are officials monitoring such speed.
- Dillon Moscone (aka Abe Fromer, the sausage king of Chicago) recreating a classic scene from the movie Caddyshack- you had to be there for true appreciation of its genius (not that I am condoning this!!)
- Tuna parents--I have to tell you, we have such an incredibly active group of parents in the mix right now...as an example:
--Four NBA parents who participated in at least part of the death ride (biking some of the local summits - the whole ride consists of going over 5 summits and takes many many hours to complete)
--Two parents who biked around the lake, a 73 mile ride.
--One parent (Everett Austin) who did a 25 mile run on the Tahoe ridge trail
--One parent (Brenda Austin) who swam for three hours in the lake as training for a 6 mile ocean swim that is coming up.
--On Sunday morning at 6:00 before the meet, we had 11 swimmers including all three coaches who did a morning swim of at least a mile (I was told many times the night before to suck it up as I tried to rationalize my way out of it - my words come back to haunt me!!).
This type of activity is very inspirational and it is easy to see why the kids on our team have such a zest for things that are challenging...thank you parents!!
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