Any Given Sunday and the Hunt Valley "A" Meet

"Any Given Sunday" is one of my favorite sports concepts. For those who don't quite know what it means, the idea originates from the NFL and the gist is that while there may be favorites and underdogs, on "Any Given Sunday" any team can beat any other team.

Every day in Gatorville is Super Hero Day.

Sure, some teams will win more than others over the course of the season, but those underdog teams are still good enough and if the favorite doesn't bring their "A-Game" then they can be beaten. Teams (players, coaches, and supporting staff) need to devote themselves to preparation and execution every week, because they know that if they take any opponent for granted, they will suffer and likely lose. The "sports romantic" in me loves how that idea keeps sport authentic and makes me think of the sporting contests as games rather than businesses (even the professional ones). Most of us agree that we want to see our sports decided by well played games rather than well spent money, unless you are a Yankee fan... then you're probably okay with money winning things for you. (Whoops, sorry... personal bias creeping in there.)

Anyway, you get the idea. It's awesome when we come into a contest with no clear favorite and have no idea who is going to win... and the players (or swimmers in our case) who perform best on game day emerge victorious.  Which brings us to this week's A-Meet versus Hunt Valley. If you've been reading the blog, then you know that this week was going to be a close one where either team could win on "Any Given Sunday (er... Saturday)." And a close one it was! 

Is anyone else disturbed by the awkward crossover here:
we're mixing universes between Marvel, DC,
and apparently the NHL. Talk about comic chaos!

One of the wonders of our modern society (especially for us geeks) are the prevalence of databases with all kinds of good information for us to use to analyze, compare and even predict. Using the NVSL's meet information, we can compare data from each team's weekly performances (and of course, your Gator Blogger & Stat Analyzer did that). Hunt Valley and MVP have each had three meets so far this season. Using those fancy data comparisons, if we match each meet up against each other we'd have nine total interactions (3x3). So, "running the numbers" and comparing those 9 interactions (8 analytical and 1 actual) MVP would have won 4 times and Hunt Valley would have won 4 times and we would have tied once. Now THAT is the type of "Any Given Sunday" parity we are looking for! Evenly matched competitors looking to win it on the field (er... in the pool). 

Interestingly, and slightly sadly for MVP fans, the largest losing score between MVP and Hunt Valley over those nine data comparisons was the 228.5-191.5 score that actually occurred on Saturday. Which means we pretty much got hit by the worst case scenario. By comparison, at the other extreme our times from last week (June 30th) versus Hunt Valley's times from week one (June 23) would have put us AHEAD 237-183. And even using our times from last week against Hunt Valley this week would have resulted in a 225-195 win for MVP. Any Given Sunday. But alas, while we were evenly matched and either team could win it... Hunt Valley was the victor of this particular meet.

Super Heroes of the musical variety.

Saturday's meet had a collection of little things that tipped the otherwise close meet more heavily in favor of the Stingrays- a few unexpected DQs, a few injuries, a few vacations, a few scratches, and a couple other things here and there all stacked ups against the Gators and let the meet get a bit out of hand where it didn't actually come down to the last relays. The final score was a bit of an anomaly in what should have been a much closer meet. 

The flow of the meet started out in the Stingray's favor, as they bested the Gators in the first two events: 33.5-56.5 in Free and then 34-56 in Back.  The Gators then started to storm back winning both Breast and Fly: 51-39 and 48-42, respectively. The Gators successfully ate into the lead, but Hunt Valley still took a 27 point advantage into relays and finished well to take the victory. 

For the first time this season, the Gators came up on the short end of the Clean Sweep battle. The Gators were able to take all the points in only one event while the Stingrays swept the Gators four times. 

That's new record holder Charlie Ruppe under John
French's swim cap. That cap has now set MVP records
in back-to-back weeks. Clearly he needs to keep
loaning it out to share more of that Mojo! 

Despite the team loss, there were some terrific performances by Gator swimmers. First and foremost we have a new Gator record holder in the 13-14 Breaststroke--- Congratulations Charlie Ruppe, who won the race in 35.27 to lower the mark set by Sean Jansen in 2015 by 0.16 seconds. With that new record, Gators swimmers have broken records at all three meets this season. Who's it going to be and which Gator record is going to fall next week? Tune in Saturday to find out. 

Our "Race of the Week" was won by Jack Dupuis who edged out the top swimmer from Hunt Valley in the 11-12 Breast by a mere 0.16 seconds in a super tight race. (Note: the blogger admits this ROTW determination may have been slightly swayed by the super cool Dave Anderson photos and GIF showing how close this finish actually was... but that said, it was the narrowest Gator victory of the day.)  

That's a close one. 

Our Age Group of the Week was the 15-18 Girls who used all their many collective years of swimming experience to show all the younger age groups how to get it done, earning 31 out of 41 points on the day. The 9-10 Boys deserve an Honorable Mention for earning 30 points, including the lone Gator Clean Sweep of the week in the Breaststroke. (Congrats to Shaun Nagda, Edward Stone, and Anthony Sarro for the 1-2-3 finish in that event.)

On to victory number 1 (followed up by victory number 2)

This coming week is Divisional Relays week (which means more stuff to write about and a busy blog week), so I'm going a little bit off script with the Swimmer of the Week... instead of a separate blog post, I'm going to include it here: Congrats, Bravo Zulu, and Two Thumbs up to Emily Makin who won both her events (13-14 Breast and Fly) and brought home all the points in her age group. And an honorable mention for SOTW goes out to Ethan Colunga who earned two points for the 11-12 boys by finishing 3rd place in both the Back and Fly while swimming in his first A-meet on his birthday! (Nice work, Ethan.) 

So, back to that "Any Given Sunday" thing. We've got another one queued up next week that is going to have the same chances of going either way. Remember that analysis I described earlier? Well, we can do the same thing and compare prior meets from MVP and Hunter Mill (our opponents next week) which yields a similarly tight distribution of results. Based on the nine theoretical matchups between our teams so far this year, MVP would have won 5 times and Hunter Mill would have won 4. Can you say, "Any Given Sunday!" Which is why we play the games (er... swim the meets). So, we'll see you next Saturday, where its going to be "Any Given Sunday" for the swim teams. This one is going to be really close. Let's Go Gators! 

Full meet results are here and lots of great pictures are here. 

Butterfly pictures make the best swim pictures.