The Hard. (Divisional Championships)

Jimmy Dugan (as played by Tom Hanks) had two all-time great lines in the movie "A League of Their Own." The first was, "Are you crying? There's no crying. There's no crying in baseball." Great line and if you haven't heard it or used it a million times, you've never been around baseball (or people who like to quote movies). That line is a funny one and can usually get a chuckle out of any crowd. The other epic line from the movie is not funny, but rather inspirational. When Dottie wants to quit because it is too hard to play baseball and have a family, Jimmy responds, "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great."

That last one sums up the work and payoff of sport... a lot of blood, sweat, and tears... year in and year out.... sacrifices... commitments... it's all in there. And if there is any sport that it applies to perfectly, its swimming. The work our kids put in all summer, the early mornings or late evenings in the pool all winter, the dry land training, the hours and hours of dedicated effort.... "If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great."  Yup. That's pretty much it.

All that hard work came to its annual summer conclusion at the Divisional Championships held at the Hunt Valley pool on Saturday. Needless to say, the Gators hard work payed off.

Hard to beat a "passing of the torch" photo of this quality.

Let's deal with the elephant in the room first. I'm sure all of our readers were at the annual swim banquet and awards ceremony on Saturday night, so I don't have my usual dramatic build-up for the blog. We all either (1) saw it happen on Saturday morning, or (2) heard the story recanted on Saturday night, or (3) read about it in the Washington Post.  That elephant was Donovan Kovalsky breaking the 11 year old NVSL record in the 11-12 Boys Freestyle. We've been talking about how it was in the realm of possibility since early in the season when Donovan first posted times that were within striking distance of the big record. He then broke lots of records all season long, creeping ever closer to the big one... and finally pushed through the mark on Saturday. And not just by a couple hundredths... he crushed it by a quarter second, touching the wall in 26.20 seconds.

That feeling when you swim so fast the internet
can't even keep up. 

Now, while most people are probably awed by the 26.20 second
record time,  the astute timers out there are most impressed by the fact
that they got a double! Go timers! (Yeah, yeah... nice job Donovan, too.) 

We discussed lots of records in the blog this year.... because the team has set so many. Donovan himself has set or re-set records 16 times. But this one is a little bit bigger than all the others. This is the NVSL Freestyle record. NVSL records are held by USA National Team members and NCAA champion swimmers. EVERYBODY swims Freestyle and EVERYBODY takes a shot at that record. And everybody is a lot of people. Many have tried. Yet, very few have owned the record over the years. And, now it belongs to Donovan. Just how fast was that time? To put it in perspective, it was fast enough to qualify Donovan for All-Stars in the 13-14 year old age group!

It's all about the face. Can you say, "Intense?" The hard
makes is great.

There were lots of other Gators seeing the results of all their hard work on Saturday. Two more Gators broke their own team records. The adrenaline and competition at Divisionals has that kind of effect! John French cut his own 13-14 Backstroke record (by 0.31) and Charlie Ruppe did the same for his 13-14 Breaststroke record (by 0.24). And for the rest of the team, fully 55 out of our 97 swims were personal bests. Reminder: the team leaders are the ones swimming at Divisionals. These are the people with the best times to begin with. So when they lower them, its that much more of a big deal! At the top of the list of time cuts, Helen Milito and Parker Fulghum both dropped their 100 IM times by more than 4 seconds, and Jack Klopson dropped his 50 Breast by over 2 seconds. That's rising to the occasion!

Butterfly photos make the best swim photos.

We had three Division 3 Champions: Donovan Kovalsky in the 11-12 Free (obviously) and Fly, and Emily Makin in the 13-14 IM.

Silver medalists included: Sheridan Phalen (Free), John French (Back), Matthew Makin (Breast), Abigail Litonjua (Breast), Charlie Ruppe (Breast), Emily Makin (Breast), Taylor Makin (Breast), Liam Fore (Fly), Ginny Grubbs (Fly), and Charlie Ruppe (Fly).

To all Little Gators: Please take not of the consistent
theme of intensity on these super Gator swimmers.

Taking home bronze medals were: Liam Fore (Free), Sean Kovalsky (Free), Gavin Moore (Back), Shaan Nagda (Breast), Matthew Makin (IM), and James Piland (IM).

Whew. That's a lot of hard work being rewarded.

More Fly Photos = Better Blog.

We had seven Gators make the cut for All-Stars (in nine events) on August 4th at Little Rocky Run. As a reminder, individual All-Stars pits the swimmers with the top-18 times in all of the NVSL against each other in a final individual championship meet.

Who made it? Sheridan Phalen (Free), Emily Makin (IM and Breast), Taylor Makin (Breast), Donovan Kovalsky (Free and Fly), John French (Back), Charlie Ruppe (Breast), and Liam Fore (Fly).

And in some late breaking news, we've had two more swimmers get added to the All-Star heat sheets as Parker Fulghum has been added to the 15-18 IM and Taylor Makin has moved up to be an alternate in that event. That makes eight Gators in 11 events!

Token mother-daughter final Divisionals emotion evoking photo.
(Note: Blogger apologizes and takes no responsibility
for any tears created by this photo, Talley.)

All Top-6 finishers came away with medals and the Top-12 get ribbons from the NVSL. Full results from the MVP team are on the website here.

Lots and lots of great pictures (hundreds!) are on the website here. And don't forget to check out the always awesome end-of-season Gator slideshows that are there, too.

And this is a good time to remind everyone about winter swim. You, too, can be a part of all of this excitement and glory! Be on the look out for an upcoming email from the team reps going over the winter options. And remember, swimming is hard, but the hard is was makes it great!

Go Gators! And good luck at All-Stars!