Your Gator Nation Blog: Gators Get Lost In Thicket of Vienna's Vienna Woods

As local country hit singer Mary Chapin Carpenter used to sing, "sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug." The MVP Gators played the part of the bug on Saturday, losing 190-230 to Vienna Woods. The Gators have fallen to 0-2 in the A meet season.

Parker, Andrei, and Clark -- ready for

some World Cup soccer. Or swimming.

The meet was close after freestyle, but the Gators led 49-41. However, Vienna Woods, colorfully nicknamed "the Woods," won backstroke by 22 points and never looked, um, back. MVP lost breaststroke 39-51 to put the meet out of reach. A 48-42 win butterfly did not come close to cutting the deficit enough.

Coach Paul points out the pool. That man

helps the swimmers in so many ways!

It was a moot point as the Gators won only four of the twelve relays. Underscoring MVP's weird dichotomy in this meet is that both mixed age relays won, which shows that there were strong individual efforts, but not enough depth to overcome the waves of Woods winners and point-scorers.

Levitating above the water is a key

part of MVP A meet warm-ups.

MVP had two sweeps, as the 13-14 boys trio of Sean Jansen, Dom Heratsch, and Collin Sundsted took 1-2-3 in the 50 free. The 11-12 boys then swept the 50 breaststroke, as Nick Dupuis touched first, Brian McNamara took second, and Parker Blondin came in third. Of course, underscoring the kind of day it was for MVP, VW had four sweeps.

Three was enough for me, but there's

nothing cuter than 8 & under girls.

Gator heroes on the day were Tyler Dunn, at age 13 years old competing in the 15-18 boy's backstroke race and TJ Heck, at age 11 swimming the 15-18 boys breaststroke.

AFrac leads the team in cheers, and leads

the team in funny face pictures on the blog.

The boys race of the week was swum by Brian McNamara, who won the 11-12 50 fly by just 0.03 seconds over his VW opponent. Which capped a day of noteworthy close wins for the Gator boys, as Donovan Kovalsky won his two races by a combined 0.11 seconds (see related article), and Andrei Zaitsev won his backstroke battle by 0.24. The girls races were not that close as they either won big or. . .didn't win. Jessie Bricker's relatively comfortable 0.44 win in the 15-18 fly was the closest over a swimmer of the Woods as they used to write in the 15th Century British sports pages.

Tom swings into action.

There were an amazing seven Gator double winners -- swimmers who took first in both of her races. Double Gator winners were Donovan Kovalsky (free and fly), Juliette Fore (free and breaststroke), Cassidy Bayer (free and fly), Nick Dupuis (free and breaststroke), Sean Jansen (free and breaststroke), Emily Makin (back and fly), and Cameron Morey (back and fly).

Joseph Ienzi, swimming frenzy.

Other Gator winners were Julianna Skopp-Cardillo (rhymes with "bopp-armadillo," not pronounced the silent Spanish double l, but that's just my pet peeve. And her parent's pet peeve) in the free, Andrei Zaitsev (back), Sara Bertram (back), Taylor Makin (breaststroke), Kevin Adams-Mardi (breaststroke), Sheridan Phalen (fly), Jessie Bricker (fly), Charlie Ruppe (fly), and Brian McNamara (fly).

I know this is a Parker. Fulghum or Blondin?

If only there were a couple of easy tells,

then this caption might be a little clearer.

(Reporter's Note: If you had told me MVP would finish first in 23 of the 40 individual events and still lost by 40 points, I would have said you were smoking something you found in the wild woods of Vienna. Editor's Note: Hey -- this is a family publication. Reporter: I didn't -- and don't -- condone it!)

Colby on the move. Literally.

The twelve MVP second place finishers were Sheridan Phalen (free), Dom Heratsch (free), Kevin Adams-Mardi (free), Sara Bertram (free), Kenny Krogh (back), Taylor Makin (back), Parker Fulghum (back), Colby Webber (breaststroke), Brian McNamara (breaststroke), Lily Penn (breaststroke), Olivia Blondin (fly), and Liam Orr (fly).

Elle Cullo with an intense breaststroke.

Garnering 19 third place points were Jack Dupuis (free and breaststroke), Lily Palmerino (free), James Piland (free), Andrei Zaitsev (free), Collin Sundsted (free and back), Elaina Phalen (free), Jessie Bricker (free), Matt Makin (back), Olivia Blondin (back), Cyrus Adams-Mardi (back), Torie Bolger (back and breaststroke), Parker Blondin (breaststroke), Carl Questad (breaststroke), Parker Fulghum (breaststroke), Andrew Baker (fly), and Jessica Metter (fly).

Liam's either doing the dead man's float,

or the butterfly. I really don't know

all that much about swimming.

Next week, MVP hosts the first of three straight home A meets against the 1-1 Little Rocky Run Stingrays. That's the pool where the Gators broke out in an All-Star Relays eight years ago, capturing the attention of the entire NVSL, finishing tied for 13th in the entire 107 team league despite being down in Division Six. It was a 150 point improvement from the season before. Fond memories.