Land Grabs and Record Captures at All-Star Relays

Team Reps wear many hats and on All-Star Relay Carnival day, one of the strangest hats of the season comes out – the “all-star relay carnival land grab” hat.  At the crack of dawn on Wednesday morning Team Rep Tonda Phalen hopped in a truck with Jamey Piland, David Ruppe, and the Gator tents and headed west to Fairfax.  They arrived just before 7AM at Greenbriar swim club, site of the 2016 All-Star Relay Carnival for an annual ritual that would seem bizarre to any alien life forms in outer space.  When the clock strikes precisely 7:00AM (not a minute earlier), the police tape drops at Greenbriar and the pool grounds open up for a race to claim real estate for your club’s relay teams.  Tonda shared with me that folks literally run as fast as they can to the best open space available, and setup tents within minutes for the evening’s festivities.  This year the Gators obtained one of the most coveted spaces at Greenbriar – right next to Clerk of Course!   And that set the stage for what would be a great evening for MVP.

Our fearless leader

 Since I brought up Clerk of Course, a quick shout-out to Kelli Makin who was our one MVP volunteer at the meet, running Clerk of Course.  Many thanks Kelli!

Rewind to a week ago and you will recall that the Gators had a big night at Division Relay Carnival at Hamlet and qualified a record 13 Gator relay teams to participate in this year’s All-Star Relay Carnival.  Those 13 teams came prepared to swim with everything they had and 5 (yes FIVE!) team records were broken at Greenbriar this year (more on that later).

67 teams competed for points at All-Stars, ranging from 44 points for a 1^st place win to 2 points for 18^th place, and the Gators finished a very impressive 12^th overall with 176 points. MVP finished ahead of two Division 2 teams – Hunter Mill (27^th place) and Donaldson Run (34^th place).  The rest of our strong division looked like this: Hamlet (6^th place), Hunt Valley (7^th place), and Little Rocky Run (10^th place).  If you are like me, you are interested to see how some of our neighbors did: well wonder no longer - Waynewood came in 23^rd with 122 points.  Riverside Gardens came in 35^th place with 76 points, Hollin Meadows in 36^th place with 72 points, and Mansion House in 38^th place with 64 points.

And their off!

So how did we swim based on how we were expected to swim?  Carrie and I had a little time on our hands on our 8 hour drive to Charleston, SC today and we analyzed the data in a variety of ways (you can only talk about your kids, job, and life for so long) and I’ve decided not to put you to sleep with the specifics.  Instead, I will just tell you that we finished almost exactly where we should have finished overall.  One example of this analysis was adding up all our seed placements and comparing to how we finished for all the relays.  The two numbers were exactly the same at 147.  

Such a cool shot.

Let’s talk about some amazing performances.  Gator girls broke three gator relay records and the boys broke two.  Here are the details:

The girls 13-14 200 meter free relay team of Juliana Skopp-Cardillo, Gabrielle Greszler, Taylor Makin, and Sheridan Phalen broke a six year old record of 1:58.32 with a record time of 1:57.83.

The girls 15-18 200 meter medley relay team of Anna Fracasso, Parker Fulghum, Sarah Jones, and Cassidy Bayer broke a three year old record of 2:09.18 with a record time of 2:08.62.  And that age group wasn’t done.  Anna, Parker, and Cassidy teamed up with Zoe Greszler to break the record for the 15-18 200 meter free relay of 1:56.37, set the previous week at Division Relay Carnival, with a time of 1:55.47.

The boys 13-14 200 meter free relay team of Nick Dupuis, Brian McNamara, Andrew Baker, and Clark Bayer broke a 25 year old record of 1:52.74, with a new record time of 1:52.29.

Getting in the zone.

I got time for one more dance move before I race.

The boys 18 & under 200 meter free relay team of Kenneth Krogh, Donovan Kovalsky, Clark Bayer, and Kevin Adams-Mardi broke the record they had set the week prior of 1:57.42 with a new record time of 1:55.44.  At just under 2 seconds, that was the most significant drop in record time of the night.

All the Gators that swam on Wednesday did really well and made Gator nation proud.  Besides the records, five additional relay teams dropped time from their seed time: girls mixed age 200 free relay (Emily Makin, Katya Zaitsev, Sheridan Phalen, and Cassidy Bayer), boys 9-10 100 meter medley relay (Matthew Makin, Jack Dupuis, Tyler Swartz, and Donovan Kovalsky), girls 11-12 meter medley relay (Juliette Fore, Emily Makin, Isabella VanDamme, and Grace McGee), boys 9-10 100 meter free relay (Jack Dupuis, Tyler Swartz, Alexander North, and Donovan Kovalsky), girls 11-12 meter free relay (Juliette Fore, Emily Makin, Isabella VanDamme, and Grace McGee).