Swimmers Take Your Mark, Wait and Boogie at the B Meet at Riverside Gardens!

By Special Correspondent David Ruppe

A whole lot happened at the Gators' final B-meet of the season, at Riverside Gardens -- just not a lot of swimming. 

The meet was cancelled for thunder after nearly two hours of freestyle, backstroke, and extended dance jams between swims. With warm-ups cancelled before the meet due to a heavy shower, some swimmers never dipped a toe in the pool. 

Gator boys waiting for a race that will never come...

Some swimmers (and spectators) at our neighborhood's reputed "party pool" did appear bored waiting for swims. 

Still, it was a amusing time, if you were watching closely or had a high quality camera lens. For instance, we saw two new dive styles in just one race, the Sprinter and the Frog:

And check out this pic:

Giving credit where it's due, the "DJ" announcing the meet was spinning some catchy tunes that got our Gators grooving, from the Chicken Dance to Cotton Eye Joe, to the Cupid Shuffle. Hatchlings pulled out all kinds of moves.

Gators who weren't dancing found other ways to amuse themselves. 

Olivias Blondin and Heck were having a foot battle.

And did you catch the kids playing a (fortunately) G-rated version of "spin the bottle?"

Some exciting things did also happen in the water. Young Tyler Swartz (9) continued to push his body to new limits, swimming his 50 free race on just two breaths. His goal is a no-breath 50 race, according to dad Matt.  

We saw him last year swim a 25 fly on no breath and pop up smiling.

After all the fun and dancing, Gators did make some significant improvements to their personal bests. Ian Hixson cut 6.33 to post 47.19 in the boys 8&U 25 free.  In the girls 8&U 25 free, Evelyn Milito cut 15.08 (42.43), Kaitlyn Herrmann 6.01 (40.89) and Alexandra Holden 9.66 (48.90). In the girls 9-10 50 free: Catie Hicks cut 5.58 (50.69) .

Smaller, yet notable cuts included Marina Soderlund improvement of 1.73 seconds (23.44) to leap into second on the girls 8&U 25 free ladder and Sam Bruce's cut of 4 seconds (31.02) to jump several places into second on the boys 8&U 25 back ladder. 

This guy put an end to the racing:

But not before Gator cameras caught a few more cool moments brought to you by Gators Lily Palmerino, Andrew Baker, and Emma Bruhl.