Your Gator Nation Blog: Breaching the Space-Time Continuum

Action photo.

The Simpsons. The English Patient. Monopoly. The Hobbit Trilogy. Any given baseball game. The list goes on. There are quite a few things we enjoy... they are things we may even love... but maybe, just maybe, they seem to go on a little bit long. Let's add the Riverside Gardens B Meet to that list. We love competing against our neighbors and schoolmates. It's one of the funnest meets of the year with lots of good, healthy competition between friends. And because of that, just about EVERY swimmer on the ample rosters of MVP and RSG shows up for this one. We splashed a LOT of swimmers. We splashed over 300 Gators into the water for swims. When combined with the Tsunami swimmers, that resulted in nearly 600 total swims in over 100 heats pushing the meet duration to nearly four hours. For a reference, an A meet normal has 42 heats.

Action photo #2.

Einstein's theory of relativity says that as you go faster, time slows down for others outside of your speed event, which explains things. Apparently our swimmers were going REALLY fast. The Gator swimmers collectively cut 209.65 seconds off their best times! I'm sure that type of speed definitely has an effect on the space/time continuum.

One of the key events in this meet is the Individual Medley. Swimmers from both teams are trying to set or improve their IM times in preparation for the upcoming IM Invitational. (The IM Invitational is a regional event between all the local swim clubs to be held next Monday at Little Hunting Park.) IM is such a focus at this time of year, in fact, that IM was moved to the head of the line and was the first event of the meet. Quite a few Gators made some terrific improvements in their IM times, which certainly bodes well for the Gator Nation next week at the IMI. Here's the list of Gators who cut their IM times.

Name	Age	Time	Improvement
Caroline Miller	11	1:40.90S	-12.66
Abigail Leach	9	1:51.37S	-7.79
Jack Klopson	12	1:25.73S	-5.64
Samantha Cowen	10	1:50.93S	-5.27
Isabella VanDamme	12	1:30.00S	-5.19
Ginny Grubbs	9	1:48.47S	-4.46
Nora Hixson	10	1:47.37S	-4.28
Mikayla Gordon	11	1:40.17S	-3.77
Abby Adams	13	1:34.64S	-3.56
Clark Bayer	14	1:12.37S	-3.06
Lily Palmerino	11	1:31.57S	-2.93
Donovan Kovalsky	11	1:20.63S	-2.68
James Piland	12	1:19.40S	-1.83
Gavin Fore	10	1:38.09S	-1.75
Elizabeth Moorman	11	1:30.95S	-1.24
Charlie Ruppe	13	1:20.29S	-0.91
Abby Dittman	14	1:20.28S	-0.45
Saira Nagda	12	1:47.79S	-0.4
Cecilia Morales	13	1:33.55S	-0.4
Alexander North	10	1:31.15S	-0.3
Tj Heck	14	1:13.18S	-0.12
Katya Zaitsev	11	1:36.23S	-0.11
Gabrielle Greszler	14	1:18.11S	-0.01

Swimmers take your mark...

You don't get to 300 splashes by IM alone, so we obviously had lots of other swims in the other four individual strokes as well. Here's some of the biggest improvements (>2 seconds) in the other strokes on the day:

Name	Age	Stroke	Time	Improvement
Tommy Clapton	8	Free	24.44S	-5.31
Finn Higgins	6	Free	44.60S	-2.92
Boyd Banach	5	Free	1:07.30S	-2.58
Delilah Fischer	6	Free	33.92S	-8.24
Katie Joyner	8	Free	31.86S	-5.04
Alexandra Holden	7	Free	27.85S	-2
Grant Cedoz	9	Free	52.98S	-5.21
Dakota Todd	12	Free	1:09.18S	-16.53
Nicole Zajac	11	Free	48.60S	-3.02
Tommy Clapton	8	Back	35.97S	-4.55
Anthony Campbell	7	Back	39.24S	-3.23
Delilah Fischer	6	Back	41.14S	-8.2
Elena Amaya	8	Back	29.66S	-4.68
Anna Starr	8	Back	32.44S	-3.98
Ella Kreinar	7	Back	35.94S	-2.92
Sofia Bryant	10	Back	1:08.69S	-2.09
Catherine Delaune	9	Back	57.78S	-2.01
Alexandra Myers	7	Breast	35.88S	-3.28
Hunter Edwards	10	Breast	1:09.96S	-4.71
Jackson Foerster	10	Breast	1:10.50S	-2.56
Josephine Cowen	8	Fly	24.37S	-2.75
Helen Milito	8	Fly	23.62S	-2.28
Charles Bradburn	13	Fly	35.29S	-3.42

Nice swimming Gators!

Timer Doubles and Triples

The swimmers weren't the only ones putting in good work on Monday. I may be biased on this one (I'm definitely biased on this one), but in a meet with 600 splashes, there is a lot of opportunity for success of one of the busiest groups of volunteers- the timers. It may seem like a relatively low impact job, but you'd be surprised by the fatigue that sets in clicking that stopwatch 300 times each (start, stop, reset x 100 heats). Those are some hard working thumbs. Despite the arduous duty, this meet provided for lots of great timing work, with over 71 doubles being recorded. And there was one extra special timing performance from one group (Lane 5) which produced what is an unverified record of 21 doubles and 2 triples in one meet. For those who don't know, a double is when two of the three timers in a lane get the exact same time on the swim (all the way down to the 100ths). A triple is when all three are exact- a truly rare phenomenon. As a part-time timer/part-time blogger, I have never had two triples in one meet before. Well, I should say I HAD never had two triples before... can't say that anymore. ;-) (And FYI, timers have the best seat in the house, so if you are looking for a volunteer job for next season and not sure what to do, maybe you should give it try. We have records... even if they are undocumented and unofficial. Which, I suppose, makes them fictional... but records nonetheless!)