Healthy Competition: Mansion House Comes to Our House for a B Meet

This is why we swim. Go Gators! 

Healthy competition is good. It's one of the benefits of youth sports. Competition drives athletes to improve and reinforces that giving their best effort has rewards (even if that reward is not always victory). Swimming has lots of competition, especially on a high performing team like MVP. Yet, while there are lots of great swimmers at MVP and therefore lots of great competition, one really great thing about this particular sport is that since the primary outcome of every race is a "time," it is easy to measure progress against yourself, no matter where any individual swimmer falls on the ladder. A positive response to the simple question of, "Did you drop your time?" always shows progress no matter how much better or worse anyone else performed. Like Dory said in Finding Nemo, "Just keep swimming" and good things will happen.

As I discussed last week after the Green and White meet, one of the big objectives of B Meets is for swimmers to improve times,  or for newer swimmers, trying to successfully complete a different stroke in a competitive environment without a DQ. In short, B meets are about improvement.

Ready to race.

But, sometimes, there is a little more competition between the swimmers themselves, even at B meets. Swimmers vie to make the cut for the A Meets, or get that last spot on a relay, or even just to win their heat for bragging rights. This B meet was one of those times where their was a little extra competition BETWEEN swimmers. This was the final meet before the fabled Divisional Relays, one of the most exciting meets of the year.  At the Divisional Relays each pool in the division sends two teams per age group to swim the Free and Medley Relays. It is always a very exciting and spirited meet.

So, because of the looming Relays, the air around the Gator swamp seemed a little heavier. It wasn't humidity. It was tension. Nervousness. Excitement. Triumph. Satisfaction. Lots of feelings and emotions could be felt in the air Monday night. The drive to improve and make one of those teams was palpable.

Nice swim. 

As I said at the beginning, healthy competition is good. It pushes young athletes to work harder and swim faster. And it certainly worked this time. The pressure and speed from fellow Gator teammates and the visiting Mansion House swimmers pushed many swimmers to personal bests- 112 in fact. That's a lot of time getting cut. How much? 210 seconds. Yes, that's right. Combined together, Gators cut 3 minutes and 30 seconds off of their collective best times.  Some are going to make new A meets. Some have new bragging rights. And some made the Divisional Relays. Congrats to everyone for some great mid-summer swimming! (And 26 people swam a new stroke for the first time in competition- also awesome!)

As always, the complete results for all of the Gators at this, and every, meet is available on the MVP website here. To highlight some of Monday's biggest cuts, here's a list of those who dropped more than 2 full seconds!

Name	Age	Stroke	Time	Cut
Kip Bryant	7	Free	32.56S	-2.63
Sabine O'Shea	8	Free	24.23S	-2.16
Hunter Edwards	10	Free	47.75S	-2.06
Evan Prible	8	Back	29.19S	-2.28
Lucy Waid	8	Back	31.54S	-2.39
Hayden Ward	6	Back	33.37S	-2.09
Evelyn Milito	6	Back	34.56S	-2.45
Jude Klopson	9	Back	57.53S	-2.90
Ginny Grubbs	9	Back	48.21S	-2.63
Samantha Cowen	10	Breast	59.28S	-2.78
Natalie Ruppe	11	Breast	1:01.03S	-2.32
Nicole Zajac	11	Breast	1:05.93S	-2.94
Jack Klopson	12	Fly	39.37S	-2.01

Not too shabby. But, if you thought that was impressive, how about this list of people who cut more than 3 seconds: 

Name	Age	Stroke	Time	Cut
Alexandra Holden	7	Free	29.85S	-4.11
Delilah Fischer	6	Free	42.16S	-3.71
Joseph Bucca	10	Free	43.16S	-3.43
Edward Stone	9	Free	57.28S	-3.42
Catie Hicks	10	Free	45.40S	-3.22
Alexandra Holden	7	Back	32.19S	-3.3
Kate Barber	6	Back	35.75S	-3.13
Sofia Bryant	10	Back	1:10.78S	-3.74
Edward Stone	9	Breast	1:08.11S	-4.86
Charlie Bruce	10	Breast	1:10.72S	-4.28
Ginny Grubbs	9	Breast	58.19S	-3.52
Emma Bruhl	11	Breast	57.47S	-3.86
Josephine Cowen	8	Fly	27.12S	-3.67

And yes, it's a little bit hard to fathom, but we've also got a list of people who cut more than 5 seconds off their personal bests... led by Jacob Milito who shaved off over 14 seconds from his 25m Free!

Name	Age	Stroke	Time	Cut
Adam Stanger	8	Free	32.17S	-10.17
Jacob Milito	6	Free	39.47S	-14.35
Kate Barber	6	Free	30.89S	-8.79
Elizabeth Delaune	9	Free	53.43S	-5.23
Kip Bryant	7	Back	35.65S	-5.05
Lincoln Jetton	6	Back	42.60S	-10.65
Dakota Todd	12	Back	1:16.06S	-10.38
Joseph Bucca	10	Breast	1:05.85S	-6.66

Once again, congrats to those who made improvements and made the cut for relays, A meets, or other goals. Be sure to check the blog on Friday to hear more about how well the Gator teams do at Divisional Relays.

Go Gators!

First timer photos could be even better than Butterfly photos.