Super Performances and Hard Decisions - Gator Swimmers of the Week

When you have an Epic Gator Battle of a swim meet, like we did this past weekend, it becomes a huge challenge to identify any standouts from such a great team performance. There were so many great swims by so many great swimmers! If you missed the meet summary blog, read it here to find out about all the clutch performances from Saturday.

I'll start with the somewhat simpler choice and tell you our boy Gator Swimmer of the Week was Clark Bayer. He set three pool records. It's pretty hard to argue with that. But, trust me, there were other good options such as Sam Bruce with two upset victories in the 8 & under Free and Back, cutting over 1 and 2 seconds off his best times, respectively, in the process... AND leading the 8 & under Free Relay to victory, also. But ultimately, Clark Kent, I mean Clark Bayer's "super" performance and three new Gator records won him the title for this week.

Clark racing to a record finish in the Medley Relay.

In the Free, he cut 0.56 seconds off his best time, beating the previous Gator record of 26.54 (set back in 2003) in his new time of 26.47. Then, just a few minutes later, he unleashed an equally impressive Backstroke performance dropping a full second off his previous best and swimming the 50m in 31.93, beating Kevin Adams-Marti's previous record from 2012 by 0.03 seconds. Most people would be pretty satisfied, and tired, after setting two records in one day, but Clark had one more in him. Teaming up with John French, TJ Heck, and Andrew Baker, he helped crush the 100m Medley Relay record from last year. The new time of 58.28 is almost a full second below the previous mark. With that third record, the hat trick was complete. But, there was still one race to go for Clark... could it be? Almost. His final race of the day was the Boys Mixed Age Free Relay. The team came up a little short of a 4th record for Clark on the day, but did swim their race in an All-Star level time, which bodes well for this week's Relay Carnival. There's a pretty good chance another record may fall Wednesday.

Bella resting up for the next swim. 

In my past life as an officer in the military, making hard decisions was one of the things I was paid to do. All that judgment and decision making practice was really put to the test this week in trying to narrow down so many great performances to just one swimmer. I've been agonizing over this since the meet ended. But, one of the other things I learned about in the military was trained initiative- which is learning to take action when in uncharted territory based upon knowledge, wisdom and the situation at hand. So, using that trained initiative, my solution to the hard decision of picking a girl swimmer of the week is to not make a decision and instead name three co-swimmers of the week! Rules are meant to be broken. So, congratulations to Cassidy Crowther, Elizabeth Moorman, and Bella VanDamme for being named the first (I think) Co-Swimmers of the Week!

Elizabeth cutting LOTS of time. 

Elizabeth rocked her way to a 1st and 2nd place finish. Cutting 2.84 seconds (yes, you read that right) off her Breaststroke, she swam to an upset victory in 46.80s pulling in 5 huge points for the team. She then put together another great swim in the Fly, grabbing second place with a time of 39.90.

Bella did her best to keep pace with her fellow 11-12 year old, Elizabeth, both literally and figuratively. Showing her own speed improvements, Bella cut 2.00 seconds off her Breaststroke time and another 0.63 seconds off her Free to earn a 2nd and 1st place finish respectively.

Cassidy en route to a .03 second victory.

Last, but certainly not least, Cassidy Crowther swam to a crucial victory in the 9-10 Girls Free in 38.03 seconds, finishing ahead of her opponent from VAC by only 0.03 seconds! She then grabbed a 2nd place finish in Back and led the 9-10 Girls Medley Relay team to victory.

Great swimming and congratulations to our Swimmers of the Week!

Go Gators!