Your Gator Nation Blog: Senior Leadership (and the "A" Meet vs Hunter Mill)

Go Gator Seniors!

Senior Day. The day we take to honor the graduating seniors on the Gator swim team and send them off into the world to begin the next phase of their lives. This day at the Swamp is pretty much the definition of a bittersweet event. It is an awesome celebration of the lives and youth swimming careers of a bunch of our oldest Gators, many of whom have been swimming at MVP for just about their entire lives. Sweet! But, it is also the harbinger of the time when those Gators will be graduating and leaving MVP. Bitter. It's an emotional roller coaster!

Bitterweet: Being injured on Senior Day, but still
coaching and rallying the troops!

This year, we bid farewell to eight Gators: Cassidy Bayer, Anna Capper, Parker Fulghum, Emma Jones, Ian Neal, Elaina Phalen, Carl Questad, and Collin Sundsted. I'm not going to write too much more about the lives and careers of these graduating Gators here because we have lots of great stuff in their bios on our Gator Senior Page and PLEASE take the time to read their "Reflections of a Gator" personal essays on this very Gator Blog. And parents, be sure the kids read them, too! The personal essays are great and tell wonderful stories about what it is like to grow up as a Gator. (Note: two essays have been posted so far, Parker Fulghum and Collin Sundsted, with more coming over the next few days... so keep checking back here on the blog.)

One of the best ways to overcome the bitter part of "bittersweet" is to add more sweet. And the sweetest thing that our Senior Gators do (in this blogger's opinion, at least) is to swim fast in the pool... and that they did! And the rest of the team followed their lead as the Gators put up some great numbers in the tightest meet of the year against Hunter Mill.

These start photos are cool... AND they have timers in them.
Bonus: Starring Chief Timer Talley Fulghum in her final "A" meet!

On Senior Day, winning Senior Fly pictures
are REALLY the best swim pictures.

This one was exciting. The Gators started hot, winning Freestyle 48-42 to take the initial lead. The Sharks chomped into the Gator lead by winning Backstroke, 47-43. That gave the Gators a mere two point lead at the halfway point... which disappeared when Hunter Mill edged MVP 46-44 in Breaststroke. A tie score after the first three events, 135-135. (I told you this one was going to be close.) The Gators found their groove in Fly and opened up a bit of a lead, winning 53-37, capped off by the final event of that round, as the 15-18 Girls put an exclamation point on it finishing with a clean sweep! Hunter Mill started making a run early in the relays winning 3 of the first 4 and closing the gap, and the meet was still up in the air with the final 3 relays remaining. But the 15-18 Girls shut the door with their win in the Medley and the Gators held on for the narrow win, with the final tally for the meet, MVP 218 - Hunter Mill 202.

Winning Senior Backstroke pictures are pretty good, too.

So, how about that Senior Leadership? Well, first off, two of the Gator seniors ended up as the co-Swimmers of the Week! With Parker Fulghum and Elaina Phalen leading the 15-18 Girls to the only two Gator clean sweeps on the day (in Back and Fly, respectively). And they each swam those strokes in their legs of the winning 15-18 Girls Medley Relay race that put the Gators over the 210 point threshold to lock up the win. On top of that, the 15-18 Girls won the title for Age Group of the Week, bringing home 35 out of a possible 41 points. Supporting our Swimmers of the Week in their sweeps and relays were their fellow 15-18 Girls: in the Backstoke Olivia Blondin and Taylor Makin rounded out the sweep, while in the Fly Sheridan Phalen and Gabby Greszler finished 2nd and 3rd. Sheridan and Taylor were also their Medley Relay partners swimming the Free and Breast for that event.

They may not be seniors yet, but I do need to say something about the 11-12 Boys. They also had 35 points, but didn't have any clean sweeps, so they lost the unofficial tiebreaker for AGOTW, but still get the honorable mention here. As a consolation prize, they did post a new record in the 11-12 Boys Medley. Not too shabby. Swimmers Alex North, Jack Dupuis, Matthew Makin, and Donovan Kovalsky set the new Gator mark with a time of 1:04.43. Congrats! And while we're talking about the 11-12 Boys... Donovan Kovalsky set another individual record with his winning time of 30.44 in the Fly. I know, this particular write-up of Donovan's record may come across as a bit cavalier given his performance, but this is Senior Day, and seniors only graduate once, while Donovan breaks records ALL THE TIME. Additionally, another great performance was delivered today in the 11-12 Boys group by Jack Dupuis, who has quietly been swimming very well in Donovan's (very large) shadow this year. Jack has been a member of all the Medley Relay records and posted a winning time of 41.56 in Breast and took 2nd behind Donovan in the Free with a likely All-Star worthy time of 30.46.

On the Race of the Week front, Cole Miller delivered a cracker in the 15-18 Boys Fly by going sub-29 for the first time in his career and pulling out a close win for the Gators.

Extra Bonus: This week's Race of the Week was Butterfly,
so you get extra awesome Fly photos.

In between the individual heats and the relays, the Senior Gators were all recognized and pass through the traditional Gator "Arch of Fins" where they were greeted by their families. Quite a few tears and quite a few cheers were witnessed. A touching celebration of our Gators. Bittersweet. I told you so.

And just for good measure.... how cool are we in Gatorville? Well, not only do the seniors win their races, win their relays, coach and motivate the younger swimmers... but they also play the National Anthem at the start of the meet. Nice work Elaina and Parker (also accompanied by non-senior, Sheridan). Gators are awesome.