For summer swimming, the All-Star meet in August is officially the end of the season. Queue the tears. Another fun, exciting, Gatorific summer of swimming has come to a close. Sad to see it go, but so happy that it happened.
Is it just me, or doesn't this photo make you think of all
those Olympian swimmers after winning their races? Poised.
Believe it or not, I wasn't a competitive swimmer growing up (or even a recreational one, for that matter). So, I don't really have a good eye for what to watch on any individual in a race. The technique and skill of excellent swimming escapes me.... Good turn? Okay, sure. If you say so. (Sorta looked like all the others...) A hitch in the stroke? Exactly. Ummm, maybe? Illegal scissor kick? Obviously (to you maybe). Great start... All right, that one I can usually identify. So, I've never been drawn toward the "official" and "judge" positions as a volunteer, and I've settled in as a timer (and blogger) instead. (But we always need more officials, so if you have any interest whatsoever, then you should become one!) Even though the technical aspect of swimming tends to go over my head, I still get totally engrossed in the drama of the competition itself. Great races are amazing to watch. And those great races are even more amazing to watch when there is a lot on the line. And there is a lot on the line at All-Stars. This is where the best-of-the-best throughout the entire NVSL come together for the final races of the year.
And guess what? They broadcast the meet on the internet! (Which, of course, you know since you've been reading the blog.) The joy of this whole internet broadcast thing meant we got to watch the races from the comfort of our own living room without having to worry about parking. We didn't watch the whole meet from start to finish, but we did see all the Gator races... which was a lot of the meet since we had swimmers in every stroke. It was pretty exciting. My kids enjoyed the opportunity to watch their friends swim and I got to feel the drama. We even watched some friends from Waynewood and Riverside Gardens... and rooted FOR them (I know, I know, don't hold it against me...). If you had a crazy, busy schedule on Saturday and missed any of the races, you can catch up on them all here, where the meet has been posted in its entirety.
And here is your surprise #1 All-Star Champion in 15-18 Freestyle! Nice sneak-attack job Sheridan!
And we were treated to some terrific performances by our All-Stars. The most exciting one of the day turned out to be a bit unexpected! We knew there would be a good race by our Gator swimmer... but didn't quite understand just how great. Sheridan Phalen was seeded in the second heat of the 15-18 Freestyle. For a little background, there are three heats of each event, with the slower seed times going first. That allows the races to progressively build to a crescendo with the fastest times and top finishers normally going last. Sheridan was seeded 8th and therefore in the second heat. The top six seed times would be in the third and final heat. But, Sheridan had other ideas in mind. She jumped out to an early lead in her race and just kept going strong, finishing well ahead of the competitors in her heat with a zippy time of 27.57 seconds. Then like a pro golfer who finishes her final round early on Sunday, Sheridan went into the "clubhouse" to see how her time would stand up against the competitors in the final heat. The final race was tight, with all four of the top seeds hitting the wall within 0.1 seconds of each other. In fact, the top two seeds actually finished in a dead heat - a tie.... which would have necessitated crowning co-champions had their times not been 0.16 seconds SLOWER than Sheridan's. Boom. Sheridan Phalen, All-Star Champion. Bringing the speed from the second heat. Pretty cool. I actually heard a rumor that her dad gave her some pre-race advice to "go faster" ... sage advice from our past team rep! I'm going to try that one with my kids in the future!
The Ruppe. The Ruppe. The Ruppe is on fire.
There were lots of other great swims by the Gator All-Stars. Charlie Ruppe had another career best race cutting more time off of his Gator team record in the 50 Breaststroke-- lowering it to the new mark of 34.73. John French jumped up one position from his 17th seed and finished 16th in the 13-14 Backstroke. And similarly, Donovan Kovalsky jumped up a spot from 4th to 3rd in the 11-12 Fly. Taylor Makin was seeded 9th in the 13-14 Breast and finished 7th. Parker Fulghum finished 15th in the 15-18 Free, improving from here 17th seed. And Liam Fore finished 18th in the 8 and under Fly.
And there was one other Gator race. It has been an awesome year observing Donovan Kovalsky's great season of swimming where he has crushed the record books at MVP and in the NVSL. But as they say, records are made to be broken. The NVSL website summarized this one well with their update, so I'm just going to quote it verbatim, "In the 11-12 Freestyle, Michael Mullen of Old Keene Mill stunned the crowd in an upset over the current record-holder, Donovan Kovalsky, finishing with a blazing kick and touching in 26.18. Donovan had just lowered the mark to 26.20 the week before." Crazy how these things happen... a record that had stood for 11 years gets broken twice by two different superstar swimmers in a week. Crazy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Well, I, for one, am already looking forward to seeing the next onslaught on the record books in 2019.
Speed vs Speed. Two of the fastest 12 year old swimmers ever.
And a cool shot of the race start.
Great work and great races to all of our Gator All-Stars. They were all amazing to watch.
What a season.
Which brings us to the conclusion. I do have one last story to share. One of the other Gator parents told me a story about a conversation she had with her young swimmer recently. He was excited about all of the records getting broken this year by many of the older Gators and was checking out the board to see what times he needed to achieve in his favorite events to get his name up there. The times were outside of his reach... for now. And that Gator parent told her son, if you want to get your name up there on that record board, you can do it, but its going to take a lot of hard work... and probably more commitment than just swimming during the summer. Most swimmers with their names on that record board and most swimmers who represent MVP at All-Stars are year-round swimmers.
I think that was some pretty good advice. If your swimmer is starting to catch the swim bug, and is excited about being a part of this great team and wants to achieve higher levels of success, then getting involved in one of the winter programs is one very important step. The Gator 10 and under winter swim program at GW Rec is one option for the youngest Gators, and so are the NCAP and Fort Belvoir Swim Team (both US Swim Club programs in the local area) for older Gators or some of the younger crowd who are up for the bigger challenges. If you're not sure which program or what frequency of training is right for you, talk to the coaches, team reps, or any of the many Gator family who are participating in these programs.
Enjoy the rest of your summer. We'll be back with the Gator blog in the spring. And just keep swimming.
Go Gators!
Fly pictures make the best swim pictures. Even in the
last blog of the year.
Want to watch your favorite All-Star Gator on Saturday? Want to let Grandma in California see the race? Do you just enjoy being part of the excitement, but can't make it to Little Rocky Run on Saturday?
Well, SwimNinja is live streaming the event, just like they did at the Division 3 Relay Carnival and the Individual Divisionals.
Individual Medley (Starts No Earlier Than 9am): Parker Fulghum (15-18 Girls), Taylor Makin (Note, Taylor is currently the 1st Alternate in 15-18 Girls... she may swim this event or may not depending on if there is one more scratch... TBD. She's definitely swimming Breaststroke.)
Note: Emily Makin (previously listed as one of the Gator qualifiers) has scratched from both of her events in order to compete in another meet and will not be swimming.
Jimmy Dugan (as played by Tom Hanks) had two all-time great lines in the movie "A League of Their Own." The first was, "Are you crying? There's no crying. There's no crying in baseball." Great line and if you haven't heard it or used it a million times, you've never been around baseball (or people who like to quote movies). That line is a funny one and can usually get a chuckle out of any crowd. The other epic line from the movie is not funny, but rather inspirational. When Dottie wants to quit because it is too hard to play baseball and have a family, Jimmy responds, "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great."
That last one sums up the work and payoff of sport... a lot of blood, sweat, and tears... year in and year out.... sacrifices... commitments... it's all in there. And if there is any sport that it applies to perfectly, its swimming. The work our kids put in all summer, the early mornings or late evenings in the pool all winter, the dry land training, the hours and hours of dedicated effort.... "If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great." Yup. That's pretty much it.
All that hard work came to its annual summer conclusion at the Divisional Championships held at the Hunt Valley pool on Saturday. Needless to say, the Gators hard work payed off.
Hard to beat a "passing of the torch" photo of this quality.
Let's deal with the elephant in the room first. I'm sure all of our readers were at the annual swim banquet and awards ceremony on Saturday night, so I don't have my usual dramatic build-up for the blog. We all either (1) saw it happen on Saturday morning, or (2) heard the story recanted on Saturday night, or (3) read about it in the Washington Post. That elephant was Donovan Kovalsky breaking the 11 year old NVSL record in the 11-12 Boys Freestyle. We've been talking about how it was in the realm of possibility since early in the season when Donovan first posted times that were within striking distance of the big record. He then broke lots of records all season long, creeping ever closer to the big one... and finally pushed through the mark on Saturday. And not just by a couple hundredths... he crushed it by a quarter second, touching the wall in 26.20 seconds.
That feeling when you swim so fast the internet
can't even keep up.
Now, while most people are probably awed by the 26.20 second
record time, the astute timers out there are most impressed by the fact
that they got a double! Go timers! (Yeah, yeah... nice job Donovan, too.)
We discussed lots of records in the blog this year.... because the team has set so many. Donovan himself has set or re-set records 16 times. But this one is a little bit bigger than all the others. This is the NVSL Freestyle record. NVSL records are held by USA National Team members and NCAA champion swimmers. EVERYBODY swims Freestyle and EVERYBODY takes a shot at that record. And everybody is a lot of people. Many have tried. Yet, very few have owned the record over the years. And, now it belongs to Donovan. Just how fast was that time? To put it in perspective, it was fast enough to qualify Donovan for All-Stars in the 13-14 year old age group!
It's all about the face. Can you say, "Intense?" The hard
makes is great.
There were lots of other Gators seeing the results of all their hard work on Saturday. Two more Gators broke their own team records. The adrenaline and competition at Divisionals has that kind of effect! John French cut his own 13-14 Backstroke record (by 0.31) and Charlie Ruppe did the same for his 13-14 Breaststroke record (by 0.24). And for the rest of the team, fully 55 out of our 97 swims were personal bests. Reminder: the team leaders are the ones swimming at Divisionals. These are the people with the best times to begin with. So when they lower them, its that much more of a big deal! At the top of the list of time cuts, Helen Milito and Parker Fulghum both dropped their 100 IM times by more than 4 seconds, and Jack Klopson dropped his 50 Breast by over 2 seconds. That's rising to the occasion!
Butterfly photos make the best swim photos.
We had three Division 3 Champions: Donovan Kovalsky in the 11-12 Free (obviously) and Fly, and Emily Makin in the 13-14 IM.
Silver medalists included: Sheridan Phalen (Free), John French (Back), Matthew Makin (Breast), Abigail Litonjua (Breast), Charlie Ruppe (Breast), Emily Makin (Breast), Taylor Makin (Breast), Liam Fore (Fly), Ginny Grubbs (Fly), and Charlie Ruppe (Fly).
To all Little Gators: Please take not of the consistent
theme of intensity on these super Gator swimmers.
Taking home bronze medals were: Liam Fore (Free), Sean Kovalsky (Free), Gavin Moore (Back), Shaan Nagda (Breast), Matthew Makin (IM), and James Piland (IM).
Whew. That's a lot of hard work being rewarded.
More Fly Photos = Better Blog.
We had seven Gators make the cut for All-Stars (in nine events) on August 4th at Little Rocky Run. As a reminder, individual All-Stars pits the swimmers with the top-18 times in all of the NVSL against each other in a final individual championship meet.
Who made it? Sheridan Phalen (Free), Emily Makin (IM and Breast), Taylor Makin (Breast), Donovan Kovalsky (Free and Fly), John French (Back), Charlie Ruppe (Breast), and Liam Fore (Fly).
And in some late breaking news, we've had two more swimmers get added to the All-Star heat sheets as Parker Fulghum has been added to the 15-18 IM and Taylor Makin has moved up to be an alternate in that event. That makes eight Gators in 11 events!
Token mother-daughter final Divisionals emotion evoking photo.
(Note: Blogger apologizes and takes no responsibility
for any tears created by this photo, Talley.)
All Top-6 finishers came away with medals and the Top-12 get ribbons from the NVSL. Full results from the MVP team are on the website here.
Lots and lots of great pictures (hundreds!) are on the website here. And don't forget to check out the always awesome end-of-season Gator slideshows that are there, too.
And this is a good time to remind everyone about winter swim. You, too, can be a part of all of this excitement and glory! Be on the look out for an upcoming email from the team reps going over the winter options. And remember, swimming is hard, but the hard is was makes it great!
