Fairy Tales in The Woods - Vienna Woods "A"

I have a theory that the Brothers Grimm must have had a really terrible experience in the woods as children. Same for Walt Disney. Personally, I like the outdoors. Heading to the mountains or woods and hiking, biking, or camping... those are some of my favorite pastimes. But, I'm pretty sure that was not the case in the Disney or Grimm families. Have you noticed that every time something evil or scary happens in a Disney movie or Grimm fairy tale, it generally happens in the woods? The Beast was banished to the Black Forest. Sleeping Beauty fell under her spell in the woods (in fact, the full title of the story is "Sleeping Beauty in the Wood") . Where did Elsa go when she left the castle? The Frozen Woods. The list goes on and on. The wooded forest seems to be the backdrop of all the bad things that happen in these stories (we ain't even going to mention Bambi). This is obviously a consistent setting for evil in the Grimm and Disney tales. But why? My theory is that they had to have some sort of bad experience in the woods as children themselves, and it clearly left a mark.

Beware: R.O.U.S. known to inhabit "The Woods."

Which brings us to our weekly "A" Meet for the MVP swim team. This week, we headed to "The Woods" of Vienna, of course. But, what reason would we have to fear entering these woods? Surely, there is no Beast, no Witch, nor any R.O.U.S for us to fear coming across.  But... maybe we do have reason to fear?

How about a little history? It is a fact that the last three times (2013-2015) MVP and Vienna Woods have matched up for a swim meet, it has been the home team that emerged victorious. So, on Saturday when we drove the winding path into Vienna Woods (made even more winding by faulty GPS directions...but that's another story), we had history, fear, and the Brothers Grimm all against us.

One of the things I normally do before a meet is run some numbers based on the seed times of the swimmers in the meet. When I did that for this meet, the pre-game analysis showed that we were set for a near virtual tie. If everyone swam their normal quality times, there was a good chance it was going to end up in a tie or a very narrow margin in one direction or the other. Admittedly, I liked to see that... as you know, I'm a fan of drama. But, lest we not forget... history said that the home team always had the advantage in this matchup, so I was a little nervous.

The scary setting was established... we were in The Woods.

Heroes are coming! 

What does every fairy tale need to find that happily ever after ending? Heroes and heroines. And here is where the MVP Gators enter the story. And it didn't take long for the first of them to emerge. In the 9-10 Girls Freestyle event, Helen Milito and Alexandra Myers came to our early rescue by swimming their best times ever to steal 3 crucial points. Helen was forecast to finish 2nd, but cut 1.22 seconds off her time to pass the VW lead swimmer and take the victory. Meanwhile, Alexandra cut nearly a full second off her time to overtake another swimmer and get the 3rd place finish. In meet scoring, a second place finish earns 3 points, while taking 1st and 3rd gives us 6. That's a gain of 3, and a loss of 3 for the other team, giving us a crucial early net 6 point swing in a tight meet. That point swing was step one of our success, and earned this one the "Race of the Week" honor.

Step two was the 13-14 Boys (Donovan Kovalsky, Jack Klopson, and Jack Dupuis) taking the first sweep of the day with their Freestyle race a few events later and earning the full 9 points. With these and the other Freestyle swims, MVP jumped out to an early 48-42 lead after Free.

But, no fairy tale is complete without some drama and despair in there. The Woods strengthened their resolve and our heroes were overcome in the Backstroke as Vienna Woods roared back, in a somewhat "Beast-like" fashion, with a 50-40 win to take the overall lead by 4.

"Jetton" to the 1st place finish... see what I did there?

With Breaststroke up third and MVP trailing, the 8 and unders got the rally rolling early with a win by Lincoln Jetton for the boys and the second team sweep of the day coming from the girls (Natalie Crowther, Hayden Ward, and Evie Milito). The older swimmers followed the lead of the young ones and won the Breaststroke 48-42 to retake the overall lead.

Heading into Butterfly, MVP held the lead by a slim two point margin. Again the 8 and unders had some fantastic swims to kick things off, notably Bianca Henderson who cut over FOUR seconds off her best time to move up into third place and grab another crucial point for the team.

Note: Tried to put an action shot of Sam in here... but
he swam so fast for that Gator record they were all blurry.

Then Sam Bruce came in for the 9-10 Boys Fly and became the hero we were all looking for. Sam swam the 25m race faster than any Gator ever has before and set a new team record at 16.61 seconds. The rest of the team continued to rack up points, winning 6 of the 10 Fly events and taking the segment 48-42. That positioned the Gators in the lead heading into relays, with the score 184-176.

While an eight point lead like that may seem like a decent cushion, the Gator relays still had to take at least six of the 12 relay events. If VW was able to win seven, they would take the meet and defend their home turf, "The Woods."(Insert dramatic music here.)  First relay up was the 8 & under Boys... who were seeded six seconds behind The Woods. What did those Little Gators do? They heroed up, of course. Coach Paul changed the order of the swimmers in the relay and somehow that helped them shave 8 seconds off their time from the previous week to win... 8 seconds! Don't ask me. Coach Paul must be playing the role of the fairy godfather in this tale... sprinkling some magic dust on the swimmers to give them a hero boost.

Dust dealer/Fairy godfather.

Relay record photos are right up there with
Fly photo supremacy.

Then, the 13-14 Boys and 15-18 Boys each set new MVP records in their respective Medley Relays. Joe Humphreys, Jack Klopson, James Piland, and Donovan Kovalsky finished the 13-14 100m race in 56.69, cutting 1.6 seconds off the previous record from 2017. The older boys (John French, Charlie Ruppe, Cole Miller, and Clark Bayer) cut 2.5 seconds off the team record in the 200m Medley posting a new time of 1:56.03 besting the old mark which was set only two weeks ago at Crosspointe.

Okay, now this is where the fairy tale theme gets really weird. This is a TRUE story: Vienna Woods has a family of swimmers whose last name is Grimm. You can't make this up. Yes, that's right, we were swimming against the Brothers Grimm themselves. And two of them were in the 15-18 Boys relay... and actually defeated our team in that race despite our boys record setting performance. If this had been a horror story, this is the point where it all would have gone seriously wrong and our opponents would have rattled off a sweep of the last few relays to steal the victory.... but no. This is still our fairy tale, and it does have a happy ending.

Did we really just do that? Yeah, that was awesome. 

The 15-18 Girls rose up to become the final heroines and secured the victory. The Vienna Woods girls were the #1 ranked relay team in the division... and our girls were seeded FOUR seconds behind them. But like four Sleeping Beauties: Emily Makin, Taylor Makin, Gabby Greszler, and Sheridan Phalen were awakened by some of Paul's magic dust and proceeded to win the race while posting the new top time for Division 3. Truly magical!

Victory achieved, the people rejoiced. The Gators overcame the hex of the "The Woods" to win the meet with a final score of 224-196. All it took was three new team records, a few hero/heroine performances, and some magic dust.

13-14's in the House.

And how about the Age Group of the Week? I glossed over portions of their workmanlike performance earlier, but the 13-14 Boys really dominated in this one. Like Robin Hood and the Merry Men, they took points at will and brought them home to the team like golden treasure. These boys earned 38 out of a possible 41 points for the age group...that's right, 38 out of 41! To get to that lofty point total they took first and second in EVERY event (Back/Fly: James & Joe; Breast: Jack & Donovan), got that one sweep in Free (Donovan, Jack, Jack), and crushed the relay while setting the new team record. Nice swimming boys. Did you guys sneak some of that magic dust, too?

The complete meet results are available online and lots more pictures, too.

I do love when the story ends with the happily ever after. Congrats to all and Go Gators!

Four second time cuts on Fly pics, are REALLY the best swim pics.

Go Gators!