The Back Nine - Mansion House "B" Meet

Too cute not to post. 

The strange thing about summer swim season is how fast it always seems to go. We start off with after-school practices in ice cold water, quickly start gearing up for Time Trials and the first "B" Meet. Then we shift to morning practices and begin the steady charge of "A" Meets every Saturday. On top of that, like whipped cream on a sundae, we mix in Divisional Relays, Championship events, and a few other local competitions. Two months of constant swim action. Whew. The steady beat of practices, pep rallies, dinners, and competitions all seems to come so fast that it is over before we know it.

Which brings us up to where we are today. It seems like we're just getting started with the season, but we've already "hit the back nine" and are heading towards the clubhouse, to use a golf analogy.

We've completed three "A" Meets, and sit with a 1-2 record- only two more to go! (You can catch up on the "A" meet action, if you like, by clicking these links and reading about each one: High Point, Lee-Graham, Hunt Valley.)

This week we had our 4th (out of 5) "B" Meet against our distant southern neighbors, the Mansion House Piranhas. Next Monday (July 16th) will be our final "B" Meet of the season... how did we get here so fast? It's all a blur.

Season...so fast,... food... so good,...getting sleepy... must rest...

And speaking of getting there fast, we continue to have terrific improvements in swims from the team and the meet at Mansion House was no exception. The full results for all the Gators at Mansion House are available here. Below are some of the highlights.

The following swimmers dropped 3 or more seconds in their events Monday:
8&under Free: Finn Torgerson (I swear he was on this list at the last one, too... that's over 6 seconds in two meets!), Emily Braithwaite
11-12 Free: Joseph Bucca, Liliana Fore
8&under Back: Ella McMorrow

8&under Breast: Fionn Miller

Who's swimming? We're here for a good,
old-fashioned Dance-Off!

9-10 Breast: Bianca Murphy
11-12 Breast: Jackson Foerster, Liliana Fore
15-18 IM: Gabrielle Greszler

The following swimmers dropped between 1 and 3 seconds: 
8&under Free: Oliver Anderson, Rhett Torgerson, Margaret Driscoll, Allie Holden, Ella McMorrow
9-10 Free: Jack Beardsley, Josephine Cowen, Anna Starr, Sabine O'Shea
11-12 Free: Brielle Keyes
13-14 Free: Joseph Humphreys
8&under Back: Finn Torgerson (Again, Finn? Somebody's having a good swim season. Keep it up!), Andrea Morales
9-10 Breast: Edward Stone, Gavin Moore, Jack Beardsley, Alexi Keyes, Josephine Cowen, Lila Colunga
11-12 Breast: Elizabeth Whitson, Nora Hixson, Nicole Zajac, Catie Hicks

Yes, we love our coaches.

13-14 Breast: Colin Baxter
9-10 Fly: Edward Stone
13-14 Fly: Abby Adams
15-18 IM: Sydney Himes

These lists always become a little bit shorter later in the season as lots of the big moves generally happen early in the year as kids post new times after the off season or make stroke improvements during their winter swim programs. Keeping up with the steady pace of dropping time gets more and more challenging later in the season, and most big drops at this point are from "figuring it out" with one of the technical aspects of a stroke. Seeing these big time cuts at this point of the season is really a great testament to both the diligence of the swimmers and the abilities of our coaches. Speaking of coaches... if you want to get a little extra practice, you can set up private lessons with most of our assistant coaches. Check it out here.

And finally, the "Big Mover of the Week" award for this meet goes to 9-year old Bianca Murphy who cut 8.42 seconds off of her Breaststroke time! Great work, Bianca.

The God of Thunder's lessor known weapon, like Mjolnir,
 Thor's iPhone is just as impossible for mortals to lift. 

Whew. Fast season with fast swims. And it doesn't slow down. Next up is Divisional Relays on Wednesday followed by Senior Day at our "A" Meet Saturday against Hunter Mill. As I mentioned above, we only have one more "B" Meet on the schedule... at our neighbors to the south, Riverside Gardens. Then it's the All-Star Relays, our final "A" Meet at Donaldson Run, the IM Invitational, the Romp in the Swamp, Divisional Championships, the Awards Banquet and Campout, and finally Individual All-Stars. I'll say it again, "Whew." It makes me tired just writing about it. And that's all going to go down in the next 3 weeks. Enjoy it while it lasts.... swim season, like our swimmers, is a lot faster than you might think.

Butterfly pictures make the best swim pictures.

You can see all of Dave Anderson's great Mansion House pictures here. Do you see any cool pictures of your kids that you'd like to memorialize? Did you know he's selling specialized prints in various formats? Be sure to check out his display in the pavilion at the next meet. 

Go Gators!

Any Given Sunday and the Hunt Valley "A" Meet

"Any Given Sunday" is one of my favorite sports concepts. For those who don't quite know what it means, the idea originates from the NFL and the gist is that while there may be favorites and underdogs, on "Any Given Sunday" any team can beat any other team.

Every day in Gatorville is Super Hero Day.

Sure, some teams will win more than others over the course of the season, but those underdog teams are still good enough and if the favorite doesn't bring their "A-Game" then they can be beaten. Teams (players, coaches, and supporting staff) need to devote themselves to preparation and execution every week, because they know that if they take any opponent for granted, they will suffer and likely lose. The "sports romantic" in me loves how that idea keeps sport authentic and makes me think of the sporting contests as games rather than businesses (even the professional ones). Most of us agree that we want to see our sports decided by well played games rather than well spent money, unless you are a Yankee fan... then you're probably okay with money winning things for you. (Whoops, sorry... personal bias creeping in there.)

Anyway, you get the idea. It's awesome when we come into a contest with no clear favorite and have no idea who is going to win... and the players (or swimmers in our case) who perform best on game day emerge victorious.  Which brings us to this week's A-Meet versus Hunt Valley. If you've been reading the blog, then you know that this week was going to be a close one where either team could win on "Any Given Sunday (er... Saturday)." And a close one it was! 

Is anyone else disturbed by the awkward crossover here:
we're mixing universes between Marvel, DC,
and apparently the NHL. Talk about comic chaos!

One of the wonders of our modern society (especially for us geeks) are the prevalence of databases with all kinds of good information for us to use to analyze, compare and even predict. Using the NVSL's meet information, we can compare data from each team's weekly performances (and of course, your Gator Blogger & Stat Analyzer did that). Hunt Valley and MVP have each had three meets so far this season. Using those fancy data comparisons, if we match each meet up against each other we'd have nine total interactions (3x3). So, "running the numbers" and comparing those 9 interactions (8 analytical and 1 actual) MVP would have won 4 times and Hunt Valley would have won 4 times and we would have tied once. Now THAT is the type of "Any Given Sunday" parity we are looking for! Evenly matched competitors looking to win it on the field (er... in the pool). 

Interestingly, and slightly sadly for MVP fans, the largest losing score between MVP and Hunt Valley over those nine data comparisons was the 228.5-191.5 score that actually occurred on Saturday. Which means we pretty much got hit by the worst case scenario. By comparison, at the other extreme our times from last week (June 30th) versus Hunt Valley's times from week one (June 23) would have put us AHEAD 237-183. And even using our times from last week against Hunt Valley this week would have resulted in a 225-195 win for MVP. Any Given Sunday. But alas, while we were evenly matched and either team could win it... Hunt Valley was the victor of this particular meet.

Super Heroes of the musical variety.

Saturday's meet had a collection of little things that tipped the otherwise close meet more heavily in favor of the Stingrays- a few unexpected DQs, a few injuries, a few vacations, a few scratches, and a couple other things here and there all stacked ups against the Gators and let the meet get a bit out of hand where it didn't actually come down to the last relays. The final score was a bit of an anomaly in what should have been a much closer meet. 

The flow of the meet started out in the Stingray's favor, as they bested the Gators in the first two events: 33.5-56.5 in Free and then 34-56 in Back.  The Gators then started to storm back winning both Breast and Fly: 51-39 and 48-42, respectively. The Gators successfully ate into the lead, but Hunt Valley still took a 27 point advantage into relays and finished well to take the victory. 

For the first time this season, the Gators came up on the short end of the Clean Sweep battle. The Gators were able to take all the points in only one event while the Stingrays swept the Gators four times. 

That's new record holder Charlie Ruppe under John
French's swim cap. That cap has now set MVP records
in back-to-back weeks. Clearly he needs to keep
loaning it out to share more of that Mojo! 

Despite the team loss, there were some terrific performances by Gator swimmers. First and foremost we have a new Gator record holder in the 13-14 Breaststroke--- Congratulations Charlie Ruppe, who won the race in 35.27 to lower the mark set by Sean Jansen in 2015 by 0.16 seconds. With that new record, Gators swimmers have broken records at all three meets this season. Who's it going to be and which Gator record is going to fall next week? Tune in Saturday to find out. 

Our "Race of the Week" was won by Jack Dupuis who edged out the top swimmer from Hunt Valley in the 11-12 Breast by a mere 0.16 seconds in a super tight race. (Note: the blogger admits this ROTW determination may have been slightly swayed by the super cool Dave Anderson photos and GIF showing how close this finish actually was... but that said, it was the narrowest Gator victory of the day.)  

That's a close one. 

Our Age Group of the Week was the 15-18 Girls who used all their many collective years of swimming experience to show all the younger age groups how to get it done, earning 31 out of 41 points on the day. The 9-10 Boys deserve an Honorable Mention for earning 30 points, including the lone Gator Clean Sweep of the week in the Breaststroke. (Congrats to Shaun Nagda, Edward Stone, and Anthony Sarro for the 1-2-3 finish in that event.)

On to victory number 1 (followed up by victory number 2)

This coming week is Divisional Relays week (which means more stuff to write about and a busy blog week), so I'm going a little bit off script with the Swimmer of the Week... instead of a separate blog post, I'm going to include it here: Congrats, Bravo Zulu, and Two Thumbs up to Emily Makin who won both her events (13-14 Breast and Fly) and brought home all the points in her age group. And an honorable mention for SOTW goes out to Ethan Colunga who earned two points for the 11-12 boys by finishing 3rd place in both the Back and Fly while swimming in his first A-meet on his birthday! (Nice work, Ethan.) 

So, back to that "Any Given Sunday" thing. We've got another one queued up next week that is going to have the same chances of going either way. Remember that analysis I described earlier? Well, we can do the same thing and compare prior meets from MVP and Hunter Mill (our opponents next week) which yields a similarly tight distribution of results. Based on the nine theoretical matchups between our teams so far this year, MVP would have won 5 times and Hunter Mill would have won 4. Can you say, "Any Given Sunday!" Which is why we play the games (er... swim the meets). So, we'll see you next Saturday, where its going to be "Any Given Sunday" for the swim teams. This one is going to be really close. Let's Go Gators! 

Full meet results are here and lots of great pictures are here. 

Butterfly pictures make the best swim pictures. 

Green and White! Fight! Fight! (and then end in a tie)

The annual Green and White meet on Monday lived up to all of the hype. After a year of planning and preparing, the Gator versus Gator internal meet went down for real... and ended in a tie. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Go, go go! 

This meet is not scored is the same way as most other meets. Instead, this one is structured to incentivize improvements (not that the kids aren't always trying to improve, but a little extra team peer pressure to do it can't hurt!). Each swimmer earns a point for lowering their time in their events. And when the final results were tallied, the score was even... or so I've been told. I actually tried to tally up all the results on the meet sheet, but it started to overheat my brain. (When is this weather going to cool off anyway?)

Great sportsmanship.

See all the full results and all the great time drops here. The "Improv" column shows how much time was dropped in each swim (negative numbers indicate time cuts).

Mental preparation. 

And all the great Dave Anderson pictures are here.

Love that unbridled excitement.

Go Gators (both Green AND White)!

Little Gator Butterfly pictures....

...without question...

....make the very best pictures. 

Gator Swimmer of the Week (#2) - The Outlier

In statistics, an outlier is a data point or observation that is away from all of the others. This is normally attributed to one of two things, an error in observation or an actual difference in the data due to particular reasons. A good example of observation error happens all the time with timers at swim meets. If two of the times are close and accurate and the third is way off, because the timer started late or finished poorly, etc, then the poor time is thrown out and the other two times are used. The important thing to try to understand before throwing out an outlier, is was the observation made in error, or was there just variance in the observations taken? Given the previous example, you could come to another conclusion- that the first two times were both flawed, and the "outlier" was the actual correct time. This is why it is important for the observers in any scenario to discuss data that is outside of the expected results to determine whether it should be included or not. Statistics can be complicated. (And yes, there is a reason for the saying, "There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.")

So, when this week's Gator Swimmer of the Week kept winning races going away in the face of otherwise dominant competition, the observers needed to do some checking. Were there observation errors? Was he swimming in the right age group, or was he somehow mistakenly swimming in a younger group? Was he wearing fins or one of those top secret suits that all the Olympians used in China? Were his relatives, friends, or fan club members somehow infiltrating the timer corps and putting up false data in his lane when he swam? Was the water somehow thinner in his lane? Careful reflection was necessary, and after close study and discussion, we came to the final conclusion that the numbers were valid. The outlier data produced were not caused by observational error, but rather caused by AWESOME swimming. So, join me in congratulating our Gator Swimmer of the Week, 8 & under swimmer extraordinaire, Liam Fore.

Why all the hubbub about outliers? Well, the Lee-Graham 8 and under boys were crushing in every event this week, except the ones Liam was in. In fact, Liam truly carried the load for the Little Gators this week by personally bringing home 10 out of the 13 points scored by his age group.

In his first race, he hit a personal best of 18.34 seconds in the Free to beat his L-G competitions by 1.5 and 2 seconds respectively. That time is also the 2nd fastest in Division 3 so far this year, and only 0.1 seconds off the Divisional lead. Then, showing similar dominance in the Fly, he uncorked a 20.98 (which is the 3rd fastest time in D3, trailing by only .02 seconds).

Liam's swims are on track for big time results at Divisionals and All-Stars this year. Keep up the hard work and outlier swims, Liam. Congrats and Go Gators!

Restoring Balance: A-Meet at Lee-Graham

Red, White, and Blue theme. Go America! And I love the
Stop Sign costume, whoever that is, but where is your blue? 

One of the things that has always bothered me about the Star Wars saga is the prophecy fulfilled by Anakin Skywaker (i.e. Darth Vader.... and sorry, not sorry, if this is a spoiler for anyone, but you had your chance to watch the movies by now). If you are not familiar, Anakin had a wicked high amount of Force Juice (that's not actually what they called it, but you get the idea) and Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were stoked because the prophecy said that he would "restore balance to the Force." Restoring balance is all well and good in some situations, but my big issue here is that everyone in the known universe at that time was a good guy Jedi. There were no known Siths or other bad guys around. So, what type of balance were Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon trying to restore? If everyone you know is good, then logically, wouldn't balance add some bad karma? Apparently, yes. That's exactly what they got as Vader brought a whole lot of bad and balanced things out. The moral of the story is to be careful what you wish for. I love Star Wars, but that was a bad call by the Jedi. Balance is good, but if you're running on all cylinders, no need to change anything.

Warning: All Dolphins beware, dangerous Gators lurking. 

Which brings us to the Gator swim team. I feel comfortable talking more openly about it now... I was a bit blindsided (and surprised) by the magnitude of our defeat in Week 1. Wins and losses happen, but I was not prepared to lose by 50 points. After talking to a few other Gator parents around the pool (and the pond), I think I'm not alone. The Hippos took it to us. It's not that High Point dominated us with their times across the board, but the way our two teams matched up at different events and age groups just so happened to result in a "bad beat" for us where the final score looked worse than it really was. As an example of what I mean, if you recall last week's A meet blog, we actually had more clean sweeps than they did (5-3) which is kind of a big deal, yet still came up so short in the final score. That's a bit irregular. And so, THIS, my dear readers, is the time and place where we would want to restore balance (take a note, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan). And restore balance is exactly what the Gators did on Saturday at Lee-Graham. All seems right in the Gator swim universe again.

Record breaking start. 

The Gators came out of the gate quickly, winning the Freestyle events 50-40, and never looked back. Progressively, the Gators won Back (46-44), dominated Breast (59-31), and finished the individual events strongly by winning Fly (54-36). The Gators also prevailed in the Relays (7-5), completing a "meet clean sweep" by winning each event. The final meet score was 244-176.

Individually, the Gators had some wonderful performances. First and foremost, three new MVP individual records were set. Donovan Kovalsky continued his assault on the record books improving upon his records in both the 11-12 Free and Fly (I did tell you this would be a recurring theme...). And John French added to the worklist of the "record-board-updater person" by finishing the 13-14 Backstroke in 31.68 seconds to take over the Gator record from Clark Bayer (who set it last year).

Putting together one Heck of a swim. 

A few other Gators had exceptional swims to outperform a few of their race competitors and add extra points to the team total. Juliette Fore set a personal best time in the 13-14 Free to upset the Lee-Graham swimmers and steal a point in that race. Sheridan Phalen cut 0.25 seconds off of her 15-18 Free time to earn a close victory. TJ Heck dropped a bomb on the rest of the competitors in the 15-18 Breast by finishing 1.50 seconds faster than his previous best and leapfrogging over a crowd of Dolphins to finish in 2nd place. And lastly, in our "Race of the Week" Taylor Makin finished 0.28 seconds better than her previous best to beat the higher seeded L-G swimmer by 0.11 seconds and steal a huge victory in the 15-18 Breast.

Our "Age Group of the Week" was the 11-12 Boys who earned 36 out of a possible 41 points- 88%!! They won every race they participated in, had one clean sweep, and two 1st-2nd finishes (i.e. "almost clean sweeps"). Solid work boys.

Leadership. Guidance. Our Gator version of L-G.

As I mentioned in the scoring summary paragraph earlier, the Gators collectively dominated in Breaststroke earning 59/90 points and producing our "Stroke of the Week." The "Race of the Week" AND three of the five Gator clean sweeps on the day all came out of the Breast events (8 & Under Girls, 11-12 Boys, and 13-14 Boys). FYI, the other two sweeps were the 9-10 Boys Back and the 15-18 Girls Fly.

All in all, it was a good trip to Falls Church. Nice swimming Gators. Nice cheering parents. Nice officiating officials.

Looking forward, don't be fooled by the moderately unbalanced scores that we've seen in the first two weeks. As I said earlier, we didn't match up well against High Point, and we swam really well against Lee-Graham. The next two weeks, home meets against Hunt Valley and Hunter Mill, promise to be extremely tight meets that possibly won't be decided until the final relay races. Be ready to swim fast and cheer hard. Go Gators!

Full results are on the Gator Website here. And photos from the meet are here.

Butterfly pictures make the best pictures. 

Sportsmen's Relays and other Annual Swimming Traditions

There are certain meets and activities that we participate in every year outside of the normal meet schedule. These are sort of the "one-offs" on the calendar which are not normal NVSL or B meet functions.

For the MVP Gators, those meets are:

The Fort Hunt Sportsmen's Relays - held this past Wednesday at Riverside Gardens pool, and the general subject of this blog (eventually).
The IM Invitational - A regional meet of all Individual Medley races for teams in the greater Ft Hunt, Kingstowne, and Springfield areas. To be held on July 23rd.
The Gator Romp in the Swamp - An internal meet for 12 and under Gators, run by the 13 and over Gators. To be held on July 25th.

We'll discuss the latter two meets when we come around to them in July. But for now, a little more detail on the Fort Hunt Sportsmen's Relays. This is an annual event hosted by the Fort Hunt Sportsmen's Association. It is comprised of a number of "non-standard" relay events and the purpose is fun, camaraderie,  and sportsmanship.

The swimmer selection for this event is limited, and doesn't necessarily go by the standard selection criteria for other meets (i.e. the swim ladder). Instead, there are various other criteria that the coaches use to place swimmers in this one, such as:

Professional patty-cake abilities. 

Synchronized goggle adjustments. 

The ability to assemble as human Matryoshka dolls.

Advanced arm levitation. 

And of course, the ability to FLY. 

Okay, I admit, none of that is actually true, though the ability to fly never hurts. The Sportsmen's Relays do have an eclectic assortment of race formats in this event: mixed ages(such as 6 and under with 13 and overs), mixed gender, siblings, coaches, and more. There is no team competition as each race is its own event. Ultimately, it is a fun night of racing at the pool. 

The results of this year's Fort Hunt Sportsmen's relays, as well as all of our other meets, are available on the "Meet Information" page of the Gator Website here. (or at least will be available soon)

Pictures will be posted here. 

B is for Bluefish - B Meet Summary

Lots of learning at Developmental Meets:

stroke technique, starts, turns....proper goggle placement.  

Ah, the infamous B Meets, also known as "Developmental Meets." B meets are great. They provide an opportunity for swimmers to improve times, become legal in the more challenging strokes, earn their way onto A Meets, and hang out and socialize with teammates and opponents in a less competitive environment than the A meets. We normally schedule about four or five B meets per year (depending on how you classify B Meets) against other local pools in the Fort Hunt area. Our schedule this year looks like this:

• Jun 18th was Waynewood
• June 25th was Hollin Hills (that's what we're talking about here... eventually)
• July 2nd will be the Green & White meet (an internal Gator vs Gator meet)
• July 9th will be at Mansion House
• July 16th will be at Riverside Gardens

Coaching 'em up. Go Paul! 

Most things about the B Meets are great. The one thing that can be a little "not-so-great" is the length of time they last. While for most A Meets, we are in and out in 2 hours or less, B Meets can easily trend north of 3+ hours. Especially when we swim against the larger pools (like Waynewood) where both teams are bringing out seriously deep benches to swim.

Which brings us to Hollin Hills. The Bluefish have the fewest number of swimmers of the pools in the local area. So, while still getting all the positives out of the B Meets mentioned above, we actually finish (including clean-up!) while the sun is still out! Which is a very nice bonus.

As I said before one of the great things about B Meets is dropping time. And whoa-daddy, did we have some great time drops this week.

The following swimmers dropped 3 or more seconds in their events Monday:
8&under Free: Jackson Saloom, Jacob Milito, Rhett Torgerson, Finn Torgerson (nice work Torgersons!), Stefen Boyd, Abigail Kangas, Ella McMorrow, Tess McCall, Annelise Sams, Lacey Murphy
9-10 Free: Alexi Keys
11-12 Free: Kate McCall
13-14 Free: Carter Hamilton, Dakota Todd
8&under Back: MarcAnthony Boyd, BradLee Khaner, Abigail Kangas, Lacey Murphy, Annelise Sams
9-10 Back: Anna Starr, Sam Bruce, Ian Hixson

8&under Breast: Aleta McQueen

9-10 Breast: Evan Prible, Lila Colunga (okay, technically Lila's improvement was 2.99.... but I'm going to round up and put her in this category for this one. ;-) 

11-12 Breast: Natalie Ruppe

11-12 Fly: Nora Hixson

9-10 IM: Amelia Adams

11-12 IM: Cassidy Crowther, Mikayla Gordon

Go Gators!

The following swimmers dropped between 1 and 3 seconds: 
8&under Free: Fionn Miller, Oliver Anderson, MarkAnthony Boyd, Connor Mills, Alexandra Myers, KateBarber, Hadley Apostol
9-10 Free: Abigail Leach, Monica Morales, Amelia Adams, Anna Starr, Lila Colunga, Gavin Moore  (On an interesting aside, the top 7 finishers in the girls 9-10 Free all dropped time on Monday... very strong! I'm feeling pretty good about this stroke on Saturday!) 
13-14 Free: Mikey Himes
8&under Back: Ty Mills, Reese Myers, Elizabeth Kellogg, Evelyn Milito, Tess McCall
9-10 Back: Bianca Murphy, Heidi Schulte
11-12 Back: Mikayla Gordon
13-14 Back: Charlie Ruppe, Abby Tynan, Dakota Todd
8&under Breast: Noah Litonjua, Alexandra Myers
11-12 Breast: Elizabeth Whitson, Nora Hixson
11-12 Fly: Elizabeth Moorman
13-14 Fly: John French, Jack Klopson
15-18 Fly: Olivia Heck
9-10 IM: Sam Bruce, Monica Morales
11-12 IM: Alex North, Katya Zaitsev, Caroline Miller
13-14 IM: Jack Klopson, Abby Adams
15-18 IM: Elaina Phalen

The "Big Mover of the Week" award goes to 5 year old Stefen Boyd who dropped a whopping 15.45 seconds off of his 25m Freestyle time in the 8 and under event.

All in all, a pretty darn good showing for the Gators. And thanks to the Bluefish for competing with us and pushing us hard to get those great new times.

Admin Note: Following a brief technical interruption, pictures are posted for all of the previous meets on the Gator web site. I'm heading back to retroactively insert some pictures into the A meet summary from last Saturday's meet, so go ahead and read that blog entry again just so you can see the pics.

It's a well known fact (of which you may or may not be aware),
that Butterfly pictures make the best pictures.

Gator Swimmer of the Week (Week 1)

Getting psyched. 

Choosing this week's Swimmer of the Week would seem to be a pretty simple decision to make. In an eight day period, Donovan Kovalsky set SEVEN pool records for the 11-12 Boys age group: Freestyle (twice), Backstroke (once officially and once unofficially at a B Meet), Breaststroke, Fly, and Individual Medley. If that doesn't define a "Swimmer of the Week" performance, well then I don't know what does.

But trust me, there is some difficulty making the call. First, we're the Gators, we always have lots of great swimmers doing great things every week and this week was no exception. Second, this is the beginning of what I fully expect to be an epic season for Donovan... so do I really want to burn Swimmer of the Week on him up front? Or should I keep some powder in reserve his next phenomenal performance sometime in the next month and a half? Maybe a Divisionals title? Or an All-Star win? Dare we dream of an NVSL record perhaps? All of those are in the realm of possible for him this season. (Gator Blogger Note: It should be pointed out that there is no rule about not winning SOTW more than once per season, but it has been a practice that I've tried to maintain... but like all unwritten rules, it could change. We'll see.)

Little Gators take note:
You can't set records without great form. 

And third, technically, Donovan wasn't just a winner this week. He was also a loser, in a roundabout sort of way. He did have two of his records broken, which is never fun. (Yes, I know, they were broken by him... but, they were broken nonetheless!) As a matter of fact, he is only setting himself up for repeatedly having his records broken as the season progresses and he potentially breaks his own records again and again.

Alright, admittedly, I may be stretching the reasons not to give the award to him with that third one. But, I've always been told that supporting lists are better in groups of three, rather than just two. And I do need to fill some blog space. The decision was a probably bit easier than I might be trying to make it out here. He kicked some butt and now owns the record Gator books. (See here.)

Congrats, Donovan, our Gator Swimmer of the Week.

Father/Record-Holder bonding.

The Often Underestimated Hippo - A Tale of the High Point Pool A Meet

In the season preview blog post last week, I posed the rhetorical question of, "How fast can a hippo really swim anyway?" Apparently, while the definition of "swimming" can come under question (some scientists say they really are really "running" in the water rather than swimming), they can move pretty darn fast in the water.

And, apparently Hippos are Africa's most lethal animal. Who knew? So much for that prediction.

The Hippos of High Point Pool swam pretty fast. So did the Gators, of course, but we came up a bit short on the scoreboard in our first meet of the season.

Gator Ballet...Part I

As an interesting aside, its probably worth it to review the method of scoring for A Meets since this is the first one of the season. There are 5 age groups, 4 strokes, and both boys and girls. If you do the math there, you'll end up with 40 total individual events. Each individual event has six swimmers, with only the top 3 taking points: 5 points for first, 3 for second, and for third. That yields nine possible points for each individual event, which can all go to one team 9-0 (5+3+1) in a "clean sweep" or get split very closely 5-4 if one team's swimmer ends up 1st, and the other team finishes 2nd and 3rd (5 and 3+1). Ties result in an average of the points, but that's probably more math than we want to get into here.

Gator Ballet Part II...dancing (swimming?) with Hippos.

After the conclusion of the individual events, the meets turn to relays. There are six relays each for boys and girls which are all scored 5-0... five points for the winner and none for the losing team. Most of the relays are Medleys (four swimmers each swimming one stroke: Back, Breast, Fly, Free). The 8 and unders swim a Free Relay (4 swimmers at 25m each) and the final race is a mixed age Free Relay.

The interesting thing with this point system is that while it distributes points fairly, it also gives a strong reward to 1st place. If you think about those 40 events.... If one team always wins (5 points x 40 events) and the other team always gets 2nd and 3rd (4 x 40), then the team with the single winner in every heat would win by a score of 200-160 in the individual events. Any guesses what the score was of the meet after all individual events? 200-160....

We definitely won the costume contest. 

Okay, the Hippos didn't win every event and the Gators didn't come in 2nd and 3rd in every event, but on average, that's how it ended up.  In fact, the Hippos won 24 events and the Gators won 16. And in a mild (and welcome) contradiction to the flow of the meet, the Gators had five clean sweeps (1st, 2nd and 3rd) while the Hippos had three.

In addition to the five clean sweeps, there were several other high points for the Gators in this opening meet.

First, Donovan Kovalsky finished off his own personal clean sweep of the 11-12 year old boys record book by taking the Backstroke in an official event (he broke the record unofficially at the Waynewood B Meet last Monday). His record time of 33.98 bested Cameron Morey's time of 34.21 and removed the last remnants of any other swimmer from the record books at that age. In addition, He lowered his own record in the Free from 27.56 down to 27.24 seconds. (As I mentioned in the last blog post.... keep watching Donovan this year as some amazing things are likely to happen.) The NVSL record for 11-12 Freestyle is 26.44 seconds. With some steady progression, I think (and hope) that mark could be in reach this season. I'll be watching his races very closely all season, as should you.

Too many photogenic Gators in this picture not to post!

Second, the 15-18 year old girls 200m Medley Relay team (Cassidy Bayer, Taylor Makin, Elaina Phalen, and Sheridan Phalen) set a new team record also by winning in a time of 2:06.81. Congrats ladies.

And while not the last high point of the meet (there were many more), the last one I'll single out was a literal point... a point earned in the Backstroke by 6 year old Jackson Saloom, who finished 3rd with a time of 26.88. It's always a great accomplishment when 6 year olds even make it to the A meets, and even more magical when the bring home points for the team! Nice work, Jackson.

On another positive note, three age groups tied for the "Age Group of the Week," all scoring 32 points each (78% of possible points): the 9-10 year old girls, the 11-12 year old boys, and the 13-14 year old boys all dominated their competition. Nice swimming Gators!

And moving on, this week's Swim of the Week goes to Charlie Ruppe, who crushed it in the 13-14 Fly, improving his time by more than a full second and upsetting the higher seeded Hippo swimmer by 0.4 seconds to get the win.

NVSL Sportsmanship at its finest, helping Charlie
to that Swim of the Week, no less.

Next up is a home B Meet with the Hollin Hills Bluefish Monday night. Go Gators, drop those times!

The full results from this week's meet are available on the Gator webpage here. Division standings and results are available on the NVSL webpage here.

All meet photos are now posted here.

You may or may not have yet heard, but Butterfly pictures
make the very best  pictures. 

Easy Way Out: Time Trials and Waynewood B Meet and What to Watch For in 2018

Okay, okay, okay. I know we're a little behind schedule here at the Gator Blog. While normally I'd do a complete write-up on each event, I'm gonna drop a summary on you here and just shotgun the results of these first two developmental events.

Summary: The Gators are fast, the Gator team is deep, and the Gators are primed for an awesome season. Lots of Gators cut lots of time at time trials, and then did some more against Waynewood. On an individual basis, Donovan Kovalsky is really, really fast and swam under the 11-12 year old team records in 4 events at time trials... then added an unofficial record time in the remaining individual event (Backstroke) at the Waynewood B meet. In what is sure to be a recurring theme this season, Donovan swam really fast and busted some records. Get used to seeing his name all over the Gator record board.

The Time Trials complete Gator Results are HERE.

The Time Trials photos are HERE.

The Waynewood B Meet complete Gator Results are HERE.

The Waynewood photos are HERE.

The Gator Team Records are HERE. (Soon to be renamed as the Donovan Kovalsky 2018 Highlight Page.)

Okay, to be fair we may not actually rename the record book in Donovan's honor. Two other current (or recently departed) Gator swimmers have also shown similar domination on the record books. Cassidy Bayer owns 4 out of 5 records in most of the lower age groups and owns the best time in all 5 individual events for 15-18 year olds. And Kevin Adams-Mardi owns 4 out of 5 records for the 15-18 year old boys. Just saying, that's some pretty stellar company Donovan is joining there. It's going to be fun to watch this season.

I know this is a short summary for two meets. I promise future meet summaries will be back up to snuff, but the first A meet of the season starts in about an hour and I'm running late, so I need my coffee and then its off to the pool!

Go Gators!

Division 3 Outlook and Talking Head Accountability

In politics, sports, and everything else on TV, the Talking Heads constantly make predictions and say lots of stuff, but never get held accountable for when they are wrong. Well, not here at the Gator Blog! For the first post of the year, I'm going to address the seeding prediction from the end of last year and be held accountable! You can review that post here.

If you don't want to go back and read it (though you should), the summary was that while the general rule of thumb was that teams with 3-2 or 2-3 records tend to stay put in the same division the following year, there was very likely to be a 3-2 team moved up to Division 2 this year, and that there was a very good chance that would be our own Gators of MVP. A pretty bold prediction.

So, what ended up happening at the final seeding meeting back in February? Not only one, but TWO of the 3-2 teams were moved up from Div 3 to Div 2. Both Dowden Terrace and Vienna Aquatic, who were part of the three way tie with the Gators, were moved up. The Gators, however, remained in Division 3 for the 2018 season. So, while I got the concept right, the individual teams chosen to move up were different. What does that mean? Another fun year at Division 3 for us.

Interestingly, we are the only team from 2017 returning to Division 3 as three teams moved up (in addition to the two mentioned above, Langley moved to Division 1) and two teams moved down with Lakevale Estates going to Div 4 and Dunn Loring dropping to Div 5.

The newly formed 2018 version of Division 3 will be comprised of six teams: Donaldson Run, Hunt Valley, Lee-Graham, Hunter Mill, High Point Pool, and MVP. If this combination of teams seems pretty familiar to many of you, it should. Four teams in this group were all together in Division 2 back in 2016: MVP, Hunt Valley, Hunter Mill, and Donaldson Run.  And unlike last year when three of our five opponents were Dolphins, this year every team has its own unique mascot. Whew. Thank goodness. Variety is the spice of life.

2018 Division 3 Team Outlook

June 23rd vs High Point Pool Hippos 
The Hippos weren't with us in Division 2 in 2016. As a matter of fact, we haven't swam again the Hippos since I've been at MVP. They have steadily moved up the NVSL table in the past few years jumping all the way from Division 5 last year up to Division 3 now. While admittedly not doing my best research in trying to get this post out, I'm not sure if we've ever swam against them. But the gist is- they're Hippos. How fast can a Hippo really swim anyway? And I'm not sure why this meet makes me think of Disney's Fantasia, but it does. Go Gators!

June 30th at Lee-Graham Dolphins
The Dolphins are the other of the two teams who weren't together with us back in 2016. They were in Division 3 that year, dropped to Div 4 in 2017 and now return to Division 3 again. Our previous matchups have always been fun, competitive and quite spirited meets. (And they have a great clubhouse and deck overlooking the pool.) Thankfully, these are the only Dolphins we will be facing this year. Three times last year was just dolphin overkill. Go Gators!

July 7th vs Hunt Valley Stingrays
The rest of our opponents from here down were with us in Division 2 back in 2016. The Stingrays were 4-1 that year, finishing as runners-up to the Green Feet of Hamlet (and took home the trophy from Divisional Relays that year). Last year they were 1-4 in a very tough Division 2. We'll have the "home pool" advantage this year, and my research indicates that Stingrays often have trouble when trying to swim in The Swamp. I'm feeling confident. Go Gators!

July 14th vs Hunter Mill Sharks
The Sharks are also dropping down from Division 2 last year. Back in 2016, we travelled out to Hunter Mill, and word from our Gators was that the pool was exceptionally cold, which was just enough to keep our Gators from swimming their fastest. The meet results literally came down to the final relays and we lost that meet in a true barn burner, 211-209. (Disclaimer: While Hunter Mill does actually have a barn as their clubhouse, we didn't actually burn it down... that's just a figure of speech.) This year they're coming to the Swamp, and no "cold water" tricks are going to slow us down this time. Go Gators!

July 21st at Donaldson Run Thunderbolts
Donaldson Run is another very familiar opponent who we've competed against quite a bit over the years. Last year they were the undefeated champions in Division 4. They have a very viewer-friendly set-up at the pool with lots of spectator space and have been the host for Divisionals in the past (but not this year, as Divisionals will be at Hunt Valley). The Thunderbolts ended up being our lone victory back in 2016 (with a final score of 239-181). Hopefully they end up being our final victory in 2018 as we look to finish with a BANG! (Thunderbolts... get it?) Go Gators!

All in all, its shaping up to be another fun and exciting swim season in the NVSL. Division 3 is really going to be a barn burner this year! (Don't worry Hunter Mill, your clubhouse is safe.) The full schedule for Division 3 is available on the NVSL website here:  https://www.mynvsl.com/schedules?year=2018&div=3 Go Gators, let's win Division 3!

Be sure to check back over the weekend for more updates on the blog. I'm going to try to catch up with a couple posts for Time Trials and the Waynewood B Meet (both of which are overdue, I know) and results from our first meet against High Point Pool (which is tomorrow!).

Welcome to 2018. Go Gators!

These All-Stars Can't Be Eclipsed

Donovan and Coach Laurel after a medal
performance in the 11-12 Free.

The big astronomical event this month is the upcoming solar eclipse. The astronomers tell us that the sun will be totally blocked out by the moon for a period of time, if you are in the right place along the moon's path. Unlike the sun however, our MVP Gator Stars refused to be blocked out, and all of them shone brightly at the NVSL All-Star Meet. The brilliance of our Gator swimmers was on full display Saturday morning. All in all, Gator swimmers had some terrific swims, resulting in two overall first place finishes (i.e. NVSL overall champion) and one new MVP record. Special congrats go out to Emily Makin for winning both the Girls 13-14 Breast and IM events (NVSL Champion!) And to Tyler Swartz for improving his own record in the 9-10 IM.

Here are all of the Gator All-Star results:

Event	Name	Place	Time
11-12 Free	Donovan Kovalsky	4th	28.67
13-14 Free	Clark Bayer	3rd	25.57
13-14 Free	Juliana Skopp-Cardillo	4th	28.26
9-10 Breast	Abigail Litonjua	8th	44.82
11-12 Breast	Donovan Kovalsky	8th	38.64
13-14 Breast	Emily Makin	1st	34.19
8 & under Fly	Liam Fore	11th	20.46
9-10 Fly	Matthew Makin	10th	16.76
13-14 Fly	Gabby Greszler	5th	30.97
13-14 Fly	Juliana Skopp-Cardillo	15th	32.2
9-10 IM	Tyler Swartz	9th	1:24.71
9-10 IM	Matthew Makin	11th	1:26.05
13-14 IM	Emily Makin	1st	1:07.49

Medalists, Juliana and Emily. 

The full meet results are available at the NVSL website here. Great work Gators! 

Coach Paul and Abbie after a great swim
in the 9-10 Breaststroke.

The All-Star meet is a bit of a bittersweet moment for us all, though.... Yes, it's true... this marks the end of the summer swim season. It's been a whirlwind 10 weeks of fun, games, hard work, sweat, rain, lots of splashing. There have been personal bests, meet victories, meet defeats, new pool records, and new All-Stars.  It's been real. It's been fun. It's been real fun. But like it does every summer, it has come to an end. So, like the sun up high in the sky, the moon has come across to block out the joy of summer swim for the time being. So enjoy your winter swim season. Or enjoy your time off in other sports. If you want to keep swimming, make sure to check out the Gator Winter Program as a terrific option.  

Next up on the Gator blogger calendar will be the results of the seeding meeting in February. Check back then to find out if we're staying in Division 3, or moving up to 2. Seven months of anticipation... I'm not sure I can wait. See you in May 2018!