Summer League County Championships
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Brett
200 Medley Relay – The relay started out with Riley doing the back, and while Riley is a good backstroker, there are a bunch of really good ones in the county. When Riley finished the opening leg, things were tight but CRC was in third/fourth place. Brett dove in and his dive was terrible, in fact it was so bad, that if I can figure out where to get the video posted so you can watch you’ll probably here me say something to the effect of “What the hell kind of dive was that, Brett?”…however, after he surfaced, Brett started reeling in the other swimmers…and he actually was second to the wall with another swimmer right on his should. Despite the bad dive Brett’s split was just over 40 seconds. So Bear dove in for the fly, but the swimmer on Brett’s shoulder at the touch was GCs and they handed off to Brett’s buddy Jack…and Jack is only about 10 seconds faster than Bear in a 50 fly, so Bear had no shot. Bear swam a strong leg posting a split of 36+ seconds…and he handed off the Alex. Alex is a year round swimmer, but mostly a breaststroker. His free is very reminiscent of Brett’s a few years ago, with a sloppy kick…but he was handed a pretty big lead. In fact, he was a good third of a lap or more ahead of the team in fourth…but he needed that much space because another swimmer closed on him hard. CRC held on for Bronze by 1.3 seconds…If you are wondering, Brett’s poor dive wouldn’t have had any impact on second, as they were a full 10 seconds behind the second place team…
200 Free Relay – Bear started off with an extremely strong swim…posting a split of 31.17, and because he was the first to go, that is a legitimate time and a personal best (it also would have been good enough to get him on a free relay at state had he done it again in the 50 free race about 20 minutes later, but he screwed up that turn)…Alex’s leg was a poor 36 second time, and Brett didn’t do his best either posting a 33.44 with a rolling start. When Brett handed off to Riley they were in fourth place and Riley was at least a third of a lap down. However, Riley is a strong freestyler and he was a hero here as he caught and passed the other team inside the flags at the finish and captured third place by .13 seconds. So another Bronze for the boys.
Note: At this point I was very concerned about Brett’s focus. His dive in the medley was terrible, his split in the free relay was poor…I was really afraid he was going to have an off day…
50 Free – Brett was behind Bear at the turn for the 50 free, but Bear’s poor turn allowed Brett to get to the wall first, as he finished with a 32.2 time and overall he was 13 out of the kids going to state for the free relay. So like Bailey he just missed too.
100 Free – Brett was seeded fifth, but there were two no-times that had I paid attention to, I would have told you they were faster freestylers than Brett. As it turns out he finished seventh, but posted a personal best time of 1:10.71, and now I was feeling better about his chances in the big breaststroke race coming up…
50 Breast – This race started and JB (the kid that beat Brett by .04 seconds for the county championship 2 years ago) got a great dive and an early lead. Brett and the rest of the pack was about half a body length back. At the turn Brett had to have a strong pullout or he would run out of room to catch JB. The turn appeared from my vantage point to be the best I’ve ever seen him make. He closed ground and put himself in position to make a charge. And charge he did…cutting into the lead with each stroke, but it was pretty clear he was going to run out of room. That is until JB got inside the flags, then he seemed to have a few poor strokes. Not sure if it was fatigue or nervousness, but he didn’t seem to get the same explosion in those strokes, and Brett pulled alongside. The both reached the wall and it was too close for me to tell…I looked up at the scoreboard and…