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Stu Hixon Meet @ Mt View Aquatic Center
This pool isn’t a very good one when it comes to improving times. It was built more for training than hosting so some of the engineering done to improve speeds by limiting waves weren’t done. Moreover, this pool is kept way to warm (80+ degrees), which also typically results in slower times. Most of the swimmer parents that participated on Saturday, while we were at the county meet, reported their kids were consistently coming in 2 or more seconds over their personal best.
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Bailey
50 Fly – 38.31 : Bailey was again hoping to get the state cut here, but she was about a half a second slower than her personal best. She finished with a 38.82. She seemed a little high to me on the first several strokes so that might have been the cause of the slowdown…but it is so close to her personal best that it isn’t really a big deal…
50 Breast – 50.42 : I’ve noted before that her breast is starting to show some improvement…it still has a way to go, but it’s getting better. She improved here with a time of 50.16
400 Free – 6:16.92 : For the first time ever, Bailey headed into a mid-distance freestyle with a positive attitude. She said she was looking for to this, and she felt she had figured out how to race this event. She was pretty much right about that, as she dropped 26 seconds to post a 5:50.33, and even more so, one of the team coaches said she swam the event perfectly. She opened with a 1:25.65 first one hundred, then the next two 100s were almost identical 1:29.10s , then she closed only 1 second slower than her opening 100…that is exactly how they like to see the splits breakdown…
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Bear
50 Fly – 43:29 : Bear was feeling much better on Sunday than Saturday, and he mentioned that he wanted to swim, so we let him, with the instructions that if it started to hurt that he needed to stop. He, like Bailey, was about a half a second slow in the fly…43.97
50 Free – 36.35 : Bear improved on this one. He still overworks a bit and moves his head to much but he dropped .69 seconds to 35.66. As long as he doesn’t have to flip turn he’s doing pretty well…
50 Breast – 53:53 : Bear’s breast is also coming around…it still needs work, but he’s going through longer stretches where he is driving forward. He improved to a 52.07 and finished eleventh, but one of the kids in front of him scratched, so Bear swam the 50 Breast finals later than night…
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Brett
50 Fly – 47.64 : Still working hard to get this stroke, and he’s still very deliberate swimming it. He didn’t come close to a personal best, which I didn’t expect him to do. I was hopeful he’d improve on the time from his previous attempt at this race, but he basically posted a similar time of 54.27. He is embarrassed about this, but he can’t get better unless he races it, so he’s working through his issues.
50 Free – 36.54 : Brett tried hard to reduce his breathing in this race, in hopes of dropping time, but it didn’t work for him. He actually added three quarters of a second to 37.29
200 Breast – 3:24.17 : Brett was hoping to get into the top 3 here, but the top 3 all came in with seed times of 3:12 or better…so then he set his sights on fourth. He went out hard, trying to keep up with the leaders, which to a certain extent he was able to do for the first 75 or so…then he started to lose some ground. However, he was still in contact with the leaders as the 150 mark. Trailing and not in striking distance, but not left so far behind that he appeared to be in a different race. Coming down the home stretch a kid to his outside swam him down and out touched him for fourth, which irritated Brett. He posted a huge improvement and personal best time of 3:19.36. We knew he was going to make finals in this event, because there were only 8 kids swimming. Initially Brett was instructed to scratch the event, but after that finish, his coach told him he wanted him to do it again that night, and focus on the pullouts, because “Brett you are a much better breaststroker than the kid that out touched you. If you improve your pullouts you’ll kill him…”
200 Medley Relay – There were relays at this meet, and Brett got on the Gold A relay. He wasn’t with any of his buddies, but he was happy to be swimming the relay. This race started immediately after the 200 Breast with Brett not having any time to even do the cool down swim. The backstroker was third or fourth at the wall when Brett dove in, but Brett was first on the other end, swimming down and passing the other breaststrokers that were in front of him. The flyer opened the lead, and the freestyler maintained it…so Brett’s relay won the event….
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