[Breeze]

SAA Conference Championship- RESULTS

Day 3

400 IM - Berry had 3 swimmers in the 400 IM finals, Ryan, who improved from 6th in '22 to 4th in '23. Ethan also swam this event, and he continued to struggle at this meet, adding 5 seconds to his '22 time and dropping from 4th to 7th overall. Keith, filling the role of the grinder admirably, made the B final and finished 13th.

200 Free - This is another event that became significantly more difficult. Prior to this season a time of 1:44 was good enough to keep you in medal contention. This year it took a 1:44 just to make the A finals. With that in mind, and the fact that Ross didn't swim particularly well in the 500, it's not surprising to hear that he added a couple of seconds to his '22 time and dropped back to 6th. Harrison had an interesting event. He qualified 12th with a 1:47.61 in prelims, but if finals he came out an attacked the race. By the end of the first 100 he was leading the field by 1.7 seconds - almost 2 full body lengths. He held on in back half to win the B heat by 1.5 seconds and post a time of 1:44.17. Billy rounded out the scoring in this event with a 13th place finish.

100 Breast - Sam Tate qualified for finals in 3rd place, and he actually swam .03 faster in finals than in prelims, but a 6'7" swimmer was able to out touch him for 3rd. Mac made A finals and finished 6th, and Andrew swam a 1:01.19, usually good enough to be top 10, but he had to settle for 14th.

100 Back - Berry only entered 1 swimmer in this event, Freshman Nate Wright, who was able to make it into the B final and ultimately finish in 13th place. dropping over a second from his seed time.


Bear

100 Fly (Seed - 53.76, PB - 53.33) - Bear's first individual event of the meet, and it was going to be a tough one. This was another case of an event that became significantly faster in '23. Bear's prelim swim was a good one. His form was fantastic, he stayed low and pushed forward well. He post a personal best time of 52.26, but that was only good enough for 12th. Until this year, a sub 53 was good enough for A finals. This year only 1 swimmer in the 53 second range made it back for B finals.

In finals, Bear's swim was almost identical to his prelim one. He ended up coming in .18 seconds slower, and he also slipped back to 14th place posting a 52:44. He was disappointed in this result. He never specified what his goal here was, but I believe he wanted to go under 52 seconds.

400 Medley Relay - Ae expected Bear was on the B relay. There was some discussion around what the two relays would look like. Would Ross do fly on the A and Noah the free. Would Sam do breast of back, and who swims the leg that Sam doesn't. Ultimately, the teams looked like this...

A Relay - Sam (back), Mac (breast), Noah (fly), Harrison (free)
B Relay - Billy (back), Ryan (breast), Ross (fly), Bear (free)

In the B relay, Billy split a 52.9, good enough to put the team in a distance 2nd place, behind BSC, who opened with a 51.63. In the breast, Ryan swam a 58 flat split, slightly off of the BSC time, but he expanded the lead on the rest of the field. Ross swim a nice 51.48 split, but the BSC swimmer was in the 49 second range, and at this point Berry was well out of first in the heat. Bear swam a very good 47.71 split, which was more than fast enough to hold on to the second place finish.

In the A relay, Sam opened with a 51.29, good enough for second place. Mac was next out and he slipped to 3rd due to a strong swim by BSC's breaststroker. Noah was third, and he smoked a 47.98 split - almost 2 seconds faster than the next flyer in the field. This put Berry back in second place, with a 1 second lead on BSC. The free leg was tight as the BSC anchor split a 44.98, but Harrison swam a 45.69, good enough to beat the Panthers by about half a body length. Berry earned the silver medal here, but at a cost. Sam, in his attempts to go faster banged his head on the wall when finishing the backstroke leg. He ended up in the concussion protocol, and wasn't able to swim the last day of the meet.