2015 Georgia Age Group State Championship – Day 3 Prelims
#68 Boys 12&U 400 Free Relay
Gold A Team – 3:48.00 : Seeded T1 – The Gold A Team, came into this relay already having earned 3 bronze medals and 3 team records. They were seeded T1, and where hoping for a better result this time out, as the Gold Team was clearly better at 100s than at 50s. The coaches for Gold, after having watched Nate try and close in the last 3 relays, decided they needed to switch up the order so as to not put too much pressure on him. They elected to have him lead off instead. Then the discussion came down to Bear vs Nicklas as the anchor. Coach Andy told the rest of the coaches, Bear will swim his best race no matter where you put him, but Nicklas does better when he’s challenged – so decision made – Nicklas is the anchor. The order ended up being Nate, Bear, Andrew, and Nicklas, and the irony of this change is – Swim Atlanta also changed their order as well. They front loaded their relay with their 2 best swimmers, hoping to disconnect and get the Gold swimmer to think they wouldn’t be able to make up the ground. Here is how it went:
Nate and Quinn (same Quinn that beat Bear in 400 IM) immediately separated themselves from the field. At the turn for the 50, Nate was up by .3, and third was already a full second back. At the end of the 100 things here were the splits:
Code:
Nate – 53.32 Quinn – 54.15
Bear was next up, and he opened with a 26.75 in the first 50…but the Swim Atlanta swimmer posted a 25.92 0 so the teams were tied with a split of 1:20.07. On the back 50, Bear lost a bit more time Here are the splits and the overall times:
Code:
Bear – 56.49 (1:49.81) Swim Atlanta – 54.85 (1:49.00)
Down by a little under a second, Andrew, the slowest of the 4 swimmers dove in. He’s more of a distance swimmer, so I was afraid that we might fall a good bit behind now. In the first 50 of the 3rd leg Andrew lost another .8 when he posted a 27.46 to SAs 26.75, but in the back half he closed some and the race was look like this:
Code:
Andrew – 57.66 (2:47.47) Swim Atlanta – 57.29 (2:46.29)
Nicklas had a 1.18 second deficit to make up when he hit the water. He was clearly closing on the Swim Atlanta anchor, and at the 50 turn of the 4th leg the deficit was almost cut in half as it was down to .57 seconds. Nicklas opened with a 26.80 to Swim Atlanta’s 27.55. The question was could he make up another .59 or did he wear himself out on the opening leg chasing?
Code:
Nickas – 55.46 (3:42.93) Swim Atlanta – 57.27 (3:43.56)
Gold wins Gold!!! And they not only broke the team record, they destroyed it by 8 full seconds.