[Breeze]

SAA Conference Championships - Day 4 Morning Finals

Bear

200 Yard Freestyle (1:44.83) : 5th Seed - Bear was last at the end of the first 50, but it was very close early. At the 100 Bear moved into 7th place moving ahead of Maggio, and the top 4 - Ziolkowski, Valdez, Snyder and Lang had already separated from most of the field. At the 150, Bear was still in 7th place, just a fraction behind Carbone. In the last 50 Bear charged home, with the 3rd fastest split in the heat, only trailing the 2 swimmers at the front battling for first place (Ziolkowski and Valdez). The split was fast enough to move him from 7th to 5th overall as he out-touched his teammate Hunter Kenny by .09. Hunter and Bear were on opposite ends of the pool and it was so close we couldn't tell from watching who had gotten to the wall first, we had to wait for the scoreboard to flash up the times. Bear managed to swim his 3rd personal best in this event at this meet finishing in a time of 1:44.03. All in all - he dropped just short of 2 seconds in this event during the meet.

Other Items of Interest:

400 IM

- Ethan Whiting finished 4th
- Ryan McKinnon finished 6th
- Riley Croker finished 12


100 Fly

- Alex Bartik finished 9th


200 Free

- Hunter Kenny finished 7th
- Paxton Smathers finished 9th
- Harrison McNeil finished 12th


100 Breast

- Sam Tate finished 3rd
- Tyler Stephenson finished 7th
- Andrew Horn finished 9th


100 Back

- Billy Blood finished 7th (Billy swam the exact same 53.15 split in prelims and finals and check out his split in the relay below)
- Breck Richards finished 8th
- Diego Torres finished 13th


200 Yard Free Relay - This should have been listed in the previous days finals, I missed it when I was doing the write up.

B Relay - Bear teamed with Paxton, Alex and Ryan McKinnon in this one. Paxton lead off and his 22.72 handed Bear the overall lead, but it was very tight with 2 teams only .02 behind. Bear split a 21.73 - and by the time he was finished only 1 team was within a half a second and 1 other was just over half a second, the rest were close to a full second back. From here the Berry team just built on their advantage. Alex (21.81) expanded the lead to .6 over the next closest team, and Ryan with a strong 21.67 pushed the lead to almost a full second over second place.

A Relay - Hunter led off and opened with a very strong 21.52 off a cold start. Breck was second with a 21.8. Harrison swam a 20.8 and Sam closed in 20.93 to post a 1:25.05 and finish 2nd, ~.3 behind BSC.


400 Medley Relay

B Team - Breck started the event doing the back, and he ended up in a lane with a bad kick plate. The small ledge that retracts following the start had apparently malfunctioned earlier in the evening and it definitely looked to me like it happened to Breck as well. Breck is normally a very good starter, and in this case he came up well behind the pack, which is another indication something was wrong. His split of 56.32 is also about 2 seconds off his normal time - so definitely evidence he was impacted by the device malfunctioning - though I never heard a word from anyone that it did happen. Ryan swam the breast and his 59.33 - moved the team up into 2nd place. Alex swam another strong fly, splitting 52.25, and Harrison crushed the free in a time of 45.91. Berry finished 2nd in the heat, and the bad luck on the start, while it obviously hurt their overall time, they were 4 seconds behind BSC, so their place wasn't impacted at all.

A Team - Billy opened with a very good split for him posting a 53.18 (within .06 of his personal best and only .03 off his split in prelims and finals of the 100 back earlier in the meet). Sam followed with a 57.43 in the breast. Ross took the fly leg and swam it in 50.40, while Paxton took the anchor free and posted a 46.96. Berry finished 3rd behind BSC and Centre.