Swim Like A Champion (a real life journal) - Page 30

Breeze · 03-02-2022, 07:50 AM

SAA Conference Championships - Final Scores

Code:


                       Gold     Slv     Brz    Score   Points
1	BSC 	        8	8	6	812	614.2
2	Rhodes 	        7	3	2	694	551.4
3	Berry 	        1	5	6	675	569.0
4	Centre	        1	4	3	592	556.4
5	Hendrix	        –	–	3	389	473.8
6	Sewanee	        –	–	–	269	466.9
7	Millsaps	3	–	–	196	451.1

As you can see Birmingham Southern dominated the meet, winning by over 100 points, and taking 22 medals. The interesting thing above is Rhodes. While they won 7 gold medals and finished 2nd, their points for their average swim was lower than Berry's. That's where the depth of the Berry lineup comes into play. Add in the fact that Berry lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 points due to the injuries to Noah and Emilio and that gap should have been wider.

Berry will have 1 last chance, next year, with their strong swimmers to push for a conference championship, but they will need to have a good recruiting class and so far that's not looking promising. Fingers crossed that the Vikings can find 3 more strong swimmer/divers to add to the roster before next season.

Note: The Points column in the table above is the collegeswimming.com swim score that I referenced earlier when breaking down the teams coming into this event. The number is determined based on a preset time for each event, and then a swimmer's result is measured against that standard and a score is derived.

Breeze · 03-03-2022, 08:55 AM

SAA Conference Championships - Post Meet Info

It was a good meet for the team, and an especially good meet for the last 2 recruiting classes. The Sophomores had Ross scoring 54 points, Bear and Hunter were in the low 40s, Ryan got 37 and Harrison got 27. The Freshman, Sam, with 3 bronze individual medals got 48 points, Ethan got 42, Billy got 29.5, Breck got 28, Andrew got 20, and Emilio Rico was in line to get around 30 pre-injury. Here is a breakdown of the full scoring, and it also includes the medal breakdown and swim score points for each swimmer.

Code:

Swimmers (16)
         Name	       Gold	Slvr	Bronze	Score	Pts
1	Ross Valdez	1	2	–	54	707.0
2	Samuel Tate	–	–	3	48	628.8
3	Hunter Kenny	–	–	1	43	578.6
4	Ethan Whiting	–	–	–	42	626.0
5	Bear Breeze	–	–	–	41	640.3
6	Ryan MacKinnon	–	–	–	37	583.3
7	William Blood	–	–	–	30	537.3
8	Carter Richards	–	–	–	28	508.3
9	Harrison McNeil	–	–	–	27	569.5
10	T Stephenson	–	–	–	24	523.6
11	Andrew Horn	–	–	–	20	512.6
12	Alex Bartik	–	–	–	15	544.1
13	Paxton Smathers	–	–	–	11	529.0
14	Riley Croker	–	–	–	10	482.2
15	Diego Torres	–	–	–	4	345.0
16	Emilio Rico	–	–	–	1	545.7

Breeze · 03-04-2022, 09:14 AM

SAA Conference Championships - Post Meet Info

Here's some additional information that might be of interest:

Code:


Berry's Top Swims
        Name	        Event	         Round	Place	  Time		Pts
1	Ross Valdez	500 Y Free	Finals	1st	4:32.72	B	745
2	Ross Valdez	1650 Y Free	Finals	2nd	15:52.41 B      732
3	Ross Valdez	500 Y Free	Prelims	1st	4:36.99		711
4	Ross Valdez	200 Y Free	Finals	2nd	1:41.05		695
5	Bear Breeze	500 Y Free	Prelims	4th	4:42.44		671
6	Bear Breeze	500 Y Free	Finals	6th	4:43.35		664
7	Ethan Whiting	500 Y Free	Finals	7th	4:43.62		663
8	Ethan Whiting	500 Y Free	Prelims	7th	4:44.36		657
9	Ross Valdez	200 Y Free	Prelims	3rd	1:43.21		652
10	Samuel Tate	100 Y Breast	Prelims	3rd	57.54		644
11	Samuel Tate	200 Y IM	Prelims	2nd	1:53.78		642
12	Samuel Tate	200 Y IM	Finals	3rd	1:53.93		639
13	Ethan Whiting	400 Y IM	Prelims	2nd	4:07.94		638
14	Bear Breeze	200 Y Free	Finals	5th	1:44.03		637
15	Bear Breeze	1650 Y Free	Finals	5th	16:38.10	636
16	Hunter Kenny	200 Y Free	Finals	6th	1:44.12		635
17	Samuel Tate	100 Y Breast	Finals	3rd	57.96		630
18	Bear Breeze	200 Y Free	Prelims	5th	1:44.83		622
19	Bear Breeze	200 Y Free	Finals	-	1:44.88	R	621
20	Ethan Whiting	400 Y IM	Finals	4th	4:10.09		621
21	Harrison McNeil	100 Y Free	Finals	6th	46.89		616
22	Ryan MacKinnon	400 Y IM	Finals	6th	4:11.17		613
23	Hunter Kenny	200 Y Free	Prelims	8th	1:45.53		610
24	Samuel Tate	200 Y Back	Finals	3rd	1:52.88		610
25	Samuel Tate	200 Y Back	Prelims	3rd	1:53.03		608

Above are the top swims by Berry swimmers based on their swim score points.

Code:



Top Swims for the Meet
        Name	        Team	Event	         Time		Score	Pts
1	Bryan Sullivan	 Mil	100 Y IM	49.83		–	786
2	J. Icimsoy	 BSC	200 Y Free	1:38.54	B R	–	749
3	Daniel Snyder	 Rhodes	1650 Y Free	15:46.33 B      20	746
4	Ross Valdez	 Berry	500 Y Free	4:32.72	B	20	745
5	Daniel Snyder	 Rhodes	500 Y Free	4:33.32		17	740
6	J. Icimsoy	 BSC	400 Y IM	3:56.48	B	20	735
7	Ross Valdez	 Berry	1650 Y Free	15:52.41 B	17	732
8	J. Icimsoy	 BSC	500 Y Free	4:34.45		16	731
9	E. Ziolkowski	 Rhodes	200 Y Free	1:39.74	B R	–	723
10	C. Fountain	 BSC	500 Y Free	4:36.35		15	716
11	E. Ziolkowski	 Rhodes	200 Y Free	1:40.17		20	713
12	Ross Valdez	 Berry	500 Y Free	4:36.99		–	711
13	H. Henderson	 BSC	100 Y Breast	55.89	B	–	703
14	J. Icimsoy	 BSC	100 Y Free	44.88	B	20	703
15	C. Fountain	 BSC	1650 Y Free	16:06.77 B	16	700
16	Ross Valdez	 Berry	200 Y Free	1:41.05		17	695
17	C. Fountain	 BSC	400 Y IM	4:01.21	B	17	693
18	Daniel Snyder	 Rhodes	500 Y Free	4:39.93		–	689
19	Daniel Snyder	 Rhodes	200 Y Free	1:41.42		16	687
20	C. Fountain	 BSC	500 Y Free	4:40.62		–	684
21	H. Henderson	 BSC	100 Y Breast	56.46		20	682
22	Joseph Swing	 BSC	500 Y Free	4:41.22		14	680
23	Chase Bolding	 BSC	200 Y Fly	1:51.00		20	675
24	Bryan Sullivan	 Mil	100 Y Back	49.66		–	672
25	J. Icimsoy	 BSC	100 Y Free	45.56		–	672
26	Bear Breeze	 Berry	500 Y Free	4:42.44		–	671
27	C. Fountain	 BSC	400 Y IM	4:04.02		–	669
28	J. Icimsoy	 BSC	500 Y Free	4:42.70		–	669
29	E. Ziolkowski	 Rhodes	200 Y Free	1:42.39		–	668
30	E. Ziolkowski	 Rhodes	100 Y Free	45.66		17	667

I think this pretty well illustrates my notes from the pre-meet write-up. You'll recognize the swimmers I tabbed as "Elite" or just below throughout this list. It is also based off of swim score points.

Code:


Swimmers
        Name	        Team	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Score	Pts
1	Bryan Sullivan	 Mil	3	–	–	60	658.9
2	Chase Bolding	 BSC	2	1	–	57	645.7
3	Jakob Icimsoy	 BSC	2	–	1	56	681.0
4	Ross Valdez	 Berry	1	2	–	54	707.0
5	Daniel Snyder	 Rhodes	1	1	1	53	705.2
6	Arthur Bishop	 Rhodes	1	1	1	53	600.2
7	A. Henderson	 BSC	1	1	–	51	644.3
8	Evan Ziolkowski	 Rhodes	1	1	–	50	649.7
9	Kai Oddo	 Centre	–	2	–	49	609.8
10	L. Fountain	 BSC	–	1	1	48	693.0
11	C. Rubin	 BSC	–	1	1	48	623.1
12	Samuel Tate	 Berry	–	–	3	48	628.8
13	P. Higgerson	Hendrix	–	–	2	47	615.4
14	Connor McClain	 BSC	–	1	1	44	607.8
15	Hunter Kenny	 Berry	–	–	1	43	578.6
16	Joseph Swing	 BSC	–	–	–	42	650.8
17	Ethan Whiting	 Berry	–	–	–	42	626.0
18	Bryan Killian	 Centre	1	–	–	41	623.2
19	Bear Breeze	 Berry	–	–	–	41	640.3
20	Max Milburn	 Rhodes	–	–	–	41	549.9

Above, are the top scorers in the conference.

Code:

Top Swimmers for the Meet by Swim Score
        Name	        Team	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Score	Pts
1	Ross Valdez	 Berry	1	2	–	54	707.0
2	Daniel Snyder	 Rhodes	1	1	1	53	705.2
3	L. Fountain	 BSC	–	1	1	48	693.0
4	Jakob Icimsoy	 BSC	2	–	1	56	681.0
5	Bryan Sullivan	 Mil	3	–	–	60	658.9
6	Joseph Swing	 BSC	–	–	–	42	650.8
7	E. Ziolkowski	 Rhodes	1	1	–	50	649.7
8	Chase Bolding	 BSC	2	1	–	57	645.7
9	A. Henderson	 BSC	1	1	–	51	644.3
10	Bear Breeze	 Berry	–	–	–	41	640.3
11	Samuel Tate	 Berry	–	–	3	48	628.8
12	Ethan Whiting	 Berry	–	–	–	42	626.0
13	Bryan Killian	 Centre	1	–	–	41	623.2
14	Chris Rubin	 BSC	–	1	1	48	623.1
15	P. Higgerson	 Hen	–	–	2	47	615.4
16	Aden Kraft	 BSC	–	–	1	30	612.0
17	Kai Oddo	 Centre	–	2	–	49	609.8
18	Connor McClain	 BSC	–	1	1	44	607.8
19	Carson Maggio	 BSC	–	–	–	38	607.0
20	Jackson Fears	 Centre	–	1	–	39	606.3

Top meet performers based on the swim score points. Again you'll recognize the swimmers noted in the pre-race write ups.

Breeze · 03-07-2022, 08:38 AM

SAA Conference - End of Year Swimmer Rankings

Code:


Season 2021-2022
        Name	         Team	Points
1	Daniel Snyder	Rhodes	739.00
2	Jakob Icimsoy	BSC	738.40
3	Ross Valdez	Berry	734.90
4	C. Fountain	BSC	705.45
5	Bryan Sullivan	Mil	678.05
6	E. Ziolkowski	Rhodes	673.67
7	H. Henderson	BSC	667.90
8	Joseph Swing	BSC	666.45
9	Chase Bolding	BSC	665.75
10	Bear Breeze	Berry	650.15
11	Ethan Whiting	Berry	649.05
12	P. Higgerson	Hendrix 638.95
13	Bryan Killian	Centre	637.40
14	Samuel Tate	Berry	635.35
15	Arthur Bishop	Rhodes	635.10
16	Jackson Fears	Centre	633.55
17	Chris Rubin	BSC	631.25
18	Carson Maggio	BSC	626.00
19	Henry Lang	Centre	625.85
20	A. Carbone	Sewanee	625.60
21	Noah Brand	Berry	625.55
22	Kai Oddo	Centre	622.85
23	Connor McClain	BSC	616.55
24	Noah Prevost	BSC	614.35
25	Aden Kraft	BSC	610.50
26	Hunter Kenny	Berry	608.15
27	Ryan MacKinnon	Berry	598.25
28	Jalen McDade	BSC	595.60
29	Max Milburn	Rhodes	593.85
30	George Mabry	Sewanee	587.10

Berry Rankings

Code:

        Name	        Team	Points
3	Ross Valdez	Berry	734.90
10	Bear Breeze	Berry	650.15
11	Ethan Whiting	Berry	649.05
14	Samuel Tate	Berry	635.35
21	Noah Brand	Berry	625.55
26	Hunter Kenny	Berry	608.15
27	R. MacKinnon	Berry	598.25
32	Harrison McNeil	Berry	576.30
33	Emilio Rico	Berry	575.15
34	Billy Blood	Berry	569.50
39	Alex Bartik	Berry	561.45
42	P. Smathers	Berry	554.80
53	Breck Richards	Berry	532.85
56	T. Stephenson	Berry	522.45
62	Andrew Horn	Berry	511.55
70	Riley Croker	Berry	500.10
82	Collin Dillard	Berry	451.90
91	Hunter Erb	Berry	387.05
94	Diego Torres	Berry	377.68

Keep in mind Noah, Emilio, Collin, and Hunter Erb didn't get to swim conference so their scores didn't get the benefit of full tapered racing at the end of the year.

Breeze · 03-08-2022, 09:19 AM

SAA Conference Championship - Scoring Review

Here is a breakdown of the scoring by class:

Code:


Team	        BSC	Rhodes	Centre	Hendrix	Sewanee	Mill	Berry
Seniors	        108	128.5	140	26	50	60	34
Juniors	        271	0	54	76	2	0	80
Sophomores	58	116	83	0	46.5	16	152
Freshman	104.5	170	107	101	18	0	168.5
							
Returning	433.5	286	244	177	66.5	16	400.5

Again, keep in mind the 400.5 returning points for Berry doesn't include the approximately 80 points that would have been provided by Noah and Emilio if they had been healthy.

Breeze · 03-22-2022, 07:08 AM

Berry - General Update

Quite a few things going on at Berry. I've got to get my thoughts around the best way to present the information. Plus working on a post season write up, just busy at the office right now, which is delaying the post.

Hope to have something soon.

Breeze · 03-25-2022, 10:57 AM

Berry - General Update

The first tidbit of information is:

Almost immediately following the conference championship GA coach Shelby Hall resigned effective immediately. This was her 1st year of a 2 year stint and she quit without even a 2 week notice. It was shocking that it went down the way it did, however, it was not terribly surprising that she didn't return.

Breeze · 03-28-2022, 06:55 AM

Berry - General Update

The second tidbit of information is:

About 2 weeks after the conference championship we received an email from Coach Flinchbaugh announcing his decision to step down as the Berry swim coach. This was a complete shock as Flinchbaugh started the Berry program in 2008. We aren't sure of what prompted his decision, and knowing that this thread has now been located online, I don't want to speculate, but I do know this was a tough season for him. The feeling around the team was that he would coach for a few more years before retirement, but coming into this season there were no indications this was a possibility.

Coach Flinchbaugh was selected as the SAA's Coach of the Year for the men's team in 2015-16 season, the 2019-20 season, and again in the Covid year of '20-'21. He also won the honor for the women's team in 2017-18. He has coached well over 100 combined SAA All-Conference swimmers and over 200 SAA Academic Honor Roll honorees.

The team has announced they are starting a nationwide search for his replacement. We mentioned the opening to Bear's former club coach Andy Eaton, who's been bouncing around the college ranks now for several years building a resume. He was intrigued a bit, but it's not really what he wants so we don't expect he'll apply.

I doubt we will know anything before the announcement of the new coach, but if I hear anything I'll be sure to add it.

Breeze · 03-30-2022, 08:12 AM

Bear - Academic Update

The final tidbit of information involves Bear's academics. Last week Bear registered for his Fall and Spring '23 classes. When he finished he realized he only had 6 hours remaining that were required before graduation. During high school Bear took numerous AP classes, and he did dual enrollment during his senior year, so when he enrolled at Berry he was basically a Sophomore. To try and extend his time on campus and allow him to get all 4 years swimming he decided to take minimum hours and to double major (Biology and Bio-Chemistry). However, because he now has some interest in potentially going to medical school, he's recently increased his rigor to show he's capable of taking a full schedule.

Having only 6 hours needed before graduation for an entire senior year, caused some soul searching on Bear's part, and the realization hit him hard. We listened as we worked his way through several options that might allow him that final 4th year of competition, but the obvious result was too much to overcome. It makes no sense to try and find filler classes to meet the 12 hours needed to retain his scholarship. Now the plan is for him to take 1 of the 2 additional classes over the Summer and other as part of his upcoming Fall or Spring semester, meaning he will be graduating at this time next year.

That also means this will be final year of his swimming and the final year of this blog. I've known from the start this could potentially occur. However, even with that knowledge, there is a small part of me that is disappointed this will likely be the last year I get to watch any of my kids swim.

Breeze · 04-13-2022, 07:05 AM

Bear - Injury Update.

Bear recently finished up his shoulder PT, and the therapist and the swim team trainer both expected him to much better off than he currently is. They have suggested that he schedule an MRI to get it looked at. While this is the last thing I wanted to hear headed into his final year, it's also not terribly surprising. Bear is currently working with the school to get this scheduled, but honestly, I'm not sure what he's going to do with the information. We all know from baseball that rotator cuff surgeries take about a year to fully heal, which would prevent Bear from competing in his final season. We'll see where this goes, fingers crossed they find something small that is fixable and will allow him to be ready to hit the water in September.

Breeze · 04-20-2022, 09:24 AM

Bear - Injury Update

Bear met with the doctor about his shoulder and the doctor wants to proceed with the MRI. He's concerned that Bear may have a torn labrum. Waiting on the date of the procedure. Will update when I know more.

Breeze · 04-21-2022, 07:15 AM

Bear - Injury Update

Bear's last exam is 5/3, but unfortunately his MRI is 5/5 so he'll be delayed coming home for a couple of days.

Breeze · 05-03-2022, 10:32 AM

Got an interesting letter in the mail yesterday from the insurance company. They sent us approval for Bailey to have an MRI, which is great, but it's Bear that is getting the procedure done. That created a frantic call last night trying to get that corrected so insurance would cover the scan today. After about 90 minutes on the phone, they finally gave us a new confirmation number that we relayed to Bear. Always great when the insurance company screws up the orders then tells you if it isn't corrected they won't cover the cost of the scan.

Breeze · 05-06-2022, 07:21 AM

Bear - Injury Update

Bear got his MRI results yesterday. Turns out he has a small tear in his labrum, but it's not serious enough to require surgery. The doctor also told him his labrum has basically been smashed flat, which means his shoulder joint is bigger than it should be. He will continue to do physical therapy for a while trying to strengthen up the whole shoulder to counteract the over developed areas from the overhand freestyle motion.

Breeze · 06-09-2022, 01:58 PM

Escobar Named New Swim and Dive Head Coach

MOUNT BERRY, Ga. - With a wide knowledge of the sport and of the Southern Athletic Association, Astrid Escobar has been named the new Head Coach of Berry's Men's and Women's Swim and Dive programs. The announcement was made by Berry Director of Athletics Dr. Angel Mason this afternoon.

"Astrid is a tremendous young coach with a passion for swimming that is matched by few," said Dr. Mason. "She is someone I believe will have a positive impact on our swim and dive student-athletes experience and on the athletic department in general."

"I'm excited for the opportunity to join such a supportive and engaged community," said Escobar. "I am thankful to everyone involved in the hiring process, including the hiring committee, the swim and dive teams, Berry President Dr. Stephen Briggs, Debbie Heida, and Dr. Mason."

In 2021-22, Escobar was an assistant coach at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minn. Helping the program transition from Division III to Division I, Escobar helped a pair of Tommies to All-Summit League status, with Will Goldman and Grace Urkiel each setting school D-I records in the 100-Yard breaststroke on the men's and women's side, respectively.

Prior to arriving at the University of St. Thomas, Escobar served as Head Coach of Men's and Women's Swimming & Diving at State University of New York at Fredonia from 2019 to 2021. In her first season with the Blue Devils, two individuals and one relay earned All-SUNYAC honors at the conference championship meet and four school records were broken. A total of 14 athletes were named to the SUNYAC Commissioner's Academic Honor Roll for the 2019-20 academic year and both the men's and women's team captured the College Swimming & Diving Coaches Association of America All-America award for the 2020 spring semester.

In the 2018-19 season, Escobar was an interim assistant coach at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. While there, she helped the men's 200-yard freestyle relay team to D-III All-America status. The men's and women's teams combined to set eight school records during the season.

Escobar began her collegiate coaching career at Hamilton College, serving as an assistant coach for two seasons and as the interim head coach for a season.

The new Berry head coach has spent time coaching at numerous camps across the country, including the University of Georgia's Bauerle Bulldog Swim Camp, Harvard's Technique Academy, and Kenyon's Total Performance Swim Camp.

A 2014 graduate of The University of the South, Escobar was a three-time NCAA Division III All-America in the breaststroke and an 11-time conference champion - three in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference and eight in the Southern Athletic Association. She set Sewanee's school and pool records in the 100- and 200-yard breaststroke events and was a member of both school-record setting 200- and 400-yard medley relay teams. Escobar was the 2014 Sewanee Senior Athlete of the Year, the 2014 Evelyn J. Mooney Award winner as the top senior female athlete, the Bishop Juhan Award winner for excellence in swimming, and a Vice Chancellor's Scholar for Scholarship and Leadership.

Escobar still holds the Berry pool record for the 200-yard breaststroke, set in 2011 at 2:25.60

"I'm so grateful to my parents and life mentors that have modeled and instilled the values in me that align with those of Berry College to prepare me for this new and exciting chapter of my life," Escobar said.

Escobar will begin her post on July 1, 2022.

Breeze · 06-10-2022, 11:18 AM

A quick follow up to the announcement of a new coach. Prior to Bear returning home for the Summer, he was aware that there were apparently 2 people in the running for the position, this lady and an older guy. For a long time, there was no word on what was happening, and he wasn't even sure if things were proceeding or if the Athletic Director was attempting to find additional candidates. However, of the two people that were up for the job, this was the one that the team captains preferred. Apparently, one of the captains on the team reached out to some of her former swimmers to find out what they thought of her, and they all expressed the fact that she was great to swim for. That she kept things fun, which in swimming isn't really an easy thing to do.

We'll see how this plays out, but I know that if Bear had a vote out of the two options, based on what he was told, this would have been his choice.

While this is Bear's last season, I'm going to be very interested to see how she recruits going forward. I felt for a long time that Berry should be a better team than they've been, and that lack of effort in recruiting was holding them back. This coach is young enough that she might embrace it more, and if she does, it could be fun to see where this goes.

Breeze · 07-15-2022, 06:51 AM

Bear has been going to PT for a while now, and he thinks he's making some progress. He's had a lot of needling done - including a few times with an electro-stimulus attachment. Recently, the therapist did what she termed a "fan" technique on his bad shoulder, and it apparently lit him up. He said it was excruciating, but apparently also effective. He's hopeful more of that will lead to big jumps in how the shoulder feels.

Also, Bear just recently started swimming again. Wanting to ease back into it and get in shape before the team ramps up in early September. The good news is the inflammation in the shoulder is mostly gone due to his taking time off, the bad news is - he's really sore when he swims. The therapist suggests it's scar tissue that built up because he's been inactive for a while and it's going to take some time to break it up. He's not looking forward to that.

Hopefully, he can find a happy medium before his final season that will allow him to thrive one last time.

thealmighty · 07-17-2022, 10:16 PM

Is there any chance you are going to adopt a youngster so this thread won't be ending in a year?

Just something to think about and discuss with Mrs. Breeze.

Breeze · 08-08-2022, 09:46 AM

The pain in Bear's shoulder wasn't subsiding as much as he had hoped so we scheduled an appointment with the Dr. that initially diagnosed him with the overtraining issue. The plan now is to continue PT until early September, at which point if there is still pain, they will look into doing injections. I'm assuming when they say injections they mean cortisone/lidocaine, but it could be something different. He also indicated if that doesn't work, there is a secondary type of injection treatment that they can do, but they would wait until around the first of the year to do it.

Bear has been hesitant to use any sort of pain killer for fear of causing more permanent damage by masking the symptoms. However, given this is his last season, he figures he's got nothing to lose at this point.

Will keep you updated on what ends up happening.

Breeze · 09-07-2022, 06:43 AM

This morning at 6 A.M. was the first practice of the season, so Bear's final swim season is now officially underway.

Sorry there hasn't been much in the way of updates about the team or the schedule but things are still very much up in the air. Bear was initially under the impression the only recruits for the men's team were Mac (a former Gold swimmer with Bear, who he helped recruit to Berry) and another swimmer who wasn't a year round guy, but that's apparently not the case. I believe there is a 3rd swimmer and a diver that also joined. When the team updates the roster I'll update the thread.

The schedule was also initially released a few weeks back, but it was seriously lacking. It had the team competing in only 6 meets all season, including the intra-squad meet. Obviously, Coach Paul was let go before he could finish the schedule and the new coach wasn't hired in time to have an impact on what was already in place. Bear indicated that the coach is apparently trying to add some additional meets. Again, once we get a firmer understanding of the schedule, I'll post it here.

Breeze · 09-19-2022, 10:28 AM

2022-23 Berry Vikings Swim Schedule

Code:


10/8 - Intrasquad Meet - Home
10/22 - Univ of Montevallo & Emmanuel College - Home
11/6 - Centre College - Away (Danville, KY)
11/12 - Sewanee - Away (Sewanee, TN)
12/2 - SCAD Invite - Away (Savannah, GA)

Summer Training

1/13 - Viking Invite - Home 
1/28 - Birmingham Southern College - Away (Birmingham, AL)

2/8 - SAA Conference Championships

Breeze · 09-20-2022, 07:47 AM

2022-23 Berry Vikings Swim Schedule - Review

The schedule was released about a month ago, but when it was released there was an indication that the new coach was attempting to add some meets to the schedule. If she was successful in doing so, no announcement has been made. As you can see, the schedule this year is significantly smaller than the one last year. I'm sure that is a direct result from the coaching turnover. In some ways it's disappointing, given this is Bear's final season and we'll only have 7 or so meets to watch him swim (and a couple that are far enough away that watching him will be an online experience). In other ways, it's probably good. Last year's schedule was way too involved. Having meets every weekend impacts your ability to train. It's the same reason that year round teams swim in meets only about once a month. In addition, given Bear's shoulder issues, less racing might be beneficial.

Here are my thoughts around the actual meets:

Intrasqad meet - always a fun one for the kids. In the past, recent graduates would return to field a 3rd team for this meet, but it doesn't look like that's on the agenda this year, which is unfortunate. I know that Bear's group still sees Dylan White regularly, and I believe Michael Bemis was planning to return, which would have been a fun reunion for the guys.

Montevallo & Emmanual - both of these schools are D2, and thus can provide athletic scholarships. The talent level here is much higher than Berry, so the Vikings won't be close in the scoring. The only good aspect is, the team will get to swim against some fast opponents.

Centre College - conference opponent, who's improved dramatically over the last couple of seasons (driven by the promise of a new multi-million dollar facility I'm sure). This one should be fun, too bad it's so far away.

Sewanee - another conference foe - another one pretty far away. This is an improving team, but Berry should still be a good bit better.

SCAD Invite - Bear isn't really a fan of this meet. It's so dominated by Emory's B team that it takes a good bit of the fun out of it.

Viking Invite - not sure who's invited this time around. Could be a totally new group of schools with the new coach. Will be interested to see.

Birmingham Southern - the annual conference match up at the end of the season, right before conference. It's a good measuring stick against what's consistently been the best team in the conference.

Conference Championship - This is going to be fun with several teams bringing their best roster in years to the event.

Breeze · 09-27-2022, 06:47 AM

General Update

The confusion with this new coach continues. We haven't received any communications from her yet, which is a bit surprising. The only things we have to go on are communications to Bear. To begin, it sounded like she was going to try and add some additional meets to the schedule, but no word on that since. Now the schedule has been released, but we find out the Intra-squad meet on the 8th, looks like it's just going to be a regular practice. Not sure when she's planning on letting parents know, because I suspect quite a few are planning to show up.

The team roster for the season hasn't been released yet (which is why I haven't updated it here). In addition, the Vikings website and the collegeswimming site for Berry still show Flinchbaugh as the coach. Not sure what she's doing on a daily basis, but if this were my new job, I think I'd be working on making sure I updated all the relevant websites and reached out to the parents to introduce myself. It's been very odd. We'll see where this goes.

Breeze · 10-04-2022, 06:38 AM

Still no word from the coach, but Bear confirmed last night that the "Intra-sqaud" meet would just be a typical practice with maybe some races mixed in. Which means, there is really nothing to watch and if you did want to watch, practice starts at 5:30 AM. For us to make it - we'd have to leave the house around 3:45.

This last season isn't getting off to a great start. Our viewing opportunities are already very limited. Not really please that this meet is basically being cancelled.

Breeze · 10-19-2022, 02:10 PM

2022-23 Berry Viking Men’s Swimming Roster

The season starts this weekend, so I'm going to post the roster as best I can. The one posted on the schools website includes a couple of people that aren't on the team, so I'm not sure how accurate it actually is, but we'll go with what we have (I'll drop the swimmers that are listed but I know aren't active). Also projecting how the swimmer will do this year is going to be next to impossible. The conference has another large influx of talent and it's going to make finals significantly more challenging. Until I have an idea what events these freshmen are going to swim, and what times they post, I'll be simply guessing based on outdated data.

The team had a very small recruiting class in 21/22. They added just 2 swimmers and 1 diver. However, they did get a diver that quit the team right before conference last year to return, and another swimmer that was academically ineligable also rejoined. This is important because it gives Berry over a full roster. In fact, if everyone is capable of swimming at conference (a big if based on last year's results) there will be 1 person on the men's side that won't count towards the team's totals.

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Alex Bartik (Sr.)
Alex has been a great performer for the Vikings. He's capable of competing in several areas as his best event is still probably the 200 IM, with his Free and Fly being his best strokes. In fact, he managed to swim a personal best in the 100 fly (52.78) last year. In his first 2 years Alex earned 24 and 23 points at conference. Last year he had a disappointing 15 point result. Ultimately, his point total was impacted by 2 things. One - the depth of talent in the conference, and Two - a bad strategic decision on how to swim the 200 IM at finals. In 2020, Alex finished 10th in the 200 IM. In 2021, he finished 9th. Last year, in prelims, Alex posted a time only .3 off of his finals swim the year before, but it was only good enough to qualify 13th. In finals, he decided to hold back a bit early to ensure he had energy to sprint home, but that left him battling choppy water, which ultimately cost him about a full second and placed him 15th overall. Combine that with a 13th place finish in the 100 free, again because of improved depth in the field, and you can see why his point total was down. Alex continues to be one of the strongest swimmers on the B relays and will be expected to at least help bolster those units with an outside shot of sneaking onto an A relay.

Billy Blood (So.)
In his Freshman year Billy scored 29.5 points at conference, right on that target goal of 30 points. He showed real good improvement in his sprint freestyle during the 21-22 season, posting personal bests in both the 50 and 100. This makes him a potential participant on B sprint frees. However, his primary role will continue to be one of the team's top backstrokers. In conference last year, he managed to make A finals in both the 100 and 200 back, finishing 7th and 6th respectively. His third event was the super deep 200 IM where he placed 12th. I'm not sure the 200 IM is the best option for Billy, despite his strong showing. He's very capable of competing in a number of other events. Moreover, just slight improvements in the 200 back could place him in a position to medal.

Noah Brand (Sr.)
One of the most disappointing things from the 21-22 season was the injury that kept Noah from competing at the conference championships. His absence was a significant impact on the team. Noah is the best sprinter the Vikings have, and removing him from the equation created a ripple effect that was felt the entire weekend. All of the sprint relays were impacted, and to a lesser extent some of the potential energy that can be generated from exciting and successful swims was lost. If Noah returns to form this season, he'll be in for some amazing races. It appears that all of the big time sprinters from last season elected to return, taking advantage of their extra year of eligibility due to Covid. Noah will have a chance to medal in whatever events he chooses to swim, and he'll be the primary piece on all 4 of his relays.

Andrew Horn (So.)
Andrew had a nice freshman season at conference totaling 20 points. All 20 of his points came from his primary stroke - Breast, where he finished 9th in the 100 and made A finals in the 200 finishing 8th. He's capable of making A finals in both distances which would increase his point total by a couple. Unfortunately, he failed to point in his 3rd event. In 21-22 he entered the super deep 200 IM and finished 21st in prelims. I don't believe the 200 IM is his best option, and certainly with the strength of that field, it's asking a lot to get into the top 16. If I were the coach, I'd plan to groom him this season to swim either the 200 Fly, 400 IM, or 1650. If he did any of those events as the 3rd option he'd almost certainly score, and he's talented enough to be a top 10 finisher in any of the 3 events mentioned. If he can score in his 3rd event, his overall total will likely improve to over 25 and maybe as high as 30 points.

Hunter Kenny (Jr.)
Hunter had a huge 21-22 conference championship, earning a whopping 43 points, a significant improvement over his freshman total of 33 points. Much of his point total improvement was due to changing his events. As a freshman, Hunter focused on sprint free competing in the 50, 100, and 200. He managed A finals in the 50 and 100 and just missed A finals in the 200. In 22-23 he decided to compete in the 50 and 200 frees and added the 200 fly as well. This was a big change, but it paid off handsomely. In the 50 free he popped personal best in finals (21.37) and finished 5th overall. In the 200 free he was only about .1 of a second off his PB and he finished 6th. Then in the 200 fly he managed another PB, this time with a significant drop of 4.33 seconds (1:55.82) to finish 3rd and earn the broze medal. It will be interesting to see where Hunter focuses this year. Obviously, 40+ points is an excellent showing, and it wouldn't be surprising to see him duplicate his schedule this year to see if he can also duplicate the results. In addition to his strong individual performances, Hunter is a key element in the relays due to his strong sprint ability. Given Noah's return it's hard to project what Hunter will swim in relays, but I'd assume, at a minimum, he's in the A relay for the 200 Free and 400 Free, while anchoring the freestyle on the B medleys. It also wouldn't be a surprise to see him on the A 800 free relay, especially if he swims a lot of 200 free and 200 fly during the season.

Ryan McKinnon (Jr.)
Ryan is another of the Berry swimmers that improved on an his strong results from his freshman year. As a freshman, Ryan scored 33 points. Last year he upped his total to 37 points, and seems to have found a niche as an all-rounder, rather than just a breaststroker. As a freshman, Ryan focused on the 100 and 200 breasts, and as you can tell from his point total he was very successful. Coming into the season last year, breast was clearly one of the team's strengths. In fact, in my preseason write up last year, I wondered several times about some swimmers potentially finding other events so the they didn't effectively steal points from themselves by having so many swimmers in the same races. I also noted that Ryan had potential to be a strong 400 IMer. Well, last season Ryan proved me correct. He decided to move off of the 100 breast and instead focus on the 200 IM, 400 IM, and 200 Breast, a schedule of events that seems to fit. Ryan is a big, strong kid, and the longer tougher events seem to suit him as he posted personal bests in all 3 events last year. He just missed the A finals in the 200 IM taking 9th in prelims and finals. Then he finished 6th overall in the 400 IM, only .15 seconds from 5th. Moreover, he took 4th in the 200 breast, just missing out on a medal. Another season of slight improvements could see Ryan top 40 points and maybe take home a medal.

Harrison McNeil (Sr.)
Harrison is one of the 3 swimmers that came in when Bear did, but will be leaving a year early. Harrison is part of the 3/2 engineering program, which consists of 3 years at Berry followed by 2 years at Georgia Tech, so this is his last season swimming. He's been a great swimmer for Berry, posting 30+ points as a freshman and 27 last year. McNeil is a sprint freestyler competing in the 50, 100, and 200 over the last 2 years, and will undoubtedly do it again this year. He's capable of making 3 A finals, but so far he's been unable to crack the top 8 in the 50, settling for 9th back to back seasons. The sprint frees are arguably tightest of all the events, because pretty much every swimmer can swim free fast. The problem with that is that the margin for error is so small. I honestly believe we haven't seen Harrison's best yet. He is so fast in the middle of the pool, quite possibly as fast as anyone in conference, but his dives and turns are hit or miss. If he can clean those up, I think 3 A finals and potentially 3 top 5 finishes are possible.

Breck Richards (So.)
One of the strong freshman from last year, Breck, like Billy above was right at that 30 point goal score, posting 28. Breck, also like Billy above is primarily a backstroker. In fact, all of last season Billy and Breck alternated as the top backstroker on the team, and their season best swims for both the 100 and 200 were close. Hopefully, because the two are so close in times they will continue to push each other to improve. Last year Breck made both A finals in the backstroke finishing 8th in both. He actually probably would have done better in the 200 back, but he slipped on the start, costing him 4 full seconds and killing any chance he had to do better. Breck's 3rd event is the 50 free, where he made the middle of the B final. Again the extremely tight field magnifies slight improvements or mistakes, so if he stays with that race, he could finish anywhere from back of A final to missing the B final all together.

Emilio Rico (So.)
Another one of the strong freshman class from last year. Unfortunately, we were unable to see how impactful Rico could be at conference due to an ankle injury he suffered right before the competition. He started off competing at the event, but ultimately withdrew due to pain and fear of doing further damage to the joint. Despite the fact he was injured, he still managed to finish 16th in the previously mentioned deep 200 IM. Uninjured, his times indicate he's a potentially an A finalist in both breaststrokes and both IMs. In addition, the 500 and 1650 are potential options for him. I'm not sure what he'll compete in this season, but I'd expect the 200 breast for sure, as his personal best is over 1.5 seconds faster than Ryan's, and Ryan finished 4th in conference last year. Honestly, I believe the 100 breast, 200 breast and 4 IM are his best events, but to do that schedule he'd have to double up because the 400 IM and 100 breast are the same day. If he's healthy, I'd be suprised if he isn't easily over 30 points this year at conference. In fact, he will probably be closer to 40 than 30.

Paxton Smathers (Sr.)
Paxton had a big year last year. He posted personal bests in the 50, 100, and 200 frees. Unfortunately, he just missed finals in the 50 free, finishing 17th in prelims, despite being just .2 seconds off his best ever time. He finished 9th in the 200 free and 15th in the 100 free for a total of 11 points. He also helped the relays significantly. Coming into this season, I was expecting more of the same from Paxton, strong freestyle swims that would require a good performance at conference to score, again due to the tightness of the sprint free races, along with a serious presence on the team's relays. Unfortunately, Paxton has had some tough luck recently. Over the summer Paxton was going through boot camp for the Marines (which he'll go straight into following graduation in May), and when he returned home it was determined he developed a stress fracture in his leg. This had him laid up for several weeks, preventing him from staying in shape or swimming. Making matters worse, almost immediately following the injury he developed mono, and has been extremely sick. Apparently it'll be around November 7th before he's released to begin training, which places his entire senior year in jeopardy.

Sam Tate (So.)
Sam had a huge 48 point total at conference last year. How strong was his performace - he took home 3 bronze medals. Making it even more impressive - he did it in 3 very different events, the 200 IM, 100 Breast, and 100 Back. Oh, and in case you weren't convinced about how strong an all around swimmer he was, he was on both A sprint free relays. Tate is a threat no matter what event he chooses to enter, but I believe the 3 he chose for 2022 are his 3 best.

Diego Torres (Jr.)
Diego continues to improve, as he posted personal bests in both the 50 and 100 frees. Unfortunately, those are spint frees and his times are not in scoring range. Last year at conference he did manage to finish 13th in the 100 back and earn 4 points. This year, if he wants to be part of the 18 person travel team, he really needs to look for ways to back-end points. Typically, the best way to accomplish that is swim the longer races. His best options would probably be the 200 back and 1650 free. With training to handle the distances, he should be able to post competitive times in those events by the time conference rolls around in February. If he dedicates himself to those 2 events he could earn 10 to 12 points this February. If he insists on staying with freestyle swims, he's potentially going to be the odd man out.

Ross Valdez (Sr.)
During his freshman year, Ross had just returned from Covid protocol 3 days before the conference championship, and he still managed to get 44 points. However, last year the SAA conference got to see what he's truely capable of. Ross finished 1st in the 500 free, 2nd in the 200 free, and 2nd in the 1650 for a grand total of 54 points! Ross also managed to earn a D3 NCAA B cut (though he didn't actualy get invited to swim). I'd expect his goal this season is to get the actual invite to the NCAA championship meet, but that will take a pretty significant improvement. It's not out of the realm of posibility, but it's not a forgone conclusion either, especially since times have gotten even tougher following the additional year of eligibility due to Covid. Regardless, of what his goals are, Ross will be a threat to win whatever event he choses to enter. That includes the 3 he swam in last year, plus both of the fly races and the 400 IM.

Ethan Whiting (So.)
Another of the strong freshman from last year, Ethan scored 42 points at conference, and he did it competing in events I wasn't expecting. I viewed Ethan as more of a distance freestyler, and I expected him to be in the 200, 500, and 1650. Instead, he illustrated that he's an all-around swimmer by competing in the 500 free, 400 IM, and 200 fly. His decision worked out well as he finished 7th, 4th, and 4th respectively. Truth is, he was so close to earning a medal in both the 400 IM and 200 fly. He finished prelims in the 400 IM in second, but slipped to 4th at finals, and in the 200 fly he was 3rd in prelims, but teammate Kenny beat him in finals to take the bronze. He is another swimmer that will be a factor to earn a medal this year.

Collin Dillard (So.)
Collin was a freshman on the team for the first semester of the 21-22 season, but was unable to compete second semester due to academic issues. Meaning, he missed the conference championship so we don't have a full assessment on him. Collin is basically a breaststroker and based on his personal best times he should be in the top 10 to 12 in the 100 and 200, which is a strong showing and should earn him around 12 to 15 points. The biggest item for Collin is developing a 3rd event he can score in. The best option is likely the 200 fly, but that would require buy in from Collin, because it will take a good bit of effort to do that race, and it doesn't appear to be a race he's done frequently (if at all). Based on his times, the rest of the options fall into 1 of 2 categories - he'll either need to improve a decent amount to get into scoring position, or he'll need to buy in and train up to compete in a longer event that requires more effort. We'll see where this goes.

Keith Scarbor (Fr.)
One of the 2 freshman that signed with Berry despite very little effort put into recruiting by the coaches and then the tumultuous offseason that saw Coach Paul fired late in the process and the new coach not hired until right before school started. Keith comes in with two events that appear to be in the mid to lower B final scoring range, the 200 fly and the 1650 (extrapolated from the 1000 Free). If he adopts the attituted that swimming these events and ones similar is the best way to help the team, he could be a surprise at conference capable of earning double digit points. If instead, he insists on swimming the sprint frees, then he likely won't earn any points and could be left off the 18 person conference team.

Mac Shefchunas (Fr.)
The second freshman added to the team, and Mac is a nice get for the Vikings. He was a swimmer with Bear at Gold for serveral years and then again at SwimAtlanta when both moved over within a few months of each other. Mac is another swimmer on the team who's best stroke is breast. In fact, he's a very nice replacement for '22 graduate Tyler Stephenson, who earned 24 points at conference last year. Mac's personal best times in the 100 breast is half a second better than Tyler's and in the 200 he's closer to 2 seconds faster. This is important because Tyler finished 7th in both those events last year. Meaning Mac is in A final range in both breaststrokes and he's capable of making finals in his 3rd event. One of the two IMs is probably his best option, but without any improvement at all he should be middle of the B final in eiher of those races. This puts him in striking distance of that 30 point goal.

Bear Breeze (Sr.)
This is Bear's last go around, and it's also a very unsettled season for him. His shoulder has not improved, and given his level of discomfort I'm not convinced he's going to stick with the distance races. He may elect to go with other options so his training distances will be shorter and the number of shoulder revolutions will be lower. He's certainly capable of being competitive in the 400 IM and the 200 Fly, and with some focused training might find he's much faster at the sprint frees than he shown in the past. He also may elect to sprint early in the season, then try to ramp up mid season and winter training to prep for swimming distance at conference. A lot is up in the air still. However, given his health, I'd expect that he probably won't beat his personal best times in the 500, 1000 or 1650 this season, which I was hoping he'd do. I really wanted him to go out with PB swims in the events he battled through for so many years.

DIVERS

The team actually has 2 divers this season, which is big because each diver counts as half a competitor at a swim meet, so two allows the team to maximize the returns. Moreoever, one of the two divers is acting as the diving coach, and he's taking it so seriously the team goes to an offsite facility a couple of days a week to work on the 3 meter board. That's another huge development because it will give both divers a chance to earn points in 2 events rather than just 1.

Kevin Fuentes-Bonilla (Sr.)
Kevin is the diver that quit last season, right before conference because of a conflict with Coach Paul. With the new coach for '22-'23 he's elected to return for his senior year. Last year, Kevin began to show serious signs of improvement before a concussion put him on the shelf for a while. Hopefully, this new coach will be able to continue pushing the right buttons to get most out of Bonilla. Keep in mind, that before he showed any signs of improvement he earned 12 points at the 2021 championships only competing in the 1 meter board event. By doing both events and improving his technique it's possible he could earn 20 points this time around. That would be a huge windfall for the Vikings if he can pull it off.

Joshua Tolson (Sr.)
Meet the new diving coach. Joshua comes to Berry from UGA, where he was not a member of the dive team. However, he has been a diver for a long time, and he placed in the top 8 in Georgia state and high school meets 3 straight years. He should be a strong competitor in the conference - no idea how well he'll match up, because I haven't watched enough of the diving at the conference championships to get a gauge, but his resume would indicate he would probably be in the running for a medal on both of the events. He could end up with a large conference point total at the end of the day.

Breeze · 10-21-2022, 08:58 AM

University of Montevallo, Emmanuel College vs Berry College @ Cage Center - 10/22

Finally, the first meet of the season. Berry will be squaring off in a double dual meet against University of Montevallo and Emmanuel College. Both of these schools are D2, which will make it a tough match up for the Vikings.

Montevallo - This a relatively new team with their first season being 2019. However, they have used their ability to provide athletic scholarships well, and have fleshed out a relatively large and competitive team in a short time. I'm unsure how many swimmer are currently active on the team, but it appears that only 12 have competed so far this season, so they may be under their recent roster size.

Emmanuel - In the last few years the Lions have gone from an afterthought team, to one that ranks in the top 20 in all of D2. Not terribly surprising when you consider all the talent in the state of Georgia. In fact, this team is a perfect example of why I've been frustrated by Berry's lack of efforts on the recruiting front. If Emmanuel, a tiny school with a very unimpressive campus, in the middle of nowhere can pull the talent they've been pulling, Berry should be able to do the same. Anyway, the Lions have 20 swimmers that have competed this year, and while they have some roster fillers on the backend, they also have a several very strong swimmers.

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Bear - from his schedule of events in meet 1, it doesn't appear that he's going to start off avoiding distance. He's scheduled to swim the 200 Free, 500 Free, 200 IM, and he's in the 400 Free relay.

200 Free - early in the season last year Bear was getting just under 1:50, so if he's on or around those times he's in pretty good form for an early, in season swim. In this event Emmanuel has had 7 swimmers compete ranging from 1:46 to 2:01, while Montevollo has had 4 compete with times of 1:46, 1:51, 1:52, and 1:53. So Bear could have some good racing in this one, but likely not to win the event.

500 Free - this one is a bit harder to get a read on early in the season. Last year, in the intra-squad, Bear swam a 5:27 in this event. Then a couple of weeks later it was a 5:07. He's easily capable of going under a 5, even early in the season, but it will depend on a few items, the biggest (minus the way the shoulder feels) is likely the order of events. If the 500 is first, and he can get a good warm up in, then he could do well. If he swims the 200 free or the 200 IM first, then he'll likely be gassed enough that I wouldn't expect much on the time. Too early in the season to have the stamina to race a 500 after a long sprint race. Montevollo's 500 times are right in line with Bear's - the top guy has gone a 4:58, with the 3 remaining swimmers in the event logging around 5:15s. Emmanuel has 5 that have competed in the event so far this season and they are falling between a 4:48 and a 5:32.

200 IM - This one isn't one that Bear swims frequently. Bear has managed to break 2 minutes a couple of times, but last year he only swam it 1 time and he posted a 2:11. Given he rarely practices backstroke and almost never practices breast, I expect the 2:11 is probably going to be closer to his time. That's going to make the race a tough one for him because Montevallo hasn't done this event this season, but they do have 2 returning swimmers who did it last year and they are 1:57 and 1:58, and Emmanuel has a 1:54 guy from this season.

Free Relay - Bear's personal best in the 100 Free is a 49.29. I'm sure he wants to get to low 48s in the relay, maybe even 47s, but I don't expect him to do it this time around. This will likely be the very last event, and after swimming 3 races of 200 or more yards, I think if he can get under 50.5 he'll be doing well.

Breeze · 10-26-2022, 10:42 AM

University of Montevallo, Emmanuel College vs Berry College -Results

Well the first meet under the new coach is in the book and here are my thoughts:

Good:
- The team swam pretty well. Some very fast swims against very strong competition.
- The coach seems very nice and totally engaged with her swimmers

Bad
- The meet results were not uploaded to the App - Meet Mobile so spectators could follow along
- The scoreboard wasn't working so no one in the stands had any idea about the swimmers times (not sure why this wasn't tested before the meet)
- The meet was exceptionally long - it took about 4 hours to complete. Normal college meets take closer to 90 minutes.
- The team elected to provide 1 cool down lane (lane 1), which probably wouldn't have been an issue in a normal meet, but with 2 very large teams, plus Berry's ~50 swimmers that 1 lane was packed and worse - it churned up the water bad for swimmers in lane 2 (Bear swam all of his events from lane 2 - by the way)
- The team warmed up at 8:30 for and 11 o'clock meet, then didn't get to warm up again before the meet started, meaning the kids sat around for hours tightening up before racing.
- Some very odd selections for swimmers, heats, and events. The coach apparently relied on a team member to assist with the line ups, and it showed.

Bear - like I mentioned above, there were no official times for the meet, but I did some unofficial timing and it was pretty obvious he wasn't swimming well. In fact, his times this meet (found the results after doing some searching on the Monvevallo swim site), were very reminiscent of his times in the opening meet from last year. Hopefully, he'll build on this like he did last year and end up having a strong season.

Note: I couldn't find the final scoring for this meet anywhere.

Breeze · 10-28-2022, 11:31 AM

Sewanee Invite @ Sewanee TN - 10/28-30

A new event was added to the schedule but not listed on the swim website. This meet is going to be very similar to the one last week because the teams competing are:

- Sewanee Tigers
- Montevallo Falcons
- Emmanuel Lions
- Berry Vikings

Yep, all 3 teams from last week plus Sewanee. This time around the event will be swim over 3 days.

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Bear - It's beginning to look more and more like Bear's distance days are over. He will again not be swimming the 1000 free, and in fact this time around he won't be swimming the 500 either.

- 100 IM - this is an interesting choice because it isn't swum at conference, but it might be a good way to get him some extra back and breaststroke laps if the 400 IM is going to be part of his future events.

- 400 IM - this is looking like a strong possibility to be one of Bear's 3 conference races. He's got a lot of work to do on his off strokes to be competitive here.

- 200 Free - Hoping for an improvement over last week to show he's trending in the right direction

- 100 Fly - Bear's fly in the 200 IM last week looked great. Not sure he has sprint speed to compete in this event long term, but the 200 fly might be in his wheel house.

400 Medley Relay - Bear will swim the fly on the B relay

400 Free Relay - Bear will be on the B relay

800 Free Relay - Bear sill be on the B relay

Breeze · 10-31-2022, 08:18 AM

Sewanee Invite - Addendum

Once the meet posted on the Meet Mobile app, I realized the Sewanee Invite was larger than Bear originally led me to believe. In fact the participation included:

- Berrry
- Montevallo
- Emmanuel
- Sewanee
- Life College
- South Georgia State College
- Birmingham Southern - (divers only)
- University of the Cumberlands - (divers only)

I also made some assumptions on the events, but I'll clean that up on the post race write up.

Breeze · 11-04-2022, 07:28 AM

Sewanee Invite - RESULTS

Emmanuel - 1109
Montevallo - 728.5
Berry - 708
South Georgia - 339.5
Sewanee - 293
Life - 272

This meet was very interesting. In addition to not knowing all the teams, I was also wrong about some of the relays I indicated that Bear would be swimming. I assumed when Bear mentioned he was in the 100 Medley Relay and 100 Free Relay, he was indicating he was swimming a 100 leg in the 400 yard relay. Nope, he swam a 25 leg in a 100 yard relay. Like he used to do as a pre-teen during summer league. It was very odd. In fact, the entire first day was odd, it was a bunch of 50 yard swims that are no longer a part of any championship meet. It was probably pretty fun for the swimmers though.

Berry did a nice job, with some of their relays winning the short sprints and giving some of the bigger teams a run for their money in the longer ones. In fact, Berry held a lead on Montevallo for quite a while, but the Falcon depth finally won out.

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Bear - another pretty rough meet for Bear. His short races and relay swims were ok, but some of the others looked painful.

100 Medley Relay - B Team - Not sure of splits because they weren't kept for this race, but Bear's team was the fastest B relay in the entire meet.

100 IM - pretty good swim, fly was good, back and breast were a bit of a struggle and free looked a bit labored coming home, but he posted a 58.80 which is a personal best. However, it's not completely surprising. Last time Bear swim this event was in 2018.

100 Free Relay - B Team - again no splits on this race (probably didn't have touch pads on both ends of the pool, making 25 splits impossible). Bear looked great in his leg, and his B team was not only the fastest B team in the meet, they actually beat 2 A teams as well.

400 IM - Fly time seemed conservative, especially with how he's looked swimming that stroke recently. He split around 1 minute. The back was a 1:12, and the breast a 1:25, he needs to get those back to around 1:0 and 1:15 respectively if he's going to be competitive in this event. His free at the end was a clearly labored 1:07, when it should be sub 60 if he's in shape and feeling good. In all he posted a pedestrian 4:45.79 - good for 11th place.

200 Free - this one was just bad. Bear failed to break the 2 minute mark in this race. I believe the last time he failed to break that mark was in 2016. There wasn't much recovery time from the 400 IM to this race, and the fact Bear took the Summer off to rest his shoulder clearly appears to be impacting his stamina still and getting into shape is going to take longer than expected.

100 Fly - solid effort for end of meet race. Posted 57.74.

200 Free Relay - B Team - This came directly on the heals of the 100 fly, so Bear posting a 23.05 wasn't terrible. His PB in this event is 23.27, so he's about right where he should be with a rolling start for this time of the year.

Breeze · 11-04-2022, 11:45 AM

Berry College and Asbury College vs Centre College @ Centre College - 11/5

This could be a fun meet. Centre has improved significantly, and things were close in dual meets the last couple of years anyway. Now, the Colonels have a huge diving contingent that inflates their overall scores and will probably be the difference in this meets scoring, but even without that there should be some good races. Add in Asbury, which is a pretty large NAIA school that has finished top 10 in that division several years in a row and you can see where this should lead to some pretty good match ups.

Really struggled trying to decide if we were going to go watch. However, Danville, KY is about 6.5 hours from here, which makes it a bit cost prohibitive to go and watch a 2 hour swim meet when your son will be in the water less than 10 minutes. Plus I'm not doing at 13 hour out and back on the same day, so we'd have to get a hotel room, and we're already doing that next weekend.

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Bear

Bear was originally set to swim the 200 Free, 500 Free and 2 IM, but do to a change on the team that we'll get into later he's now swimming the following:

200 Free - Currently listed at a 1:53.53 time, which is well off his personal best time, but also well below last weekends terrible 2 minute effort. I'd like to see him under the 1:53 mark, but at the very least be around that number.

100 Free - This is the switch event, Bear was moved here to fill a void. It was a logical choice given this event needed someone and the 500 free was extremely deep with Ross, Ethan, Bear and Kevin all swimming. Ross is likely to win the event, so you don't move him. Kevin's strength is only in the distance events. That leaves Bear or Ethan, and Bear is a slightly better sprinter and Ethan is clearly swimming the distance events better.

200 IM - I think Astrid is still keeping the 400 IM as an option for Bear at conference and want him to race the medleys. I'd like to see improvement on the back and breast and hopefully and improvement on the free because he's in a little better shape than he's been the last couple of weeks.

400 Free Relay - B Team - This is also a fill in spot, as Bear wasn't scheduled to do the relay initially. It appears he's filling the same void from the 100 Free race.

Breeze · 11-10-2022, 10:27 AM

General Update

Normally, I would be updating the swimming results and the upcoming meet this weekend, but things have become very messy at Berry. I was hoping to have some clarity on what's going on before updating this thread, but I'm not sure that's going to happen. Given this thread was located last year by some of the Berry team, I'm not comfortable going into too much detail, but to provide a quick illustration of the problems - the following swimmers have quit in the last few weeks:

- Paris Thornberg
- Breck Richardson
- Emilio Rico
- Hunter Kenny
- Collin Dillard

The sad part is it's not the coach's fault. There are some swimmers on the team that aren't happy - though I suspect they will NEVER be happy (remember this is the same group that ultimately forced Coach Paul to resign at the end of the last season). Interestingly, the ones quitting are guys, but the ones complaining aren't. I'll let you figure out how that works for yourselves.

Breeze · 11-11-2022, 09:03 AM

Berry College and Asbury College vs Centre College - RESULTS

Centre - 179
Berry - 118

Asbury - 81
Berry - 191

This meet was striking in how much better the Centre swimmers seemed to finish races verses the Berry swimmers. In fact, it was so startling I'd venture to guess that Centre elected to drop taper for this meet. An odd choice but given the timing, it could work. Drop taper now, ramp up for a December invite, then get to winter training and start over to prep for conference.

I'd say it'd be fun to see how this plays out at conference, but with the significant number of men leaving the Berry team, I'm not sure we'll get to see it play out in the water.

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Bear - continues to struggle, and there are, by my estimation 3 potential issues:

- Stamina - took the entire summer off to see if he could get his shoulder to heal. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to help the shoulder at all, and now he's got to get back into shape. I'm not sure he'll accomplish it at all, but almost certainly not before winter training ends.

- Pain - the shoulder is still a problem, and the continued wear and tear may finally have caught up to him.

- Technique - because he took the entire summer off, Bear is struggling to find his form. He admitted everything feels wrong and he's having a hard time trying to dial it back in.

Taking the time off was a risk, probably one that was worth taking, but it's looking like the gamble isn't going to pay off.

Another item to keep in mind. Centre currently has a small 6 lane pool, so there was no warm up or down, which is a problem for Bear. He needs extra time to get his shoulder warmed up. Also, they had the pool extremely cold, which is odd, most competition pools are kept between 77 and 82 degrees. Centre's pool was 72 (thermometer was in the pool). This made it very difficult to warm up - and in fact, it was so cold most swimmers didn't even want to get in the water to warm up during the short periods that warm up times were offered.

200 Free - Swam a 1:54. Opened with a 54, which isn't terrible, but coming home in over 60 seconds isn't good.

200 Fly - quick turn around from the 200 free, and Bear only managed to go 2:15. Fatigue was clearly an issue here.

100 Free - posted 53.50, around 2 seconds off where he probably wants to be, but it was another pretty quick turn around so fatigue is again a factor.

400 Free Relay - B Team - here Bear swam pretty well for in season. he posted a 50.90, the second fastest time on the B relay, only .5 behind Ross. This swim was much later in the meet, so Bear was able to adequately recover. Hopefully, this is a sign that with adequate recovery time he can still swim fast.

Breeze · 11-11-2022, 01:51 PM

Berry vs. Sewanee @ Sewanee TN - 11/12

Berry has what I believe is a dual meet tomorrow at Sewanee. We are planning on making the trip to watch. We debated not going given the current unrest on the team, but figured we are running out of chances to watch Bear swim, so we're going.

I have no idea what Bear will compete in at this point, and in the grand scheme of things, it's not that important. I'll provide details in the follow up. It will be interesting to see what shuffling the coach does offset the recent losses.

Breeze · 11-15-2022, 08:28 AM

Berry vs. Sewanee - RESULTS

Berry - 182
Sewanee - 80

It was a nice trip up to Sewanee, Tennessee. The campus was very nice, similar architecture to the Rhodes campus, but much more spread out. It was also very cold, with a high of 37 degrees, a surprising 10 degrees cooler than Chattanooga, which was not far down the highway. The almost 2000 feet of altitude probably had something to do with that.

The team seemed to adjust ok to the loss of several swimmers. With a few posting some very fast times in unusual events.

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Bear - unfortunately, Bear is still struggling, and at this point I'm not sure he's going to recover. He's way off where he needs to be at this point in the season to position himself for a good conference championship meet. It's looking more and more like the shoulders are just completely shot, at least for anything more than a sprint.

400 Medley Relay - B Team - Bear swam the free leg at the end of the relay. When he dove in, he was about half a second behind Sewanee, but by the end of the first 50 he had taken the lead, and he pulled away to secure second place in the meet. Bear split a respectable 50.61.

200 Free - Once again Bear struggled in this event, and at this point he's about 10 seconds off where he needs to be at this point in the season. Maybe he'll respond for the December mid-season taper event, fingers crossed.

200 Free Relay - A Team - Bear lead off the relay and posted a personal best time of 23.13, a nice little reward, especially in this tough season. I know he wants to get sub 23, but in season, no taper, that's a good swim.

1000 Free - I know, given Bear's struggles why is he swimming the 1000? Well, he actually requested it. I believe this was a test to see what it would feel like to do this race, so he'd have information to decide how he wanted to handle the remainder of the season. Unsurprisingly, he didn't swim well, but what's more important is how he felt doing it and how he felt afterwards. I can't answer those questions because he's not volunteering any information on what's going on. I guess we'll know more based on what events he swims moving forward.

Breeze · 11-29-2022, 01:00 PM

General Update

A lot has transpired since the last general update so I figured I needed to update the thread.

Meeting with the AD
The swimmers and coach met with the AD recently to air their issues and following that meeting the parents were invited to a discussion to outline how things were going to work moving forward. Basically, it came down to improving communication between the swimmers and the coach, while also requiring the swimmers to hold each other more accountable.

While this all seems pretty standard, are some issues that are making this harder than it should be. For instance, the coach has no assistant. Basically the GA coach left a year early, and the program is for a 2 year stint. Meaning no one is looking to jump into that roll for just 1 year. They would rather wait until next year, so they can have the full 2 year option.

Moreover, for some reason the coach never named captains. I'm not sure the logic behind this, especially given the lack of an assistant, but that's the way it was prior to this meeting.

While all of this sounds good, there are indications that some of the problem children are still griping.

Captains Announced
Following the meeting the coach named a men's and women's captain for the Sr. Jr., and Soph. classes. Bear was named the senior men's captain.

No Winter Training Trip
Because the former coach used to borrow against next year's budget to go on the winter training trip, the new coach inherited a deficit on day 1. The school has decided this is the year to correct that practice and as such - will not allow the team to take a travel trip for training purposes around the new year. Therefore, the team will be training at the school. A seriously unfortunate outcome for Bear's senior year.

The lack of a winter training trip may not be the only thing that the swimmers end up without. There is a possibility that the school won't be purchasing team competition suits for the conference meet. Not an insignificant thing considering how much it costs to purchase these suits.

Bear's No Longer Doing Distance
The biggest news to update is the fact that Bear will officially no longer be a part of the distance group. After struggling with mid and long distance events this season, he and the coach had a long discussion. They determined that his shoulders just can't handle the workload anymore, and that he needs to shift his focus to sprints in hopes of getting his times down before conference. It currently looks like he'll be focusing on the 50, 100, and 200 Frees, and the 100 and 200 Flys.

Breeze · 12-01-2022, 07:09 AM

SCAD Invite @ Chatham County Aquatic Center - 12/1-3

Last year Berry participated in this event with about 7 other teams, most of them very small ones, like South Georgia, Thomas, Point, Brenau, and Life. The one major exception to that was Emory that brought their B team, which was still by far the largest and fastest in the pool. This year most of the above mentioned teams are back, but the meet will also feature Wingate, and top 5 D2 school, with a very large roster.

This event is a preliim/finals meet, and last year it appeared short races brought back 24 and longer races brought back 16. In the past, when this event was larger every event brought back 24, we'll see what happens this time around.

This is a taper meet, so hopefully the rest helps Bear and he's able to swim fast.

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Bear - as I mentioned above, Bear is finished with distance so this will be his first sprint event since adjusting his training to sprint only. I'm hopefully, he'll pop a few good times. As far as where he'll finish...it'll be tough to make finals against this group of swimmers, especially in sprints.

50 Free - got a personal best in the relay during the last meet. Says he's beaten that time in practice. I know he wants to get in the 22s here. If they bring back 24 and Bear can get mid 22s, he might have a shot at finals - but I don't expect him to make it back. He's currently seeded mid-30s and there are over 24 swimmers going 22 low or better.

100 Fly - his form in fly has been very good recently, but the speed hasn't been there. Not sure why - could be as simple as he doesn't practice it enough. He hasn't commented on the impact it has on his shoulder, but I hope it doesn't hinder him in this and the 200 fly moving forward. Again, he's not likely to return. He's seeded mid-30s again, so quite a few swimmers to jump to make the top 24.

100 Free - personal bests at practice in the 50 free, bode well for a potentially good swim here too. He ultimately wants to get into the 47s, I don't think he'll be close to that here. Even with a taper that would be a huge drop, especially considering he hasn't be training sprint for that long. He's again seeded mid 30s, so he'll need a big time drop to leap enough swimmers to make top 24.

Breeze · 12-06-2022, 08:15 AM

SCAD Invite - RESULTS

Wingate - 1278.5
Emory (B team) - 909.5
SCAD - 447
Lynn - 376
Berry - 229
Life - 132
Ave Maria - 80
Point - 69

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Bear - one nice thing about Bear moving to sprints is that he gets to race in events he hasn't focused on or swum in a very long time.

Day 1

50 Free - came in with a PB time from the previous meet of 23.13, but he managed to drop .72 seconds and finish in 22.41. That was good enough to move him up to 29th overall, jumping 7 swimmers with faster seed times. He was a bit disappointed because he said he was sloppy, but given this was the first time he raced the 50 since switching his focus, I think some sloppiness is expected. I hope he can clean it up and get under 22.

This also sets up an interesting dynamic. With Hunter Kenny quitting the team, the final spot on the A sprint free relays is up for grabs. Alex was a clear front runner for that final spot, but now Bear and Alex are a eyelash apart on times. In this race Bear beat Alex by .12 seconds. This will be fun to watch moving forward.

Day 2

800 Free Relay - Bear led off the A relay. He posted a 1:48.84 time, which is only .4 off of his time in this same event last year. Hopefully, this is a sign that the 200 free is still in play for conference. Also, I hope this means Bear's times are still good enough for him to be on the A-team for the relay at conference.

100 Fly - Bear's seed time was a 57.74, which is way off his personal best of 53.33, which he swam in 2020 before joining Berry. In prelims, he posted a 53.76, just off his personal best, and good enough to climb from 35th to 19th, which put him in the C final.

In the finals, Bear swam a 53.78, only .02 off his morning swim. This time kept him in 19th, but it was a tight race, with Bear only .3 behind 17th place, .03 behind 18th, .01 ahead of 20th, and .05 ahead of 21st.

400 Medley Relay - Bear competed on the B relay in the fly leg, and he swam a 53.27 split. In line with his times from the 100 fly above, given the .5 improvement he either had a fantastic start or swam slightly faster, either option is really good.

Day 3

100 Free - Came into this event with a 53.50 time, seeded 32nd. His personal best coming into this event was a 49.29, from the same meet where he posted his PB in the 100 fly. Here he went 50.05 in prelims and moved up to 23rd, and earning a spot in the C final.

During the finals swim later that afternoon, he managed to improve his time to a 49.44, just .15 off his PB. Here Bear was .23 behind Alex. The final spot for the 100 sprint relay is a bit more up in the air, as Ross, Ethan and others could potentially slot into that 4th position, but if Bear wants a shot at the A relay he'll have to beat Alex.

400 Free Relay - Bear led off the B relay, and posted a 49.84, again, right in line with his race just 10 minutes earlier. His cold start time was right in line with the other 3 swimmers who all benefited from the rolling relay start.

Breeze · 01-04-2023, 06:52 AM

General Update

Bear headed back to campus on New Years Eve and they started their winter training on campus 1/1. The good new was the lack of travel allowed him to stay home a couple of extra days, which was nice. The bad news is - it's a pretty boring location for winter training, and I really feel for him. Before Covid the team would go to Puerto Rico every 4 years so each graduating class would have 1 year to go there for winter training. Now things have devolved to the point they don't even leave campus. I know that Bear won't be a part of the team next year, but I do hope once they get the budget for the team back in line that they at least go back to Florida next year.

Breeze · 01-11-2023, 06:51 AM

General Update

We head over to Rome this weekend for the first post winter training meet, but we found out some really unfortunate news for the team. As you're probably aware winter training is the most rigorous part of the season for college swimmers. There are no meets and the team ramps up the effort significantly to get in peak shape before the conference championship. Well, half of the Berry team has the flu. Apparently, one of the guys got sick right before coming back, gave it to his girlfriend (also a swimmer), who got sick during the winter training, and gave it to everyone else. This basically undoes all the hard work, as the swimmers have to rest to get well.

So far Bear hasn't gotten sick - saying my prayers that continues.

Man what a lousy final season Bear has had to deal with.

Breeze · 01-11-2023, 06:51 AM

General Update

Double post, not sure why, but I'll use this to preview the meet this weekend...

Breeze · 01-13-2023, 06:51 AM

The Viking Classic @ Cage Center - 1/14

Berry's first post winter training meet is tomorrow. It was originally schedule to be a multi-day meet, but was cut back to just Saturday, but it will still be 2 sessions - 10 AM and I'm guessing 3 or 4 PM. Unfortunately, I currently have no idea who's attending the meet. I can't find anything posted on the school website, on the phone app that posts results, and Bear doesn't call to check in frequently, so he hasn't provided us any details (he did let us know in time not to come yesterday because the meet schedule changed, which was nice).

I'll provide details as soon as I get them.

Breeze · 01-19-2023, 09:31 AM

The Viking Classic - RESULTS

Well, I've been waiting and searching for the official results from this meet, but ultimately I had to go to one of the competitors sites to actually find them. SMH

The meet, on the men's side ended up being:

Berry College Vikings
Point University Sky Hawks
Life University Running Eagles

Note: On the women's side Brenau University also competed

Berry pretty much dominated this event. The final scores aren't contained in the official results, but just through sheer numbers Berry's larger team overwhelmed the scoring.

Bear - this was Bear's senior recognition meet - the last home meet of his swimming career. The team did the classic "walk out" with the parents. It was a nice moment, not particularly well organized, but nice. I don't think we even knew they were doing a senior recognition until the day before at around 10:30 P.M. (that should pretty well illustrate the lack of organization).

The coach was very sweet, she loves Bear and wanted to make sure we knew it. She also didn't want to put any pressure on the seniors so most swam their off events. Which for Bear meant breaststroke.

400 Medley Relay - Bear was the breaststroke leg in this event, and it was the best looking Breast he's swum since he was around 14. He managed to go a 1:05.86, which even with the rolling start removed would destroy his personal best. He also wasn't the slowest breast split of the 5 relay teams, as his time was a fraction faster than Life's swimmer. Unfortunately, while he had a good breast time, the team doing off strokes resulted in a 5th place finish, which under the circumstances was completely expected.

50 Free - Bear swam a 23.41, which is a nice swim coming out of winter training. He's about 1 second off his personal best, so with a taper hopefully he's looking at being around a 21 high or 22 low. He also beat Alex Bartik, his teammate and potentially a challenger for the A relay at conference, by .07 seconds.

50 Fly - a personal best time 25.39, but don't get too excited, his previous best occurred when he was 12. This isn't an event that is typically raced at college meets, and even when they were in the past, with Bear being distance, short sprints were not in the cards. This time Alex beat Bear by .03 seconds.

200 Medley Relay - this time Bear got to swim Back...pretty sure he was less enthusiastic about doing this than doing the Breast in the other medley relay. He did manage to post a personal best time of 27.22, and because the back leg leads off the relay it's an official time. However, like the fly above, don't get too excited about the PB, he was 10 when he set his previous best. His back was good enough to be 2nd of the 5 swimmers in the event. The team ultimately finished 2nd in the race.

100 Free - pretty good swim from Bear, 51.36. He swam the first heat, and didn't really have anyone to race. His time was good enough for 4th overall, with free sprint specialist teammates Harrison and Noah both finishing above him.

100 IM - I'm not sure the results here are correct. They show Bear swimming a 59.63, I thought he post a faster time than that. I could be remembering incorrectly, but for all intents and purposes it's irrelevant, this event isn't contested at championship meets. It was just a fun one for him to swim.

800 Free Relay - Bear was part of the B relay and the 3rd swimmer in the lineup. He went off in second place .6 seconds behind his good friend Billy. At the 100 flip Bear was trailing by .78. At the 150 Bear cut the lead to .17, and at the final touch of the leg, Bear had a lead of .08. He split 1:52.37. Unfortunately, the final swimmer on the B relay was Diego - and he was seriously outclassed, so they ended up in last place in the race.

Breeze · 01-27-2023, 09:24 AM

Bauerle Visits Swim Practice

Retired UGA and US Swim Coach Comes to Cage Center

MOUNT BERRY, Ga. - It's not every day that one of the greatest coaches in the history of a sport comes to Berry College for a practice. Yet today, one of the most decorated coaches in the history of NCAA and USA Swimming came to The Cage Center as Jack Bauerle joined Berry head swim and dive coach Astrid Escobar on the pool deck for practice.

"It was an honor to be here. It's nice to be asked to come," Bauerle said as the Thursday practice was coming to an end. "I have so much respect for Astrid. She came and worked our camp a few years ago, and she just stuck out. I knew she was going to be a heck of a coach. The athletes were great and willing to learn, but that's also a reflection on Astrid and the kind of coach that she is."

Bauerle is someone that has earned deep respect from people across all levels of swimming. The Philadelphia, Penn., native spent over 50 years with the University of Georgia swim and dive program, spending his first season as a varsity swimmer in the 1971-72 campaign. He would take over women's coaching duties in 1979 and men's coaching duties in 1983. The longest-tenured coach in UGA history, 62 of Bauerle's athletes won a total of 175 National Championships. Chosen to lead the 2008 US women's swimming team at the Olympics in Beijing, Bauerle coached the American side to 14 medals, the most of any country at that Olympics. His time as an assistant coach with Team USA dates back to 2000.

"It's hard to truly capture with words what a truly remarkable experience it was having Jack on deck," said Coach Escobar. "You're talking about a man whose name is synonymous with the sport of swimming; he is someone who has regularly led athletes and teams to the pinnacle of success in our sport."

Bauerle's time on campus featured a meet-and-greet with members of the Berry swim team and Berry athletic department members, including athletic director Angel Mason and senior woman administrator Ginger Swann. Other Berry notables from outside of athletics, such as President Stephen Briggs and Director of Admissions Glenn Getchell stopped by to visit with the legendary coach.

But the real fun for everyone began at the start of practice. Bauerle spoke to the team for about 25 minutes, giving them words of guidance and encouragement as they prepare for the Southern Athletic Association Championships in mid-February, then beyond into the rest of their careers both in and out of the pool. After that, with Escobar by his side, Bauerle helped to run drills with the team, giving advice individually and as a group to the BC teams. An afternoon that was planned to be a pep talk and maybe a drill then turned into a legendary coach getting back into the arena and slipping into full coach mode.

"It felt great, because I really didn't think I was going to do it. I didn't even think about it, and next thing I know, that's what was happening," Bauerle said. "I guess in a sense, I've missed it. I missed being with the kids. They always want to get better, and it was fun. I just thought I was going to talk with the team a little and be with Angel and be with Astrid, but the next thing you know, it's what it was. I hope it was as much fun for them as it was for me."

It was a surreal moment for many members of the Berry swim teams, but those feelings were somewhat put at ease by Bauerle's demeanor. "I really liked him," said freshman Ella Quigley. "It was kind of intimidating to see all the stuff he has accomplished, but he is really humble too. He is really proud of all of the swimmers he's helped along the way, and he seemed really excited about helping us as well."

"It was interesting to see how quickly he saw details in our strokes," said junior Diego Torres. "It was interesting to see how fast he came up with the sets. He gave us good tips inbetween to improve our swimming and recover faster."

"He's a swim legend, so it was really cool to see him out there trying to give us some pointers," said senior Paxton Smathers. "It's very motivating to get back to practice."

Both Coach Escobar and Bauerle wanted to make an opportunity like this happen for the BC squads. Soon after Escobar took the head coaching position, Bauerle offered to come up some time. In November, Escobar called to try to take the living legend up on the offer. The timing enabled the two to make it happen at this stage in the season.

"Jack's a swim wizard, but he's so much more than that," Escobar stated. "As a young coach, it was so humbling to have a living legend spend the day working with me and my program just because he could. That altruistic spirit is rare and it is inspiring."

While it's a first-year head coach at the helm of the Berry program, Bauerle knows bright days are ahead with Escobar leading the ship. "What she's doing is great," Bauerle said. "It's going to take a while and it does take a while, but anything that's worthwhile does. Just watching and meeting with some of the administration, I know she's in good hands. She knows her stuff, and she's always willing to ask. She's a really good coach in that way, and she puts herself around people that she trusts."

In order to stay compliant with NCAA rules and regulations regarding practices, Bauerle signed the necessary paperwork to be classified as a volunteer assistant coach for the Berry swim and dive programs. While he won't show up on the team's roster or coaching pages, and this designation would probably show up about 2,000 pages into his career resume, the experience that Bauerle gave to the Berry program is something that can't be quantified or measured. "It's so much more than having an Olympic coach providing feedback to a group of athletes for a day," Escobar said. "Today was a moment for my team to witness that success comes by lifting up, championing, and investing in others. I'm so grateful that Jack came up here and gave his time to our program."

Breeze · 01-27-2023, 09:41 AM

BSC Quad Meet @ Birmingham Crossplex - 1/28

This meet will have BSC hosting Sewanee, SCAD and Berry. It should be a nice tune up for the conference championship in a couple of week.

This will be the final regular season swim of Bear's career. I'm not yet sure what he'll be competing in, but I'll update if I find out before the meet.

Breeze · 01-27-2023, 10:10 AM

General Update

An interesting situation has come to light. Apparently, Birmingham Southern is on the verge of bankruptcy. In fact, they could be shutting their doors at the end of the semester.

“Birmingham-Southern has been operating in financial distress for over a decade. Without support, it will not be able to continue to operate after May 2023.”

The school is apparently seeking $30 million in state funding for the private college - $12.5 million from funds provided by the American Rescue Plan Act and $17.5 million from the Education Trust Fund. In addition, they have also petitioned the city of Birmingham for $5 million and $2.5 million from Jefferson County.

Unfortunately, it looks like the City and County have rejected the schools request.

Obviously, this has wide ranging ramifications, but given this journal is about swimming I thought I'd point out a few interesting tidbits.

- As I'm sure you've gathered from the last few years BSC has been the dominating swim team in conference forever. Them shutting down would dramatically shake things up

- BSC, historically, is the largest team in the conference, so there will be quite a few swimmers looking for new teams

- One problem the potentially disassociated BSC swimmers could run into is cost - BSC is by far the least expensive college in the SAA conference.

If BSC does shut their doors, it will be interesting to follow the impact on all the SAA sports. I'd assume a considerable amount of the relocations would be inside the conference, as most of the schools are close geographically and skill wise the athletes have already proven they can compete at this level.

Bear won't be around to see the impact, but I'll casually keep an eye on it, as this is an unusual circumstance that for me is worth watching.

ntndeacon · 01-27-2023, 10:54 AM

BSC will have issues at the state level as well. The HBCUs seem to be against the state giving money, as when they ask for addition funds for their schools ( like a million or 2) is is usually denied. The idea of giving 50 million or so to BSC sticks in some craws.

Breeze · 01-31-2023, 07:48 AM

BSC Quad Meet - RESULTS

I can't find the final scores of the event posted anywhere.

Bear

200 Medley Relay- A team - Shockingly, Bear swam the breast on the A relay again. This seemed extremely odd, to the point I was trying to determine why that might be the case. Is the coach having him race breast because she's going to swim him in the IM at conference? This seemed logical, especially given his improvement in the stroke from this meet and the last. Bear managed to spit in under 30 seconds for his 50, coming in at 29.49. The B relay had Andrew Horn swimming the breast, and that's his best stroke. He split a 28.73, so Bear was only about half a body length behind based on time. The team finished 4th jn a time of 1:37.63. SCAD took 1st and 2nd, and BSC finished 3rd only .57 seconds ahead of Berry.

100 Free - Bear was able to JUST get under 50 seconds posting a 49.99, which put him 6th, but, and this is a big but - 3 of the 5 in front of him were SCAD swimmers. The other two were Jakob Icimsoy, who you may recall was one of the top swimmers at the conference meet last year, and teammate Harrison McNeil, who is a free sprinter. Here is the interesting part - Jakob was only .74 faster than Bear and Harrison beat him by .56. That puts Bear in pretty good company.

200 Free Relay - A team - The Berry team won this relay. Bear swam the 3rd leg and clocked in a 22.38. The other swimmers Ross (22.79 with a cold start), Sam Tate (21.04), and Noah Brand (20.28). In addition, no one on the B relay outswam Bear, and even Alex with a cold start tie of 23.11 is still slightly behind Bear even allowing the maximum .7 for a rolling start. Hopefully, this means Bear will be on the A relay at conference.

Breeze · 02-01-2023, 07:12 AM

Conference Championship Update

As I'm sure you recall from an earlier post, the Berry swim team basically had no budget for the '22-'23 season. This lack of funding forced the team to train at the school over the Christmas break rather than travel to Florida. It also means that the swimmers won't be getting the typical SWAG heading into conference.

At the winter break the team did receive a swim suit, which they will use for warm ups, as the suits aren't designed for competition. They also received a long sleeve t-shirt. This is a pretty small offering, but at least it's something. The kids will also get a competition suit for the meet, but the parents are chipping in a large portion of that cost.

Finally, the team mother typically coordinates getting something else for the swimmers that is conference related. Last year, they got really great wind breakers. Given there was basically no budget for this, the parents had indicated they would pitch in so the kids could get something. Unfortunately, the initial team mom, was Hunter's and he quit the team, then the next mom that stepped up, dropped the ball. In fact, we are concerned that she may have dropped the ball so significantly that the kids might have issues just having snacks on hand during the meet.

When we finally were forwarded the email from the team mom (as we weren't originally copied on it for some reason), the wife and I decided to see if we could get something done for the team. Cathy has a friend who is big into making T-shirts, embroidery, glass etching, etc., so we asked her to help. Since we are purchasing stuff for about 50 people, and having to get them updated to represent Berry, we were faced with 4 issues.

First, what should we get? They have a new long sleeve T-shirt. They got a windbreaker last year. We wanted to come up with something useful and different, but that leads to problem number 2...

Second issue is cost. 50 of anything can get pretty expensive. So what can we buy?

Our third issue was branding. We were initially planning to just do block lettering or some general pattern to note the school on the SWAG, but if we do it, Berry wants to maintain their branding. I get it, they've paid a bunch of money and worked hard to build the brand (and it is a great logo), but that makes our 4th issue worse...

Finally, we are dealing with a very tight window to get anything done. Given the meet starts on 2/8, we have less than a week to get the stuff, get the branding approved, brand it, and get it to the kids before the start of the meet.

Ultimately, what we elected to do was stocking caps. We have purchased 50 gray stocking caps and the plan currently was to sew on a Berry patch with the B that's used on their football helmet. We are still waiting on approval of that design and the receipt of the patches (looks like I might be making a trip over and back to pick them up if this is how we end up going). I know it's not much, but at least it's something, and it is something that swimmers will wear on the pool deck.

In addition, to the money we've spent on the swim caps, given that this is Bear's final season, we wanted to give the seniors something as well. They will be receiving the oar with their name on it (a standard gift for the last few years, which goes with the Berry "we all row" tag line). However, the seniors would typically also receive some SWAG that noted Berry Alumni. For this gift we got gray towels and will be embroidering the Berry Alumni on it (we hope - as we still have the Berry approval and time limitations. But hey we already bought the towels).

Will keep you updated on our progress.

JonInMiddleGA · 02-02-2023, 02:00 AM

re: the Bauerle visit

Just a random aside here, my kid went to HS with his kid

Mine is well-documented here lol but his went on to be the regular punter & holder for Ga Southern in 2018. He remained on the team as the backup for the next two years despite losing the starting job.

Was an all-state punter & tennis player, all-region soccer defender but afaik never swam.

03-02-2022, 07:50 AM	#1451
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	SAA Conference Championships - Final Scores Code: Gold Slv Brz Score Points 1 BSC 8 8 6 812 614.2 2 Rhodes 7 3 2 694 551.4 3 Berry 1 5 6 675 569.0 4 Centre 1 4 3 592 556.4 5 Hendrix – – 3 389 473.8 6 Sewanee – – – 269 466.9 7 Millsaps 3 – – 196 451.1 As you can see Birmingham Southern dominated the meet, winning by over 100 points, and taking 22 medals. The interesting thing above is Rhodes. While they won 7 gold medals and finished 2nd, their points for their average swim was lower than Berry's. That's where the depth of the Berry lineup comes into play. Add in the fact that Berry lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 points due to the injuries to Noah and Emilio and that gap should have been wider. Berry will have 1 last chance, next year, with their strong swimmers to push for a conference championship, but they will need to have a good recruiting class and so far that's not looking promising. Fingers crossed that the Vikings can find 3 more strong swimmer/divers to add to the roster before next season. Note: The Points column in the table above is the collegeswimming.com swim score that I referenced earlier when breaking down the teams coming into this event. The number is determined based on a preset time for each event, and then a swimmer's result is measured against that standard and a score is derived. Last edited by Breeze : 03-02-2022 at 08:10 AM.

03-03-2022, 08:55 AM	#1452
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	SAA Conference Championships - Post Meet Info It was a good meet for the team, and an especially good meet for the last 2 recruiting classes. The Sophomores had Ross scoring 54 points, Bear and Hunter were in the low 40s, Ryan got 37 and Harrison got 27. The Freshman, Sam, with 3 bronze individual medals got 48 points, Ethan got 42, Billy got 29.5, Breck got 28, Andrew got 20, and Emilio Rico was in line to get around 30 pre-injury. Here is a breakdown of the full scoring, and it also includes the medal breakdown and swim score points for each swimmer. Code: Swimmers (16) Name Gold Slvr Bronze Score Pts 1 Ross Valdez 1 2 – 54 707.0 2 Samuel Tate – – 3 48 628.8 3 Hunter Kenny – – 1 43 578.6 4 Ethan Whiting – – – 42 626.0 5 Bear Breeze – – – 41 640.3 6 Ryan MacKinnon – – – 37 583.3 7 William Blood – – – 30 537.3 8 Carter Richards – – – 28 508.3 9 Harrison McNeil – – – 27 569.5 10 T Stephenson – – – 24 523.6 11 Andrew Horn – – – 20 512.6 12 Alex Bartik – – – 15 544.1 13 Paxton Smathers – – – 11 529.0 14 Riley Croker – – – 10 482.2 15 Diego Torres – – – 4 345.0 16 Emilio Rico – – – 1 545.7 Last edited by Breeze : 03-03-2022 at 08:55 AM.

03-08-2022, 09:19 AM	#1455
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	SAA Conference Championship - Scoring Review Here is a breakdown of the scoring by class: Code: Team BSC Rhodes Centre Hendrix Sewanee Mill Berry Seniors 108 128.5 140 26 50 60 34 Juniors 271 0 54 76 2 0 80 Sophomores 58 116 83 0 46.5 16 152 Freshman 104.5 170 107 101 18 0 168.5 Returning 433.5 286 244 177 66.5 16 400.5 Again, keep in mind the 400.5 returning points for Berry doesn't include the approximately 80 points that would have been provided by Noah and Emilio if they had been healthy. Last edited by Breeze : 03-08-2022 at 09:19 AM.

03-28-2022, 06:55 AM	#1458
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Berry - General Update The second tidbit of information is: About 2 weeks after the conference championship we received an email from Coach Flinchbaugh announcing his decision to step down as the Berry swim coach. This was a complete shock as Flinchbaugh started the Berry program in 2008. We aren't sure of what prompted his decision, and knowing that this thread has now been located online, I don't want to speculate, but I do know this was a tough season for him. The feeling around the team was that he would coach for a few more years before retirement, but coming into this season there were no indications this was a possibility. Coach Flinchbaugh was selected as the SAA's Coach of the Year for the men's team in 2015-16 season, the 2019-20 season, and again in the Covid year of '20-'21. He also won the honor for the women's team in 2017-18. He has coached well over 100 combined SAA All-Conference swimmers and over 200 SAA Academic Honor Roll honorees. The team has announced they are starting a nationwide search for his replacement. We mentioned the opening to Bear's former club coach Andy Eaton, who's been bouncing around the college ranks now for several years building a resume. He was intrigued a bit, but it's not really what he wants so we don't expect he'll apply. I doubt we will know anything before the announcement of the new coach, but if I hear anything I'll be sure to add it. Last edited by Breeze : 03-28-2022 at 07:22 AM.

03-30-2022, 08:12 AM	#1459
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Bear - Academic Update The final tidbit of information involves Bear's academics. Last week Bear registered for his Fall and Spring '23 classes. When he finished he realized he only had 6 hours remaining that were required before graduation. During high school Bear took numerous AP classes, and he did dual enrollment during his senior year, so when he enrolled at Berry he was basically a Sophomore. To try and extend his time on campus and allow him to get all 4 years swimming he decided to take minimum hours and to double major (Biology and Bio-Chemistry). However, because he now has some interest in potentially going to medical school, he's recently increased his rigor to show he's capable of taking a full schedule. Having only 6 hours needed before graduation for an entire senior year, caused some soul searching on Bear's part, and the realization hit him hard. We listened as we worked his way through several options that might allow him that final 4th year of competition, but the obvious result was too much to overcome. It makes no sense to try and find filler classes to meet the 12 hours needed to retain his scholarship. Now the plan is for him to take 1 of the 2 additional classes over the Summer and other as part of his upcoming Fall or Spring semester, meaning he will be graduating at this time next year. That also means this will be final year of his swimming and the final year of this blog. I've known from the start this could potentially occur. However, even with that knowledge, there is a small part of me that is disappointed this will likely be the last year I get to watch any of my kids swim. Last edited by Breeze : 03-30-2022 at 11:01 AM.

03-22-2022, 07:08 AM	#1456
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Berry - General Update Quite a few things going on at Berry. I've got to get my thoughts around the best way to present the information. Plus working on a post season write up, just busy at the office right now, which is delaying the post. Hope to have something soon.

03-25-2022, 10:57 AM	#1457
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Berry - General Update The first tidbit of information is: Almost immediately following the conference championship GA coach Shelby Hall resigned effective immediately. This was her 1st year of a 2 year stint and she quit without even a 2 week notice. It was shocking that it went down the way it did, however, it was not terribly surprising that she didn't return.

04-13-2022, 07:05 AM	#1460
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Bear - Injury Update. Bear recently finished up his shoulder PT, and the therapist and the swim team trainer both expected him to much better off than he currently is. They have suggested that he schedule an MRI to get it looked at. While this is the last thing I wanted to hear headed into his final year, it's also not terribly surprising. Bear is currently working with the school to get this scheduled, but honestly, I'm not sure what he's going to do with the information. We all know from baseball that rotator cuff surgeries take about a year to fully heal, which would prevent Bear from competing in his final season. We'll see where this goes, fingers crossed they find something small that is fixable and will allow him to be ready to hit the water in September.

04-20-2022, 09:24 AM	#1461
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Bear - Injury Update Bear met with the doctor about his shoulder and the doctor wants to proceed with the MRI. He's concerned that Bear may have a torn labrum. Waiting on the date of the procedure. Will update when I know more.

04-21-2022, 07:15 AM	#1462
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Bear - Injury Update Bear's last exam is 5/3, but unfortunately his MRI is 5/5 so he'll be delayed coming home for a couple of days.

05-03-2022, 10:32 AM	#1463
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Got an interesting letter in the mail yesterday from the insurance company. They sent us approval for Bailey to have an MRI, which is great, but it's Bear that is getting the procedure done. That created a frantic call last night trying to get that corrected so insurance would cover the scan today. After about 90 minutes on the phone, they finally gave us a new confirmation number that we relayed to Bear. Always great when the insurance company screws up the orders then tells you if it isn't corrected they won't cover the cost of the scan.

05-06-2022, 07:21 AM	#1464
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Bear - Injury Update Bear got his MRI results yesterday. Turns out he has a small tear in his labrum, but it's not serious enough to require surgery. The doctor also told him his labrum has basically been smashed flat, which means his shoulder joint is bigger than it should be. He will continue to do physical therapy for a while trying to strengthen up the whole shoulder to counteract the over developed areas from the overhand freestyle motion.

06-09-2022, 01:58 PM	#1465
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Escobar Named New Swim and Dive Head Coach MOUNT BERRY, Ga. - With a wide knowledge of the sport and of the Southern Athletic Association, Astrid Escobar has been named the new Head Coach of Berry's Men's and Women's Swim and Dive programs. The announcement was made by Berry Director of Athletics Dr. Angel Mason this afternoon. "Astrid is a tremendous young coach with a passion for swimming that is matched by few," said Dr. Mason. "She is someone I believe will have a positive impact on our swim and dive student-athletes experience and on the athletic department in general." "I'm excited for the opportunity to join such a supportive and engaged community," said Escobar. "I am thankful to everyone involved in the hiring process, including the hiring committee, the swim and dive teams, Berry President Dr. Stephen Briggs, Debbie Heida, and Dr. Mason." In 2021-22, Escobar was an assistant coach at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minn. Helping the program transition from Division III to Division I, Escobar helped a pair of Tommies to All-Summit League status, with Will Goldman and Grace Urkiel each setting school D-I records in the 100-Yard breaststroke on the men's and women's side, respectively. Prior to arriving at the University of St. Thomas, Escobar served as Head Coach of Men's and Women's Swimming & Diving at State University of New York at Fredonia from 2019 to 2021. In her first season with the Blue Devils, two individuals and one relay earned All-SUNYAC honors at the conference championship meet and four school records were broken. A total of 14 athletes were named to the SUNYAC Commissioner's Academic Honor Roll for the 2019-20 academic year and both the men's and women's team captured the College Swimming & Diving Coaches Association of America All-America award for the 2020 spring semester. In the 2018-19 season, Escobar was an interim assistant coach at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. While there, she helped the men's 200-yard freestyle relay team to D-III All-America status. The men's and women's teams combined to set eight school records during the season. Escobar began her collegiate coaching career at Hamilton College, serving as an assistant coach for two seasons and as the interim head coach for a season. The new Berry head coach has spent time coaching at numerous camps across the country, including the University of Georgia's Bauerle Bulldog Swim Camp, Harvard's Technique Academy, and Kenyon's Total Performance Swim Camp. A 2014 graduate of The University of the South, Escobar was a three-time NCAA Division III All-America in the breaststroke and an 11-time conference champion - three in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference and eight in the Southern Athletic Association. She set Sewanee's school and pool records in the 100- and 200-yard breaststroke events and was a member of both school-record setting 200- and 400-yard medley relay teams. Escobar was the 2014 Sewanee Senior Athlete of the Year, the 2014 Evelyn J. Mooney Award winner as the top senior female athlete, the Bishop Juhan Award winner for excellence in swimming, and a Vice Chancellor's Scholar for Scholarship and Leadership. Escobar still holds the Berry pool record for the 200-yard breaststroke, set in 2011 at 2:25.60 "I'm so grateful to my parents and life mentors that have modeled and instilled the values in me that align with those of Berry College to prepare me for this new and exciting chapter of my life," Escobar said. Escobar will begin her post on July 1, 2022.

06-10-2022, 11:18 AM	#1466
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	A quick follow up to the announcement of a new coach. Prior to Bear returning home for the Summer, he was aware that there were apparently 2 people in the running for the position, this lady and an older guy. For a long time, there was no word on what was happening, and he wasn't even sure if things were proceeding or if the Athletic Director was attempting to find additional candidates. However, of the two people that were up for the job, this was the one that the team captains preferred. Apparently, one of the captains on the team reached out to some of her former swimmers to find out what they thought of her, and they all expressed the fact that she was great to swim for. That she kept things fun, which in swimming isn't really an easy thing to do. We'll see how this plays out, but I know that if Bear had a vote out of the two options, based on what he was told, this would have been his choice. While this is Bear's last season, I'm going to be very interested to see how she recruits going forward. I felt for a long time that Berry should be a better team than they've been, and that lack of effort in recruiting was holding them back. This coach is young enough that she might embrace it more, and if she does, it could be fun to see where this goes.

07-15-2022, 06:51 AM	#1467
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Bear has been going to PT for a while now, and he thinks he's making some progress. He's had a lot of needling done - including a few times with an electro-stimulus attachment. Recently, the therapist did what she termed a "fan" technique on his bad shoulder, and it apparently lit him up. He said it was excruciating, but apparently also effective. He's hopeful more of that will lead to big jumps in how the shoulder feels. Also, Bear just recently started swimming again. Wanting to ease back into it and get in shape before the team ramps up in early September. The good news is the inflammation in the shoulder is mostly gone due to his taking time off, the bad news is - he's really sore when he swims. The therapist suggests it's scar tissue that built up because he's been inactive for a while and it's going to take some time to break it up. He's not looking forward to that. Hopefully, he can find a happy medium before his final season that will allow him to thrive one last time.

07-17-2022, 10:16 PM	#1468
thealmighty Pro Starter Join Date: May 2003 Location: heaven	Is there any chance you are going to adopt a youngster so this thread won't be ending in a year? Just something to think about and discuss with Mrs. Breeze. __________________ Check out The Unofficial FOFC Movie Guide Here

08-08-2022, 09:46 AM	#1469
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	The pain in Bear's shoulder wasn't subsiding as much as he had hoped so we scheduled an appointment with the Dr. that initially diagnosed him with the overtraining issue. The plan now is to continue PT until early September, at which point if there is still pain, they will look into doing injections. I'm assuming when they say injections they mean cortisone/lidocaine, but it could be something different. He also indicated if that doesn't work, there is a secondary type of injection treatment that they can do, but they would wait until around the first of the year to do it. Bear has been hesitant to use any sort of pain killer for fear of causing more permanent damage by masking the symptoms. However, given this is his last season, he figures he's got nothing to lose at this point. Will keep you updated on what ends up happening.

09-07-2022, 06:43 AM	#1470
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	This morning at 6 A.M. was the first practice of the season, so Bear's final swim season is now officially underway. Sorry there hasn't been much in the way of updates about the team or the schedule but things are still very much up in the air. Bear was initially under the impression the only recruits for the men's team were Mac (a former Gold swimmer with Bear, who he helped recruit to Berry) and another swimmer who wasn't a year round guy, but that's apparently not the case. I believe there is a 3rd swimmer and a diver that also joined. When the team updates the roster I'll update the thread. The schedule was also initially released a few weeks back, but it was seriously lacking. It had the team competing in only 6 meets all season, including the intra-squad meet. Obviously, Coach Paul was let go before he could finish the schedule and the new coach wasn't hired in time to have an impact on what was already in place. Bear indicated that the coach is apparently trying to add some additional meets. Again, once we get a firmer understanding of the schedule, I'll post it here.

09-20-2022, 07:47 AM	#1472
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	2022-23 Berry Vikings Swim Schedule - Review The schedule was released about a month ago, but when it was released there was an indication that the new coach was attempting to add some meets to the schedule. If she was successful in doing so, no announcement has been made. As you can see, the schedule this year is significantly smaller than the one last year. I'm sure that is a direct result from the coaching turnover. In some ways it's disappointing, given this is Bear's final season and we'll only have 7 or so meets to watch him swim (and a couple that are far enough away that watching him will be an online experience). In other ways, it's probably good. Last year's schedule was way too involved. Having meets every weekend impacts your ability to train. It's the same reason that year round teams swim in meets only about once a month. In addition, given Bear's shoulder issues, less racing might be beneficial. Here are my thoughts around the actual meets: *Intrasqad meet* - always a fun one for the kids. In the past, recent graduates would return to field a 3rd team for this meet, but it doesn't look like that's on the agenda this year, which is unfortunate. I know that Bear's group still sees Dylan White regularly, and I believe Michael Bemis was planning to return, which would have been a fun reunion for the guys. *Montevallo & Emmanual* - both of these schools are D2, and thus can provide athletic scholarships. The talent level here is much higher than Berry, so the Vikings won't be close in the scoring. The only good aspect is, the team will get to swim against some fast opponents. *Centre College* - conference opponent, who's improved dramatically over the last couple of seasons (driven by the promise of a new multi-million dollar facility I'm sure). This one should be fun, too bad it's so far away. Sewanee - another conference foe - another one pretty far away. This is an improving team, but Berry should still be a good bit better. *SCAD Invite* - Bear isn't really a fan of this meet. It's so dominated by Emory's B team that it takes a good bit of the fun out of it. *Viking Invite* - not sure who's invited this time around. Could be a totally new group of schools with the new coach. Will be interested to see. *Birmingham Southern* - the annual conference match up at the end of the season, right before conference. It's a good measuring stick against what's consistently been the best team in the conference. *Conference Championship* - This is going to be fun with several teams bringing their best roster in years to the event. Last edited by Breeze : 09-20-2022 at 07:51 AM.

09-27-2022, 06:47 AM	#1473
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	General Update The confusion with this new coach continues. We haven't received any communications from her yet, which is a bit surprising. The only things we have to go on are communications to Bear. To begin, it sounded like she was going to try and add some additional meets to the schedule, but no word on that since. Now the schedule has been released, but we find out the Intra-squad meet on the 8th, looks like it's just going to be a regular practice. Not sure when she's planning on letting parents know, because I suspect quite a few are planning to show up. The team roster for the season hasn't been released yet (which is why I haven't updated it here). In addition, the Vikings website and the collegeswimming site for Berry still show Flinchbaugh as the coach. Not sure what she's doing on a daily basis, but if this were my new job, I think I'd be working on making sure I updated all the relevant websites and reached out to the parents to introduce myself. It's been very odd. We'll see where this goes.

10-04-2022, 06:38 AM	#1474
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Still no word from the coach, but Bear confirmed last night that the "Intra-sqaud" meet would just be a typical practice with maybe some races mixed in. Which means, there is really nothing to watch and if you did want to watch, practice starts at 5:30 AM. For us to make it - we'd have to leave the house around 3:45. This last season isn't getting off to a great start. Our viewing opportunities are already very limited. Not really please that this meet is basically being cancelled.

10-21-2022, 08:58 AM	#1476
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	University of Montevallo, Emmanuel College vs Berry College @ Cage Center - 10/22 Finally, the first meet of the season. Berry will be squaring off in a double dual meet against University of Montevallo and Emmanuel College. Both of these schools are D2, which will make it a tough match up for the Vikings. *Montevallo* - This a relatively new team with their first season being 2019. However, they have used their ability to provide athletic scholarships well, and have fleshed out a relatively large and competitive team in a short time. I'm unsure how many swimmer are currently active on the team, but it appears that only 12 have competed so far this season, so they may be under their recent roster size. *Emmanuel* - In the last few years the Lions have gone from an afterthought team, to one that ranks in the top 20 in all of D2. Not terribly surprising when you consider all the talent in the state of Georgia. In fact, this team is a perfect example of why I've been frustrated by Berry's lack of efforts on the recruiting front. If Emmanuel, a tiny school with a very unimpressive campus, in the middle of nowhere can pull the talent they've been pulling, Berry should be able to do the same. Anyway, the Lions have 20 swimmers that have competed this year, and while they have some roster fillers on the backend, they also have a several very strong swimmers. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bear - from his schedule of events in meet 1, it doesn't appear that he's going to start off avoiding distance. He's scheduled to swim the 200 Free, 500 Free, 200 IM, and he's in the 400 Free relay. *200 Free* - early in the season last year Bear was getting just under 1:50, so if he's on or around those times he's in pretty good form for an early, in season swim. In this event Emmanuel has had 7 swimmers compete ranging from 1:46 to 2:01, while Montevollo has had 4 compete with times of 1:46, 1:51, 1:52, and 1:53. So Bear could have some good racing in this one, but likely not to win the event. *500 Free* - this one is a bit harder to get a read on early in the season. Last year, in the intra-squad, Bear swam a 5:27 in this event. Then a couple of weeks later it was a 5:07. He's easily capable of going under a 5, even early in the season, but it will depend on a few items, the biggest (minus the way the shoulder feels) is likely the order of events. If the 500 is first, and he can get a good warm up in, then he could do well. If he swims the 200 free or the 200 IM first, then he'll likely be gassed enough that I wouldn't expect much on the time. Too early in the season to have the stamina to race a 500 after a long sprint race. Montevollo's 500 times are right in line with Bear's - the top guy has gone a 4:58, with the 3 remaining swimmers in the event logging around 5:15s. Emmanuel has 5 that have competed in the event so far this season and they are falling between a 4:48 and a 5:32. *200 IM* - This one isn't one that Bear swims frequently. Bear has managed to break 2 minutes a couple of times, but last year he only swam it 1 time and he posted a 2:11. Given he rarely practices backstroke and almost never practices breast, I expect the 2:11 is probably going to be closer to his time. That's going to make the race a tough one for him because Montevallo hasn't done this event this season, but they do have 2 returning swimmers who did it last year and they are 1:57 and 1:58, and Emmanuel has a 1:54 guy from this season. *Free Relay* - Bear's personal best in the 100 Free is a 49.29. I'm sure he wants to get to low 48s in the relay, maybe even 47s, but I don't expect him to do it this time around. This will likely be the very last event, and after swimming 3 races of 200 or more yards, I think if he can get under 50.5 he'll be doing well. Last edited by Breeze : 10-28-2022 at 11:34 AM.

10-26-2022, 10:42 AM	#1477
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	University of Montevallo, Emmanuel College vs Berry College -Results Well the first meet under the new coach is in the book and here are my thoughts: *Good:* - The team swam pretty well. Some very fast swims against very strong competition. - The coach seems very nice and totally engaged with her swimmers *Bad* - The meet results were not uploaded to the App - Meet Mobile so spectators could follow along - The scoreboard wasn't working so no one in the stands had any idea about the swimmers times (not sure why this wasn't tested before the meet) - The meet was exceptionally long - it took about 4 hours to complete. Normal college meets take closer to 90 minutes. - The team elected to provide 1 cool down lane (lane 1), which probably wouldn't have been an issue in a normal meet, but with 2 very large teams, plus Berry's ~50 swimmers that 1 lane was packed and worse - it churned up the water bad for swimmers in lane 2 (Bear swam all of his events from lane 2 - by the way) - The team warmed up at 8:30 for and 11 o'clock meet, then didn't get to warm up again before the meet started, meaning the kids sat around for hours tightening up before racing. - Some very odd selections for swimmers, heats, and events. The coach apparently relied on a team member to assist with the line ups, and it showed. Bear - like I mentioned above, there were no official times for the meet, but I did some unofficial timing and it was pretty obvious he wasn't swimming well. In fact, his times this meet (found the results after doing some searching on the Monvevallo swim site), were very reminiscent of his times in the opening meet from last year. Hopefully, he'll build on this like he did last year and end up having a strong season. Note: I couldn't find the final scoring for this meet anywhere. Last edited by Breeze : 11-04-2022 at 06:55 AM.

10-28-2022, 11:31 AM	#1478
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Sewanee Invite @ Sewanee TN - 10/28-30 A new event was added to the schedule but not listed on the swim website. This meet is going to be very similar to the one last week because the teams competing are: - Sewanee Tigers - Montevallo Falcons - Emmanuel Lions - Berry Vikings Yep, all 3 teams from last week plus Sewanee. This time around the event will be swim over 3 days. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bear - It's beginning to look more and more like Bear's distance days are over. He will again not be swimming the 1000 free, and in fact this time around he won't be swimming the 500 either. *- 100 IM* - this is an interesting choice because it isn't swum at conference, but it might be a good way to get him some extra back and breaststroke laps if the 400 IM is going to be part of his future events. *- 400 IM* - this is looking like a strong possibility to be one of Bear's 3 conference races. He's got a lot of work to do on his off strokes to be competitive here. *- 200 Free* - Hoping for an improvement over last week to show he's trending in the right direction *- 100 Fly* - Bear's fly in the 200 IM last week looked great. Not sure he has sprint speed to compete in this event long term, but the 200 fly might be in his wheel house. *400 Medley Relay* - Bear will swim the fly on the B relay *400 Free Relay* - Bear will be on the B relay *800 Free Relay* - Bear sill be on the B relay Last edited by Breeze : 10-31-2022 at 08:19 AM.

10-31-2022, 08:18 AM	#1479
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Sewanee Invite - Addendum Once the meet posted on the Meet Mobile app, I realized the Sewanee Invite was larger than Bear originally led me to believe. In fact the participation included: - Berrry - Montevallo - Emmanuel - Sewanee - Life College - South Georgia State College - Birmingham Southern - (divers only) - University of the Cumberlands - (divers only) I also made some assumptions on the events, but I'll clean that up on the post race write up. Last edited by Breeze : 10-31-2022 at 08:19 AM.

11-04-2022, 07:28 AM	#1480
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Sewanee Invite - RESULTS Emmanuel - 1109 Montevallo - 728.5 Berry - 708 South Georgia - 339.5 Sewanee - 293 Life - 272 This meet was very interesting. In addition to not knowing all the teams, I was also wrong about some of the relays I indicated that Bear would be swimming. I assumed when Bear mentioned he was in the 100 Medley Relay and 100 Free Relay, he was indicating he was swimming a 100 leg in the 400 yard relay. Nope, he swam a 25 leg in a 100 yard relay. Like he used to do as a pre-teen during summer league. It was very odd. In fact, the entire first day was odd, it was a bunch of 50 yard swims that are no longer a part of any championship meet. It was probably pretty fun for the swimmers though. Berry did a nice job, with some of their relays winning the short sprints and giving some of the bigger teams a run for their money in the longer ones. In fact, Berry held a lead on Montevallo for quite a while, but the Falcon depth finally won out. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bear - another pretty rough meet for Bear. His short races and relay swims were ok, but some of the others looked painful. *100 Medley Relay - B Team* - Not sure of splits because they weren't kept for this race, but Bear's team was the fastest B relay in the entire meet. *100 IM* - pretty good swim, fly was good, back and breast were a bit of a struggle and free looked a bit labored coming home, but he posted a 58.80 which is a personal best. However, it's not completely surprising. Last time Bear swim this event was in 2018. *100 Free Relay - B Team* - again no splits on this race (probably didn't have touch pads on both ends of the pool, making 25 splits impossible). Bear looked great in his leg, and his B team was not only the fastest B team in the meet, they actually beat 2 A teams as well. *400 IM* - Fly time seemed conservative, especially with how he's looked swimming that stroke recently. He split around 1 minute. The back was a 1:12, and the breast a 1:25, he needs to get those back to around 1:0 and 1:15 respectively if he's going to be competitive in this event. His free at the end was a clearly labored 1:07, when it should be sub 60 if he's in shape and feeling good. In all he posted a pedestrian 4:45.79 - good for 11th place. *200 Free* - this one was just bad. Bear failed to break the 2 minute mark in this race. I believe the last time he failed to break that mark was in 2016. There wasn't much recovery time from the 400 IM to this race, and the fact Bear took the Summer off to rest his shoulder clearly appears to be impacting his stamina still and getting into shape is going to take longer than expected. *100 Fly* - solid effort for end of meet race. Posted 57.74. *200 Free Relay - B Team* - This came directly on the heals of the 100 fly, so Bear posting a 23.05 wasn't terrible. His PB in this event is 23.27, so he's about right where he should be with a rolling start for this time of the year. Last edited by Breeze : 11-04-2022 at 07:29 AM.

11-04-2022, 11:45 AM	#1481
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Berry College and Asbury College vs Centre College @ Centre College - 11/5 This could be a fun meet. Centre has improved significantly, and things were close in dual meets the last couple of years anyway. Now, the Colonels have a huge diving contingent that inflates their overall scores and will probably be the difference in this meets scoring, but even without that there should be some good races. Add in Asbury, which is a pretty large NAIA school that has finished top 10 in that division several years in a row and you can see where this should lead to some pretty good match ups. Really struggled trying to decide if we were going to go watch. However, Danville, KY is about 6.5 hours from here, which makes it a bit cost prohibitive to go and watch a 2 hour swim meet when your son will be in the water less than 10 minutes. Plus I'm not doing at 13 hour out and back on the same day, so we'd have to get a hotel room, and we're already doing that next weekend. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bear Bear was originally set to swim the 200 Free, 500 Free and 2 IM, but do to a change on the team that we'll get into later he's now swimming the following: 200 Free - Currently listed at a 1:53.53 time, which is well off his personal best time, but also well below last weekends terrible 2 minute effort. I'd like to see him under the 1:53 mark, but at the very least be around that number. 100 Free - This is the switch event, Bear was moved here to fill a void. It was a logical choice given this event needed someone and the 500 free was extremely deep with Ross, Ethan, Bear and Kevin all swimming. Ross is likely to win the event, so you don't move him. Kevin's strength is only in the distance events. That leaves Bear or Ethan, and Bear is a slightly better sprinter and Ethan is clearly swimming the distance events better. *200 IM* - I think Astrid is still keeping the 400 IM as an option for Bear at conference and want him to race the medleys. I'd like to see improvement on the back and breast and hopefully and improvement on the free because he's in a little better shape than he's been the last couple of weeks. 400 Free Relay - B Team - This is also a fill in spot, as Bear wasn't scheduled to do the relay initially. It appears he's filling the same void from the 100 Free race.

11-10-2022, 10:27 AM	#1482
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	General Update Normally, I would be updating the swimming results and the upcoming meet this weekend, but things have become very messy at Berry. I was hoping to have some clarity on what's going on before updating this thread, but I'm not sure that's going to happen. Given this thread was located last year by some of the Berry team, I'm not comfortable going into too much detail, but to provide a quick illustration of the problems - the following swimmers have quit in the last few weeks: - Paris Thornberg - Breck Richardson - Emilio Rico - Hunter Kenny - Collin Dillard The sad part is it's not the coach's fault. There are some swimmers on the team that aren't happy - though I suspect they will NEVER be happy (remember this is the same group that ultimately forced Coach Paul to resign at the end of the last season). Interestingly, the ones quitting are guys, but the ones complaining aren't. I'll let you figure out how that works for yourselves. Last edited by Breeze : 11-10-2022 at 10:27 AM.

11-11-2022, 09:03 AM	#1483
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Berry College and Asbury College vs Centre College - RESULTS Centre - 179 Berry - 118 Asbury - 81 Berry - 191 This meet was striking in how much better the Centre swimmers seemed to finish races verses the Berry swimmers. In fact, it was so startling I'd venture to guess that Centre elected to drop taper for this meet. An odd choice but given the timing, it could work. Drop taper now, ramp up for a December invite, then get to winter training and start over to prep for conference. I'd say it'd be fun to see how this plays out at conference, but with the significant number of men leaving the Berry team, I'm not sure we'll get to see it play out in the water. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bear - continues to struggle, and there are, by my estimation 3 potential issues: - Stamina - took the entire summer off to see if he could get his shoulder to heal. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to help the shoulder at all, and now he's got to get back into shape. I'm not sure he'll accomplish it at all, but almost certainly not before winter training ends. - Pain - the shoulder is still a problem, and the continued wear and tear may finally have caught up to him. - Technique - because he took the entire summer off, Bear is struggling to find his form. He admitted everything feels wrong and he's having a hard time trying to dial it back in. Taking the time off was a risk, probably one that was worth taking, but it's looking like the gamble isn't going to pay off. Another item to keep in mind. Centre currently has a small 6 lane pool, so there was no warm up or down, which is a problem for Bear. He needs extra time to get his shoulder warmed up. Also, they had the pool extremely cold, which is odd, most competition pools are kept between 77 and 82 degrees. Centre's pool was 72 (thermometer was in the pool). This made it very difficult to warm up - and in fact, it was so cold most swimmers didn't even want to get in the water to warm up during the short periods that warm up times were offered. 200 Free - Swam a 1:54. Opened with a 54, which isn't terrible, but coming home in over 60 seconds isn't good. 200 Fly - quick turn around from the 200 free, and Bear only managed to go 2:15. Fatigue was clearly an issue here. 100 Free - posted 53.50, around 2 seconds off where he probably wants to be, but it was another pretty quick turn around so fatigue is again a factor. 400 Free Relay - B Team - here Bear swam pretty well for in season. he posted a 50.90, the second fastest time on the B relay, only .5 behind Ross. This swim was much later in the meet, so Bear was able to adequately recover. Hopefully, this is a sign that with adequate recovery time he can still swim fast. Last edited by Breeze : 11-11-2022 at 09:06 AM.

11-11-2022, 01:51 PM	#1484
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Berry vs. Sewanee @ Sewanee TN - 11/12 Berry has what I believe is a dual meet tomorrow at Sewanee. We are planning on making the trip to watch. We debated not going given the current unrest on the team, but figured we are running out of chances to watch Bear swim, so we're going. I have no idea what Bear will compete in at this point, and in the grand scheme of things, it's not that important. I'll provide details in the follow up. It will be interesting to see what shuffling the coach does offset the recent losses.

11-15-2022, 08:28 AM	#1485
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Berry vs. Sewanee - RESULTS Berry - 182 Sewanee - 80 It was a nice trip up to Sewanee, Tennessee. The campus was very nice, similar architecture to the Rhodes campus, but much more spread out. It was also very cold, with a high of 37 degrees, a surprising 10 degrees cooler than Chattanooga, which was not far down the highway. The almost 2000 feet of altitude probably had something to do with that. The team seemed to adjust ok to the loss of several swimmers. With a few posting some very fast times in unusual events. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bear - unfortunately, Bear is still struggling, and at this point I'm not sure he's going to recover. He's way off where he needs to be at this point in the season to position himself for a good conference championship meet. It's looking more and more like the shoulders are just completely shot, at least for anything more than a sprint. 400 Medley Relay - B Team - Bear swam the free leg at the end of the relay. When he dove in, he was about half a second behind Sewanee, but by the end of the first 50 he had taken the lead, and he pulled away to secure second place in the meet. Bear split a respectable 50.61. 200 Free - Once again Bear struggled in this event, and at this point he's about 10 seconds off where he needs to be at this point in the season. Maybe he'll respond for the December mid-season taper event, fingers crossed. 200 Free Relay - A Team - Bear lead off the relay and posted a personal best time of 23.13, a nice little reward, especially in this tough season. I know he wants to get sub 23, but in season, no taper, that's a good swim. 1000 Free - I know, given Bear's struggles why is he swimming the 1000? Well, he actually requested it. I believe this was a test to see what it would feel like to do this race, so he'd have information to decide how he wanted to handle the remainder of the season. Unsurprisingly, he didn't swim well, but what's more important is how he felt doing it and how he felt afterwards. I can't answer those questions because he's not volunteering any information on what's going on. I guess we'll know more based on what events he swims moving forward. Last edited by Breeze : 11-23-2022 at 06:40 AM.

11-29-2022, 01:00 PM	#1486
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	General Update A lot has transpired since the last general update so I figured I needed to update the thread. Meeting with the AD The swimmers and coach met with the AD recently to air their issues and following that meeting the parents were invited to a discussion to outline how things were going to work moving forward. Basically, it came down to improving communication between the swimmers and the coach, while also requiring the swimmers to hold each other more accountable. While this all seems pretty standard, are some issues that are making this harder than it should be. For instance, the coach has no assistant. Basically the GA coach left a year early, and the program is for a 2 year stint. Meaning no one is looking to jump into that roll for just 1 year. They would rather wait until next year, so they can have the full 2 year option. Moreover, for some reason the coach never named captains. I'm not sure the logic behind this, especially given the lack of an assistant, but that's the way it was prior to this meeting. While all of this sounds good, there are indications that some of the problem children are still griping. Captains Announced Following the meeting the coach named a men's and women's captain for the Sr. Jr., and Soph. classes. Bear was named the senior men's captain. No Winter Training Trip Because the former coach used to borrow against next year's budget to go on the winter training trip, the new coach inherited a deficit on day 1. The school has decided this is the year to correct that practice and as such - will not allow the team to take a travel trip for training purposes around the new year. Therefore, the team will be training at the school. A seriously unfortunate outcome for Bear's senior year. The lack of a winter training trip may not be the only thing that the swimmers end up without. There is a possibility that the school won't be purchasing team competition suits for the conference meet. Not an insignificant thing considering how much it costs to purchase these suits. Bear's No Longer Doing Distance The biggest news to update is the fact that Bear will officially no longer be a part of the distance group. After struggling with mid and long distance events this season, he and the coach had a long discussion. They determined that his shoulders just can't handle the workload anymore, and that he needs to shift his focus to sprints in hopes of getting his times down before conference. It currently looks like he'll be focusing on the 50, 100, and 200 Frees, and the 100 and 200 Flys. Last edited by Breeze : 12-07-2022 at 08:14 AM.

12-01-2022, 07:09 AM	#1487
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	SCAD Invite @ Chatham County Aquatic Center - 12/1-3 Last year Berry participated in this event with about 7 other teams, most of them very small ones, like South Georgia, Thomas, Point, Brenau, and Life. The one major exception to that was Emory that brought their B team, which was still by far the largest and fastest in the pool. This year most of the above mentioned teams are back, but the meet will also feature Wingate, and top 5 D2 school, with a very large roster. This event is a preliim/finals meet, and last year it appeared short races brought back 24 and longer races brought back 16. In the past, when this event was larger every event brought back 24, we'll see what happens this time around. This is a taper meet, so hopefully the rest helps Bear and he's able to swim fast. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bear - as I mentioned above, Bear is finished with distance so this will be his first sprint event since adjusting his training to sprint only. I'm hopefully, he'll pop a few good times. As far as where he'll finish...it'll be tough to make finals against this group of swimmers, especially in sprints. *50 Free* - got a personal best in the relay during the last meet. Says he's beaten that time in practice. I know he wants to get in the 22s here. If they bring back 24 and Bear can get mid 22s, he might have a shot at finals - but I don't expect him to make it back. He's currently seeded mid-30s and there are over 24 swimmers going 22 low or better. *100 Fly* - his form in fly has been very good recently, but the speed hasn't been there. Not sure why - could be as simple as he doesn't practice it enough. He hasn't commented on the impact it has on his shoulder, but I hope it doesn't hinder him in this and the 200 fly moving forward. Again, he's not likely to return. He's seeded mid-30s again, so quite a few swimmers to jump to make the top 24. *100 Free* - personal bests at practice in the 50 free, bode well for a potentially good swim here too. He ultimately wants to get into the 47s, I don't think he'll be close to that here. Even with a taper that would be a huge drop, especially considering he hasn't be training sprint for that long. He's again seeded mid 30s, so he'll need a big time drop to leap enough swimmers to make top 24.

12-06-2022, 08:15 AM	#1488
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	SCAD Invite - RESULTS Wingate - 1278.5 Emory (B team) - 909.5 SCAD - 447 Lynn - 376 Berry - 229 Life - 132 Ave Maria - 80 Point - 69 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bear - one nice thing about Bear moving to sprints is that he gets to race in events he hasn't focused on or swum in a very long time. Day 1 *50 Free* - came in with a PB time from the previous meet of 23.13, but he managed to drop .72 seconds and finish in 22.41. That was good enough to move him up to 29th overall, jumping 7 swimmers with faster seed times. He was a bit disappointed because he said he was sloppy, but given this was the first time he raced the 50 since switching his focus, I think some sloppiness is expected. I hope he can clean it up and get under 22. This also sets up an interesting dynamic. With Hunter Kenny quitting the team, the final spot on the A sprint free relays is up for grabs. Alex was a clear front runner for that final spot, but now Bear and Alex are a eyelash apart on times. In this race Bear beat Alex by .12 seconds. This will be fun to watch moving forward. Day 2 *800 Free Relay* - Bear led off the A relay. He posted a 1:48.84 time, which is only .4 off of his time in this same event last year. Hopefully, this is a sign that the 200 free is still in play for conference. Also, I hope this means Bear's times are still good enough for him to be on the A-team for the relay at conference. *100 Fly* - Bear's seed time was a 57.74, which is way off his personal best of 53.33, which he swam in 2020 before joining Berry. In prelims, he posted a 53.76, just off his personal best, and good enough to climb from 35th to 19th, which put him in the C final. In the finals, Bear swam a 53.78, only .02 off his morning swim. This time kept him in 19th, but it was a tight race, with Bear only .3 behind 17th place, .03 behind 18th, .01 ahead of 20th, and .05 ahead of 21st. *400 Medley Relay* - Bear competed on the B relay in the fly leg, and he swam a 53.27 split. In line with his times from the 100 fly above, given the .5 improvement he either had a fantastic start or swam slightly faster, either option is really good. Day 3 *100 Free* - Came into this event with a 53.50 time, seeded 32nd. His personal best coming into this event was a 49.29, from the same meet where he posted his PB in the 100 fly. Here he went 50.05 in prelims and moved up to 23rd, and earning a spot in the C final. During the finals swim later that afternoon, he managed to improve his time to a 49.44, just .15 off his PB. Here Bear was .23 behind Alex. The final spot for the 100 sprint relay is a bit more up in the air, as Ross, Ethan and others could potentially slot into that 4th position, but if Bear wants a shot at the A relay he'll have to beat Alex. *400 Free Relay* - Bear led off the B relay, and posted a 49.84, again, right in line with his race just 10 minutes earlier. His cold start time was right in line with the other 3 swimmers who all benefited from the rolling relay start. Last edited by Breeze : 12-06-2022 at 02:47 PM.

01-04-2023, 06:52 AM	#1489
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	General Update Bear headed back to campus on New Years Eve and they started their winter training on campus 1/1. The good new was the lack of travel allowed him to stay home a couple of extra days, which was nice. The bad news is - it's a pretty boring location for winter training, and I really feel for him. Before Covid the team would go to Puerto Rico every 4 years so each graduating class would have 1 year to go there for winter training. Now things have devolved to the point they don't even leave campus. I know that Bear won't be a part of the team next year, but I do hope once they get the budget for the team back in line that they at least go back to Florida next year. Last edited by Breeze : 01-04-2023 at 06:53 AM.