Swim Like A Champion (a real life journal) - Page 4

Breeze · 09-07-2012, 11:12 AM

Short Course Season Goals - Bailey

Right now Bailey's goals would be almost exactly the same as Bear's. However, Bailey's chances of achieving those goals are much slimmer...

First, the shoulder issue she is currently dealing with will limit her ability to practice and thus reduce her improvement. If this can get cleaned up before November, then the impact will be significantly reduced and Bailey should have time to catch up before the state meet in February. Getting the state cuts in all strokes shouldn't be a huge deal as she already has almost all of them. She's only missing....the 50, 100, and 200 Free. Obviously, if she can't practice the chances of getting the Sectional Cut will become much more difficult. However, like Bear she's only about 3 seconds from that time in several events.

Second, making a relay at Swim Atlanta is much tougher...The sheer number of Swim Atlanta swimmers will make it difficult...Swim Atlanta has over three times as many kids in the program compared to Chattahoochee Gold...so much more competition for the 8 relay spots. Also Swim Atlanta has some very high end swimmers. For instance, there are 2 sisters that are both 10 and under and both are ranked in the top 3 nationally for the age group in multiple strokes. They will undoubtedly get 2 of the 8 relay spots.

Based on what we find out in physical therapy her goals may be downgraded a bit...

Breeze · 09-10-2012, 02:05 PM

Bailey - Update

The Physical Therapist basically told us that the muscles in the front of Bailey's shoulder are getting too strong compared to her rhomboids and rotator cuff. She's been given strengthening exercises to do everyday. She'll continue to work with the PT for the next couple weeks. The only restriction she is currently under is not to swim more than 2 days in a row...meaning we'll probably have her swim 4 a week...

I'm hoping we get this fixed soon, so she can start going 5 days a week in mid December to get fine tuned before the Short Course State Meet in February...

Breeze · 09-10-2012, 02:10 PM

General Update

I have some really sad news to report...

Bailey's friend Lexi, the girl that had surgery on both of her knees as a 9 year old, has just found out that she has torn the meniscus again in the first knee that was operated on. She will be having surgery later this week...

I'm not sure on the time table for her return...she's a tough little girl and extremely competitive, which may be why she's back in this position so soon. I felt she rushed back last time...we'll see how long she'll be out this time.

Also, it wouldn't surprise me if Lexi never swam Breaststroke again...

Breeze · 09-12-2012, 01:17 PM

Chattahoochee Gold Time Trials @ Cumming Aquatic Center - 9/15

The boys will be cranking off the season this Saturday. The will both swim 3 events at the time trials...

Brett

50 Free - Brett's short course personal best is 35.70...but that was swum in February, and he has improved his form significantly since then. In fact, if I use a conversion tool to take his best long course time from July (38.68), it states his time for short course should be around 34.12...so hopefully we'll see a significant improvement here...

50 Back - Brett's back is also getting better. He still over reaches across his head a bit, which doesn't allow him to get his arms in a strong pull position, but he's much more comfortable on his back. His best short course time is 42.38...again, I'm hoping for an improvement...but it will probably come down to - does he trust his count on the turn and finish.

50 Breast - This is one of the state cuts that Brett thinks he'll be able to get. He's personal best is 41.93 (year round short course), he did swim 41.72 at the Forsyth County Championships last year...to get the state cut he'll at least have to get to 38.29 (though this is subject to change as the new cut times haven't been released yet)...

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Bear

50 Free - I did some research on Chattahoochee Gold and found out that had Bear been on Gold last year during short course, he would have swum on the B relay at the short course state championships. He needs to swim well in this stroke, as there are 3 very strong swimmers moving up from 8U. He comes in with a personal best time of 35.65. His long course converted is 33.14...

50 Fly - Bear's best time here is 39.76 with a conversion time of 37.64...his form here keeps getting better, even if it hasn't translated to speed yet. Hoping we see some drop this weekend. Interesting note...In my research on Gold, I found out that Bear would have also represented the Gold team at state in the medley relay in either back or breast...yes breast...

50 Breast - This is one of the only events Bear doesn't have a state cut. He is very close (assuming the time doesn't drop signifcantly when the new times come out). He has gotten stronger in this event...and I think he has a pretty good chance of getting his cut. His time coming in is 46.70 (current cut time is 45.79)...

Breeze · 09-14-2012, 09:53 AM

SA Time Trials @ Cumming Aquatic Center - 9/16

Bailey's season starts on Sunday, and unlike the boys, we'll get a good baseline on all the strokes...

50 Free - One of the few strokes Bailey doesn't have a cut in...she was extremely close at the end of the last long course season...and could get the cut during the meet. Her current best is 33.96 the cut is 33.49...

50 Back - Bailey got a bit of instruction on proper form from Brett (who still doesn't do it exactly right yet...but regardless)...and it has seemed to help a bit. I'll be interested to see if it is translating to improved times. She has the cut based on Long Course...and her best SC is 39.38...

50 Breast - Bailey's breast is starting to look stronger again. Her form has been better as she's stayed lower in the water and continued to push forward, rather than the up and down motion she got into in the middle of the season last year. Of course, she could overwork when racing and fall back into the bad from trying to go to fast. We'll see...best time is 45.44

50 Fly - Bailey's fly has looked real strong. She has just built on her summer league swimming and her confidence in this stroke is high. Not sure how'll she do on Sunday, as she hasn't raced and 50 in a while, and if she over breathes she'll lose her body position and it will cost her time. But I'm thinking a personal best should happen here, her time to beat is 38.43

100 Free - The 100 Free is another stroke that Bailey doesn't have a cut in...her best time is 1:14.94 the cut time is 1:14.59. She could certainly get the cut this weekend. However, I have to say, I'd much prefer her form to hold up and have her be slower than see her revert to the bad form that led to her shoulder injury...

One point that I need to add here...because this is the first race of the season, and because she'll be swimming 5 events, I expect there will be a fatigue factor that will potentially impact the last couple of events...

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The Psych Sheet for this meet has been released and Bailey is seeded:

100 Free - 10th / 8th for 10U -

50 Fly - 11th / 8th for 10U

50 Back - 11th / 8th for 10U

50 Breast - 11th / 9th for 10U

50 Free - 14th / 9th for 10U

Note: In the seeding...the first number is the actual seed, the second number removes those swimmers that will age up before the short course state meet...

Breeze · 09-17-2012, 08:45 AM

Chattahoochee Gold Time Trials @ Cumming Aquatic Center - 9/15

The Chattahoochee Gold Meet went real well...the boys had fun and did a good job...

Bear

50 Fly - Bear's fly is still a work in progress, as he is still trying to learn the longer stroke, which of course can impact times, but he look much better and still managed a strong personal best time of 39.66. But the more interesting thing is that he finished 2nd overall, and the boy that beat him will be 11 by the time the state meet rolls around...

50 Breast - Still up and down with this stroke. While his form is much better than it was last year at this time, he still lacks a powerful kick and can get to up and down. However, he has a great pullout..was off of his best time posting a 49.46. In case you are curious his time placed him 5th, and his best time would have ben 4th...

50 Free - Bear again had a personal best...form was a little sloppy, but he busted his butt to post a 34.31. Again this was 2nd overall at the meet, and in fact, it was the same kid that beat him in fly that beat him here...

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Brett

50 Back - Brett's back was pretty good...he definately looked more comfortable than he ever has before swimming on his back. He had a nice start and good turn. There are still some flaws in his stroke which are keeping him from increasing the stroke rate enough to go fast, but it appears to be coming along nice. He posted a personal best 41.94

50 Breast - Brett, as it typical was quick off the blocks, but behind after everyones pullout. The boy just lacks the strong dolphin kick to propel himself in the pullout. However, once he was up, he was fast...blew past most the field only to lose ground on the pull out after the turn. But he swam strong coming home and finished 2nd overall. He improved his time by 2 seconds to post a 39.82. Like Bear, the boy the beat Brett will age up before the state meet...

50 Free - Brett's form was much better, as he continues to build on the improvements from the end of last year. He's still not an elite freestyler, but he's now officially caught up with his siblings and he's sitting squarely in the middle of the pack in results. He posted a personal best 34.38

Breeze · 09-17-2012, 09:12 AM

Private Lesson Update

Following the Chattahoochee Gold meet when signed Bear and Brett up for some private lessons. The reason for the additional work was different for both kids.

For Bear, we wanted to further solidify his comfort level with the Gold team. He's really liking the change, and in fact, he received the 1st Red Cap award of the season, given to the swimmer who has worked the hardest in the pool, at dryland, and been well behaved. He was pumped about that...this was just a way to allow bonding time between he and his coaches. Also, as I've said before, Bear is a hard worker, who will push himself to be good. But his strokes are lacking, and we want to clean up mistakes now before he moves up.

Brett on the other hand has already moved up, and while he's doing well, we were starting to see signs of struggling. We noticed him cheating (breaststroke kicking) during free kick sets and during fly laps, and we felt that this was mostly because he is so inefficient with his off strokes he has to work to hard just to finish the laps. So the extra work is an attempt to improve form and allow him to be more successful.

Bear's work was good, though mostly uneventful. He enjoyed the work and gave the coach all he had. He'll benefit greatly from this instruction, mostly by learning how to "feel" the differences in his stroke and understand the efficiencies in swimming rather than simply trying to overpower everything with hard work.

Brett on the other hand had a very interesting session. Before it ever started the coach wanted Brett to point his toes and show how the flutter kick should be done. The whole pointing of the toes was a funny routine as he seemed to not understand what she wanted him to do. However, it became pretty evident that the issue wasn't that he didn't understand, but rather he can't point his toe easily. In fact, the coach asked him to sit on is heals with his toes pointed straight out, so that the top of his foot up to his ankle would be flat on the ground, and he can't do it. He has a flexibility problem with his ankle and this is a big part of what has been holding him back in his off strokes. He will now be doing some stretching exercises to loosen up his ankle and hopefully free things up to improve his kick....

Breeze · 09-18-2012, 12:52 PM

Swim Atlanta Time Trials @ Cumming Aquatic Center

Bailey did very poorly at her time trials. In fact, with the exception of Fly she added about 2 full seconds to every stroke, and in my opinion the only reason she didn't in fly is because Reese was right next to her and she didn't want to lose. The poor performance was alarming and concerning, and as I expected at the time - directly related to her shoulder injury. Initially the conversations about the shoulder indicated that it as causing discomfort, but after the meet we learned that following the 100 free Bailey went to the bathroom and cried because the shoulder hurt so bad. She also admitted that it was painful in all of her strokes, had been hurting at practice for weeks, and got as high as a 8 on a scale of 10.

Her swimming has now been completely shut down. She will not return to the pool until the shoulder is better, and once she returns she will be under restrictions to come back slowly in freestyle and to clean up the stroke. This is a problem for Bailey because Swim Atlanta isn't good at stroke mechanics in their lower levels, so I'm not sure who is going to work with her to clean it up, and the older level teams won't allow her to go slow enough to clean it up. We have asked both her SA coach and the Chattahoochee Gold coach how they think we should handle it. I'll let you know what they say...

Breeze · 09-20-2012, 10:09 AM

Bailey Injury Update

Bailey's SA membership has been suspended...since she is injured we won't be going to the pool for a while and the team was nice enough to suspend her account so we wouldn't have to keep paying the monthly dues.

We have talked with the doctor and basically this is what we will be doing.

1. Stay out of the pool until the shoulder is feeling better and the middle back is strong enough to counteract the affect of the shoulder being pulled forward by the strong front side muscles.

2. When she starts swimming again she will need to get into it slowly and be monitored very closely to insure her stroke is corrected and she doesn't immediately reinjure the shoulder...

3. once the stroke is cleaned up we will put her back on a team, but she will be on restrictions as to how long she'll be in the pool and how far she'll be allowed to go...

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We reached out to the coaches of both SA and Gold to see what they would suggest. I will be posting our correspondence to both teams below so you can see how this has played out...I'd do it in this post, but it will get pretty long...

Breeze · 09-20-2012, 10:32 AM

Bailey's Injury Update - Swim Atlanta Correspondence

Me to coach
One of the parents of another swimmer found us after the meet yesterday to tell us that Bailey was in the bathroom crying because her shoulder was hurting her. This was news to us, as our understanding of the injury was that it caused some discomfort, but certainly nothing to the level of causing tears from pain. The doctor told us when we had Bailey examined that if the pain was severe she'd need to stop swimming. Unfortunately, we feel that the pain has been significant for a while, and that Bailey has been hiding it from us so she can stay in the pool. In fact, she admitted last night that she is in pain every day at practice. We feel it is in her best interest at this point to pull her out of the pool for a couple of weeks and hopefully allow the physical therapy to work.

Moreover, once she is feeling well, we feel that she's going to need to fix her freestyle before resuming the yardages she is currently practicing, or we'll simply be looking at her reinjuring the shoulder due to poor form. We are strugging to determine the best way to accomplish that. Do you have any suggestions?

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Coach to Me
I am sorry to hear that bailey has not been honest to you guys and me about her shoulder. Every time we work on it she says to me it feels better. My question is does she want to swim or be social with her friends?

We diffently can try a different group here if she feels aag is to hard.

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Me to Coach

(Comment: intially I thought the coach was saying that if the practice was too hard we could move her down...so this was my response)

I don't think she feels it's too hard...from a work standpoint. I think the issue is that the shoulder is injured and with her having the bad freestyle form swimming so many laps the physical therapy isn't having a chance to work.

Then my fear is, even if we get the shoulder right, she'll just reinjure the shoulder unless she can take some time to clean up her form. That's where I think the problem is...getting that form cleaned up to avoid further injury. I certainly am not opposed to backing her down until the freestyle is fixed...

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Me to Coach

(comment - after thinking about what the coach said, I realized I may have misinterpreted his meaning. With this second response I was working under the impression that he was thinking as long as Bailey is willing to get away from her friends we have some options available)

I may have misinterpreted your email initially. Basically, the social aspect has to be put on hold at this point. She is under doctor's orders to come back slowly with a good bit of supervision to insure her stroke is cleaned up. I know that you can't do that during the AAG practice, so we'll have to find another way for her to re-learn the stroke and to build back to AAG level practices...

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Coach to Me

Sounds like a plan. Sure is more than welcome to swim White practices so we are only doing drills and kicking.

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Coach to Me

(Comment: He followed up the short response above with this)

Just let me know what you guys would like to do. The tuesday thursday group has the most space and Fridays in AAG are the easiest of the days. So she could do White 2days and AAG 1day. Gold group would be an option on Saturdays since they have the whole pool. In the beginning I am not sure she is going to need 4 days in the water.

For us that would be the only options we can do for Bailey. I would suggest gold more but am scared that she would want to push it to hard.

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Breeze · 09-20-2012, 11:04 AM

I should probably provide some explanation of the conversation above...

The coach I am communicating with is the same coach for the White team referenced in the emails. He is offering to allow Bailey to slide down 2 team levels (to the second lowest team level). She'd be swimming with good 8 year olds and average 9 year olds. The practices are 3 days a week (MWF or TTS), and they run for 45 minutes. The White practices are just kicking, drills and laps, no interval training so no need to rush through sets. However, the white team (even the smaller TTS group) is still around 30 kids...

I think it is also important to remember (and I think I mention it here quite a few posts back)...we noticed that while on the SA Gold team Bailey had developed the bad habit with her left arm in the freestyle last fall, and we pointed it out to the coach and told him that needed to get fixed. He didn't get it fixed and because of that we are dealing with this issue. Now I realize Bailey is partly at fault for not fixing it - this isn't meant to be a blame game. Lord knows I told her repeatedly to focus on fixing it, and I know the coach told her a couple of times, but when she didn't fix it, I feel the team should have taken a more firm stance and drastic approach to clean it up before something bad happened. One of the reasons that we aren't even considering allowing her to move back down to the SA Gold team.

Breeze · 09-20-2012, 11:28 AM

Bailey's Injury Update - Chattahoochee Gold Correspondence

I can't cut and paste emails from Chattahoochee Gold because they responded to my wife's intial inquiry by calling. However, I can and will break down their suggestions and comments...

The Gold team was sorry to hear that Bailey was hurting and alarmed that it was a problem, stating it is a huge red flag for a 10 year old to have shoulder injuries.

They also commented that it was unfortunate that the problem was with freestyle, because that is the most basic stroke and most of practice is build around that. If the problem was another stroke, she would be able to go through most of practice regularly, but be pulled aside and monitored when the other bad strokes comes up (often this is breaststroke for swimmers).But with free being the problem, she will be limited in the entire practice.

Here is how they said they'd handle this situation...

To begin with, once she is cleared to begin swimming again, they feel she should do private lessons to work out the kinks in her stroke. This will insure someone is watching and working with her, it will also allow the coach to limit the amount of time she swims. They suggest doing this "until she gets it right".
Once she returns to practice with the team, Gold suggests having her initially isolated from the rest of the team (in the injured lane). Make sure one of the coaches or volunteers keep an eye on her at all times. Still limit what she does and keep practice times to about 30 minutes
Once she has graduated to real practice, keep her in the back of the lines, especially during freestyle, and keep reinforcing the correct mechanics and monitoring her for backsliding.

Izulde · 09-22-2012, 12:54 AM

Seems to me like CG has the better idea of how to handle this situation.

Izulde · 09-22-2012, 01:14 AM

Oh and just now caught up on State, which I missed because I was in Japan at the time and not reading the board as regularly.

Congratulations to you all on your successes there.

Breeze · 09-24-2012, 09:22 AM

Thanks Izulde...appreciate you following along...

We have basically laid out the situation to Bailey and she understands the advantages of moving to CG. She isn't happy about leaving her friends, but she's prepared to make the move. She won't be able to get in the water for another 3 weeks or so...but once she does, she'll move over.

Following your swimming thread. Good luck...

Breeze · 10-01-2012, 11:26 AM

General Update

There is a swim meet this weekend at GaTech, and I will be updating the boys' events shortly, but here is where things currently stand...

Since we have taken Bailey completely out of the pool her shoulder is going much better. There is no constant aching any more, and we just put her in the pool for a VERY short private lesson on Saturday. The coach really worked hard on her form, and I don't thing she even finished 5 laps. We are planning to put her in the pool 1 night this week for a similar type of effort, and then again next week as we slowly ease back into this.

Bear is not feeling well. He started practice on Thursday but got out early due to feeling poorly. He didn't go Friday, as we took him to the doctor who said it wasn't strep, just a virus. He tried again on Saturday, but again cut the practice short. To make matters worse he's gotten into poison something (ivy, sumac, oak...not sure), and it is all over his legs and right arm.

Brett had quite possibly his best practice ever on Saturday. He was lapping the 3 other girls in his lane, and doing it with pretty good form for him. The practice was 2 hours and he was strong throughout. Then he had a private lesson where the coach was able to get him to understand the free and back kick better. He was kicking more from the hips and he was going much faster. The coach was very pleased...hopefully, he'll remember how to do it and focus on doing it correctly this week in practice. If he does, and he starts building muscle memory for this new kick, his times will drops significantly in the next couple of events...but it is a lot to ask for this weekend...

Breeze · 10-08-2012, 02:33 PM

SCAT Fall Invite @ GaTech - 10/6 - 10/7

So I messed up and didn't post the pre-race events and thoughts. So I'm going to post my thoughts heading into each event and the actual results below...

Day 1

Bear

200 Free - Bear heads into this event having finished the week of practice strong after being sick at the end of the previous week. I was hopeful that he would be able to challenge his personal best time of 2:42.61. Bear did swim a strong race. He was unfortunately seeded with a NT and therefore had a pretty weak heat. With no one pushing him he managed to post a 2:40.98. That was good enought to finish 13th overall in the 9/10 age group.

50 Back - Bear's backstroke has gotten much more consistent under Gold coaching. They have forced him to focus on rotating his body without moving the head. He's starting to get it, as his head is much more still, but he tends to sway the hips rather than pivoting them. Still all-in-all a better stroke. His personal best coming in was 40.48...leaving the race it was 39.90. Now when he starts being able to swim this stroke without thinking about technique I think his time will drop a good bit.

100 Breast - Bear's breast is still a work in progress. He was showing signs of improvement in the stroke, but Gold is making a slight change to his kick in an effort to get his hips up a bit, and it has reduced his power. Thus he is swimming slowly. He didn't have a short course time in the event...but he did qualify for the state with his long course performance last season. He ended up swimming a 1:46.29. This isn't really a very good time considering his conversion time from long course puts him around a 1:37.7...He's got work to do in this stroke again...and unfortunately, it's also going to hold back his IM until he figures it out.

100 Fly - This is Bear's first time swimming the 100 fly and he is working to retool this stroke as well. He is much further along with this one than Breast, but he still has moments, and his rythem can get off, but he's still pretty solid here. I did have concerns with him swimming a 100 fly as the 4th event of the day, I was afraid fatigue would be a big problem, but he handled it like a champ and posted a good 1.31.34, which beats the state cut by 6 seconds...

200 IM - Another first time attempt at a race, and again I was concerned about a 200 IM at the end of a long day. But again Bear handled it like a champ. He posted a time of 3:06.64, and got another state cut. His splits ended up being 41.01 - Fly, 48.63 - Back, 55.57 - Breast, 41.43 - Free. He really took it a bit too easy on the back...and of course the Breast as I mentioned above is still a problem, but a good swim.

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Brett

200 Free - Brett's 200 Free marked the first time he swam the event in short course. In long course over the Summer he managed a personal best of 3:13.87...converted to short course stated he should swim a 2:47.87...he actually posted a 2:47.61...

100 Breast - based on Brett's improvement during time trials in the 50 breast, I expected a moderate improvement here, maybe a second or so...he swam a great race and posted a personal best time of 1:29.77 an improvement of 2.41 seconds...this is an event that he is hoping to earn a state cut in, but unless he really hits a growth spurt it isn't going to happen as he's still 7 seconds slow. Coach is going to work with him now on increasing his stroke rate but not at the expense of the glide phase of the stroke. He told Brett in his post race talk that due to his short stature there is no possible way to be efficient enough at this stage of his life to beat kids that are over a foot taller, and he's going to have to do more strokes per lap to keep up. This explains why the 200 Breast is the one stroke he has his cut in, because the efficienty allows him to maintain his strength over the longer race...

100 IM - With his improved strokes I was really hoping for a personal best here, but while his strokes looked stronger...his turns were poor and it was obvious that he was thinking about the technique more than racing. He posted a pedestrian 1:31.68.

50 Fly - Brett's fly has gotten much better, and he goes through spurts where he can be fast, but he lacks the stamina in this event and with it being at the end of the day, I felt he might struggle through. I was hopeful that he might break his best time of 42.22, but he cam up short with a 43.92.

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Day 2

Bear

50 Fly - wasn't sure what to expect here. I'm afraid given the work he is putting in on this stroke, I won't know for sure what to expect until later in the season, my thoughts were this could go anywhere...it could be a couple seconds faster to several seconds slower than his time a time trials a few weeks back. As it turns out...it was about the same. He came in with a 39.66 and finished this race with a 39.93.

100 Free - Bear looks strong swimming his freestyles, as he really powers through the water. He isn't the most efficient, but he works hard. He same in with a best time of 1.16.40...and I felt that was within reach, especially given his personal best in the 200 the day before. And, I was right, he posted a very good 1:15.96...

100 Back - this was an event that Bear hadn't done in a while in fact, ironically, the best time he posted was the first time he ever swam it, and with him swimming very deliberately so he can make sure the stroke is right, I didn't expect the time to fall and it didn't 1:27.71

100 IM - Bear like Brett is real technical with his stroke right now, and until he become second nature his times are going to suffer. That, plus his breast is way off where it was at the end of the year last year, I felt he wouldn't do well here...and he didn't 1:31.18, well off his personal best.

500 Free - Bear was a little intimidated by this event. And I have to say I was a bit concerned for him, especially with it coming as the last event after 2 heavy race days. But before the race he got excited as he was telling me I needed to get on deck to handle the lap counters well before his 100 IM event started lining up. He swam the event, and did a nice job. He really needs to work on the glide phase in this stroke as he worked hard for all 20 laps. He posted a time of 7:10.17 and qualified for state by a 11 seconds...not sure he wanted to qualify for state

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Brett

50 Breast - Brett's second day started with the 50 Breast, and I was hopeful he'd continue his level of improvement, but he basically matched his time from the time trials posting a 40.06, only .2 slower. The good news is he still was the second gold swimmer to finish in the race and the first will age up before state...actually...this is where the stroke rate conversation mentioned above occurred.

100 Free - Came in with a 1:18.35 and with his improved kick and form I felt this was a good shot for a personal best. He looked good, turns were a bit sloppy and dive was too deep, but he still posted a nice 1:17.50

50 Back - his back looks so much better it is amazing, but it hasn't been translating to speed yet, and he still isn't comfortable on his back going into the walls, which can hurt in time, and in this case did. In fact, if he had just going straight into the wall without peaking for it he would have had a personal best as it turned out he posted a 42.77 off of his best by about .4.

200 IM - As I expected coming in, Brett was very uptight for this one. I didn't expect a great swim, but I did think he'd come in around 3:12 or so, based on Bear's time. He actually outperformed that posting a 3:10.14, but was DQed for underwater recovery on the fly (not sure if they got the right reason as I didn't see this error, but it doesn't really matter as I have a baseline for this event moving forward).

note: quick key update in case you were wondering...RED=has/earned state cut: GREEN = Personal Best (Red overshadows Green), Bold just provides a quick look at results...

Breeze · 10-12-2012, 11:43 AM

General Info - Bailey Update

Bailey has gone to a couple of private lessons recently and her form is coming along. No idea about speed because the coach isn't allowing her to go fast yet, to prevent her from reverting back to bad habits. She also had her first "team" practice last night. Basically she went through warm ups and did the first 3 drills with the team, then she was pulled out. The coach wants to get her back in the pool, but she wants to bring her back very slowly. She'll continue to practice with the team a couple times a week, and will still have a private lession 1x a week to really focus on cleaning up mistakes.

She is entered in the meet next weekend, but she'll only do a couple of events per day, and she'll be under strict orders to maintain form...(details on that when I talk about the meet)...

Breeze · 10-17-2012, 11:42 AM

Gold Invite @ Cumming Aquatic Center - 10/19-21

Brett

The coaches have told us several times that they have been extremely impressed with Brett's efforts recently. They are seeing huge improvements in his form and they expect that his times will start dropping significantly soon. Unfortunately, I don't think it will be this weekend...

100 Free - Seed Time 1:17.50 - his kick here has definately improved, but I don't think he's capable of doing the flutter kick at a hard pace for a full 100. He just doesn't have the stamina yet with those muscles. I could however invision a personal best here.

50 Back - Seed Time 41.94 - again a huge improvement in form. Still needs to work on not overreaching with the arms to the point his hands reach above his head, thus lengthening the stroke and slowing it down. If he picks up the rotation of the arms, and attacks the walls he could drop a good bit of time. Even if he just swims the same way he's been doing it recently he could get a personal best. Ideally, if he could break 40.00 he'd be thrilled...

100 Breast - Seed Time 1:29.77 - not sure what to expect here. He dropped time at his last meet, just a few weeks ago, so not sure he'll better it this time around. If he isn't faster, he'll be upset, but honestly he has a long way to go in this one to get the state cut, so in the long run, it won't matter as long as he doesn't get upset if he posts a slower time.

100 IM - Seed Time 1:31.68 - Actually, Brett has swum this event faster than the seed time. In fact, his personal best coming in for year round meets is 1:28.53, and his best if you count Summer League is 1:26.35. This is where the coaches are expecting to see improvement first. Because his "other" strokes have gotten so much better, they expect to see this one drop due to improvements in the Back and Fly legs in particular. We'll see, I think Brett holds back a bit in this race to conserve energy, and until he starts racing from the gun, he'll continue to post similar times, even if he is doing it more efficiently. I do expect he should be the seed time, and there is a decent probability if he isn't too fatigued from the earlier races that he could also beat his year-round personal best, I don't however expect him to beat his Summer League time.

100 Fly - Seed Time NT - Brett like Bear in the last meet will be facing this race for the first time, and I can tell you he'll be stressed about it. He really isn't comfortable trying new races, especially in his weaker strokes. He swims 100 flys in practice regularly now and he does pretty well with it, but I expect he'll get DQed. There are 2 reasons for this...in practice when he swims fly, if things get crowded he'll switch to breast arms so he doesn't collide with anyone else...but this quick transition and the easy in which he makes it, leads me to believe he'll do it when he gets tired in the race at least once. Also like the last meet when he was DQed in the IM on the fly leg...we learned that the error occurred right at the wall when he did a short stroke and didn't get his arms above the water going into the wall. Also a bad habit that he could easily repeat. I'm not really concerned about these issues. When he gets bigger and stronger he'll be able to work through the first, and the more he swims fly the better he'll get at the second.

100 Back - Seed Time NT - another first time swim for Brett, and another one he'll be stress about. However, he swims a good bit of back in practice and other than being sloppy on the walls he's doing it pretty well, even if it isn't terribly fast. I don't expect a great time, as he'll probably go conservative in the race, but he should do fine. I am concerned he'll get sloppy on the walls and get DQed because he is too cavalier with them at practice, but if he does he does and hopefully he'll learn to tighten up his focus at practice as a result.

50 Breast - Seed Time 39.82 - interesting and important one here for Brett. He didn't beat his personal best at the last meet, and he will be racing the best of the Gold team. He need to be the top finishers for kids that will be 12 as of the end of February (when the State Meet falls) to help improve his chances of being on the relay team. It will be tight. Hopefully, we get a good dive and strong pull outs...

200 Free - Seed Time 2:47.61 - This is an event that Brett could improve on. He'll have to figure out how to best use his legs to get through a 200 and still provide some momentum, because he clearly won't be able to kick hard for all 8 laps. But his improved kick, strong upper body and better form still lead me to believe a personal best is well within reach.

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Bear

I tried to talk Bear into swimming the 500 free again at this meet. This time it would have been on Friday and it would have been the only thing he would have competed in for the day. I expect he would have done much better since he would not have been as fatigued going into the race, but he wasn't interested...

100 Free - Seeded 3rd (1:15.96) - Bear is seeded 3rd going into this race, behing 2 kids he practices with everyday. He'll want badly to beat them and he typically does well in his first few events (often to the detrement of the ones that come later in the day), so I could see a personal best here, though my guess is he still finishes no better than 3rd.

50 Back - Seeded 3rd (39.90) - Bear's back is coming along. He's still a little bit deliberate with the stroke, but the body position is better, and he's starting to pivot rather than sway, which is helping. Not sure what to expect here, because if he puts it together and really races it he could improve by a couple of seconds if he's still thinking to much, I'd expect only a slight improvement (assuming he has a good turn and stays out of the ropes).

50 Fly - Seeded 3rd (39.66) - very much like back it will all depend on if Bear trusts the new stroke and races it, or if he thinks about it too much...he's within half a second of 2nd place in this one. He could improve by a bunch or come in with a very similar time. My bet is a slight improvement.

100 IM - Seeded 4th (1:13.18) - like Brett, this really isn't his personal best. In year round swimming I have his best time as a 1:26.94 and for Summer League it is a 1:23.53. I don't think we'll touch that 1:23 time, though if he did he'd probably finish 2nd in this race. I do think something around his year round personal best is certainly possible. However, the key is his Breaststroke, which has slowed down considerably since long course/summer season, due to some technical changes in the way he swims it. He's still working through those...for him to get a PB he'll need to to swim the back half much better than the 48.29 from a few weeks ago (with most of that time being the Breaststroke leg).

50 Free - Seeded 3rd (34.31) - This is a key race for Bear as it has relay implications moving forward. He needs a strong swim here to create some cushion for the State Relay team. There are a bunch of kids crowded around Bear's time so this will be close. Hopefully, he gets his good start, because I know he'll work like the devil until he gets to the wall. I'm really hoping to start to see a drop in this time, just not sure if we'll see it yet or not. If practice is any indication he should, because Bear gives it all he's got everyday he's there...

100 Back - Seeded 3rd (1:27.71) - See the 50 back...same issues apply here. Really eager to see how this goes. Hoping he'll increase his stroke rate without sacrificing form or stroke length. If he does could be a big improvement, I don't think we are quite ready for this yet, so I'll guess a small increase.

50 Breast - Seeded 8th (49.46) - the seed time isn't actually a personal best...his best was in December of last year when he posted a 46.70. This slower time is from the Gold team...and it indicates the slower speed due to the change in technique. This is about 3 seconds off his best time from almost a year earlier. Increased size and strength should have created speed so the slower time is disappointing. Hopefully, he'll start to turn the corner and we'll see a drop...but I'm not convinced he's ready for that yet...

200 Free - Seeded 1st (2:40.98) - Bear is seeded 1st in this, which is exicting, but this is his last event of the weekend, and typically he's usual spent by this point in time, so I'd be surprised if he actually posts a personal best in this and wins the event.

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Bailey

Bailey's event this time around could be quite funny...which is not something you typically think about when it comes to a swim meet. Here is the situation, in many of Bailey's events, the coach entered her with a seed time about 10 seconds slower than her personal best. This was done to hopefully prevent her from trying to race too hard and destroying her new form that she's been working on. Bailey is super competitive so I'm not sure how well this philosophy is going to work...but add to that the order, from the coach, that she is not to win any of her heats or else she'll have to sit out of practice for a week, and this could get down right comical. Even with Bailey's slow deliberate stroke to concentrate on form, she's passing many of the other slower swimmers at practice. I don't believe with this new stroke that she is 10 seconds slower than her best time, but she'll be racing people that are that slow. Not sure how she's going to lose these races...maybe she'll just hang on the walls during turns for an extended period of time. I can't wait to see how this plays out.

50 Back - Seed Time 40.38 - This time isn't far off her best...but because it is backstroke, as long as the form is good it shouldn't hurt her shoulder...this will be a key race. If her form is bad here, her weekend might be over. The coach isn't going to take any chances, and a bad form on the first race would be a red flag...

100 Breast - Seed Time 1:47.52 - This is 10 seconds slower...breast doesn't seem to bother the shoulder as bad, so she might have a hard time not racing this one. I'm also not sure that the coach would care on this stroke, as her form here is pretty good (Brett has a lot to do with that...)

50 Free - Seed Time 44.19 - This is also about 10 seconds slower than her best time. This is the other key race as it is the one stroke that she is really working to rebuild the fundamental on it. She has to focus on form, or I'm sure the coach will make her No Show for the rest of the meet...

100 Back - Seed Time 1:36.59 - 10+ seconds off her best time. I can see this one working out for her as she lazily strokes and glides through the race...

50 Breast - Seed Time 55.44 - 10 seconds...we'll see what happens here. As I said in the 100 Breast...coach might not be so strick with this stroke...

Breeze · 10-23-2012, 09:41 AM

Gold Invite Results

Bailey

Bailey had a very good meet and she did exactly what she needed to do, which was maintain form even in the face of competition. This was a huge step forward and hopefully, she'll get to start racing more moving forward.

50 Back - Her first race was quite entertaining. As I mentioned in the preview, she was under strict orders not to win her races, even if she was entered in a heat with swimmer that are typically 10 seconds slower than her time. In this case the difference was more like 5 seconds...but in a 50 yard race, 5 seconds is a lot of time. The race started and Bailey was well out in front off the blocks and through the underwater part of the race. She was very deliberate with her strokes, but she still finished first at the 25 yard turn. She was slopply with the turn, mostly because she was catching a peek at the other swimmers, but coming off the wall, she was still in first. From there she really shut it down, with long, lazy strokes. To give you a visual perspective, if you go to the Y and watch an older person swim back for exercise, then you've got a pretty good representation of Bailey coming home in the back half of her race. She ended up posting a 45.02.

100 Breast - Bailey asked and was given permission to race this event, due to the fact her Breast is pretty good technically and it doesn't hurt her shoulder. Her seed time was a 1:47.52, her actual personal best was a 1:37.52. She was strong through the stroke, she stayed low and pushed forward for the full 100. She finished with a personal best time of 1:35.90. I do think the excitment of getting to race helped...but this is very promising as she hasn't even been able to do full practices until just a few days prior to this race. Hopefully when she gets in better shape she'll be able to improve on he 50.38 back half split.

50 Free - This was the pivitol event for Bailey. She had to maintain her form...and she did. She looked very good, kicking hard and using long arms and keeping her wrists and shoulders in the correct position. She swam a 38.43. The interesting thing is that this is only 4 seconds off her personal best, with her approaching the race with the mindset to not go fast. I'm hopefully, this means the improved form will allow her to increase her speed once she is freed to race the stroke.

100 Back - Because Bailey's 50 back the first day was so good, she was given the permission to race the stroke as long as her form held. Which it did...she did pretty well. She was racing, but deliberately...She didn't come close to her personal best of 1:25.66, but her time of 1:29.9 was very good under the circumstances.

50 Breast - Bailey was also given the ability to race this event. Though she didn't remember that initially. After pullout, she took 3 very slow, very easy strokes...before she apparently remembered that she could race. She ended up posting a 46.51, which is ok, but not her best time of 45.44 and actually it is also slower than her opening 50 from the 100 Breast the day before which was a 45.52. I expect once she is in better shape, this time will drop a good bit...

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Brett

100 Free - Brett's improved form and kick is really starting to pay off, as he posted a personal bes time of 1:15.93...a second straight time drop in this event and this time he cut another 1.57 seconds. As good as this sounds, it easily could have been a lot better. Brett's turns were awful (that is a theme that will be repeated a good bit)...the worst was the turn at the 50 mark. He fliped so early, that he almost couldn't touch the wall to push off. He completely lost all of his momentum. That turn alone cost him at least 2 seconds, probably more. It is a terrible mistake for a kid that has been swimming year round as long as he has, but it is also one that he can quickly correct...so looking forward to see how much faster he might be moving forward.

50 Back - another personal best with a time improvement of .46 seconds and an overall time of 41.48. Again could have been better with better wall work. Flipped to his belly way to early and had to coast into the wall for the turn, and slowed down on the finish, but at least he didn't try to peek at the wall.

100 Breast - this was one of the few disappointments from the weekend. The 2 seconds Brett dropped in this even from the previous meet, he put back on this time. He finished with a 1:31.88...and the inability to generate enough force on the pullouts is killing him. We are planning to have him work with a coach this weekend on turns and pullouts...

100 IM - Brett improved on his time from the last meet by about 2 seconds posting a 1:29.71, but it wasn't a personal best. His fly, back and free look so much better I'm a bit surprised by the fact wasn't a best time, but I believe it was due to slow turns...

100 Fly - First time the kid has swum this event, so obviously it is a personal best. But the big news wasn't his time, but that he didn't panic about it. He simply got up, got in line and dove in when the race started. He posted a pedestrian 1:43.86...but he did it, and his form early was pretty good (before he fatigued). Also one of the best moments of the meet for me happened in this event. Another boy on Brett's team, Hunter, a big kid and a strong swimmer, was in the lane next to him. Obviously, he finished well before Brett, but as Brett was coming down on the last 25, every time he lifted his head to breathe, Hunter was cheering and urging him on. It was nice to see him get support from the better swimmers. (Oh, and he didn't get DQed as I predicted he would)

100 Back - the other first time event...and he again did it without any anxiety. He was a strong (for him) 1:29.77, and again it could have been much better...terrible walls. Same problems with flipping to the belly too soon for the flip, flipping to far from the wall, and then not finishing on the wall. In fact, his last stroke went over the wall and he ended up hitting the touchpad timer with his head. He easily could have been a couple seconds faster...

50 Breast - this was again disappointing. He came in .84 seconds slower than his personal best with a 40.66...

200 Free - I was really interested to see this race, because with his improved form, I really felt that he might drop several seconds. As it turns out he added 3...the problem was....you guessed it Turns. Also fatigue as this was his last race on the second day...2:50.81

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Bear

Bear did a nice job overall. He swam well with many personal bests, but...and this is going to sound bad I'm sure, but he lost several races to some kids he practices with Grant1 and Grant 2, and I really want him to beat these two. I don't tell him this, and I don't put pressure on him, but Bear works so much harder than they do at practice and I just want to see Bear get in that top relay team, and with both of these kids in front of him, he'll be hard pressed to make it...

100 Free - Bear finishes the event 5th overall with a personal best time of 1:14.04 and improvement of almost 2 seconds. Unfortunately, he lost to both of the Grants here. He was really racing Grant 2 the whole time as they were back and forth but he ended up being out touched by .12 seconds

50 Back - 6th overall...and a personal best of 39.23. He raced this better than he has recently, but he was still a bit deliberate. Also, he had an incident in practice where he cracked his head swimming back and messing up his wall count. Ever since, he's been very timid on the walls which is costing him time. (Lost to both Grants again).

50 Fly - 5th overall...this time it wasn't a personal best...40.38. Early his stroke looked good...late he seemed to get stuck with the arms and his head was too high...beat Grant 1, Grant 2 didn't swim it...

100 IM - 2nd overall...1:27.40, off his personal best by .5 seconds. Needs to charge the wall in the back, and get stronger in the Breast (though it didn't look bad in this race)...to get below his best time moving forward. Beat both the Grants bad in this one...

50 Free - 6th overall - personal best time of 33.57...finished 3rd for Gold swimmers, which is good but...still lost to Grant 2...

100 Back - Bear started feeling bad right before this race. He had an upset stomach and quite queezy. He still managed a personal best 1:25.23 and finished 4th overall.

50 Breast - Bear was still not feeling well in this one, and he swam a very slow 50.67. It is the first time he hasn't broken 50 in this stroke in a while. The coach told us not to worry about it. That he has just started getting the wide elbows that she's looking for, and she'll now work with him on the second part of the pull phase which should greatly improve his time. But we are still looking at a learning curve.

200 Free - Bear overcame his nausea to swim a personal best in a 200 yard race. I was very proud of the determination and effort. He posted a 2:40.47 and improved by .51 seconds. He finished 4th overall, but the only bad part is he lost to both Grants...

Breeze · 11-09-2012, 06:48 PM

Martha Bass Swim Meet @ Baylor Swim Club in Chattanooga TN

We have our only out of town meet this season in Tennessee this weekend. Bear has been swimming well in practice, Brett works real hard when he goes, but he hasn't wanted to go as frequently and I'm not fighting him at this point, and Bailey is still getting ramped up so we'll see how it goes. I'm not going to get into to much detail, but I did figure I'd at least give a high level overview...

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Bailey

50 Breast - Seeded 7th - 45.44 - she can move up here with a good swim. I haven't seen her really get this stroke going in a while and if she does she could drop some time here.

100 Back - Seeded 10th - 1:26.59 - only starting to learn correct arm strokes. Could mean a personal best if she puts it together.

50 Free - Seeded 11th - 34.19 - my bet is she's still too deliberate to go fast. Gotta maintain the correct stroke or she'll be yanked from the meet.

50 Back - Seeded 12th - 39.38 - see 100 back...

100 Breast - Seeded 4th - 1:35.90 - no shot to win, but could get 3rd or second with a good swim.

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Brett

50 Breast - Seeded 12th - 39.82 - didn't do well in this one last race. Would like to see a much stronger pullout this time. If he does, I can almost guarantee a personal best.

100 Back - 1:29.77 - starting to creep up on his siblings with his time.

50 Free - 34.38 - slowly getting the kick better and it is paying off a little bit at a time.

100 IM - 1:29.71 - with his improved strokes I hope he doesn't go out conservatively in order to save energy. He could really drop a bunch of time by racing this one hard.

200 IM - NT - he actually has a time here, just not sure what it is. I just hope he swims it without having a panic attack.

50 Back - 41.48 - got to increase the effort to go faster here...

100 Breast - 1:29.77 - pull out, pull out, pull out, pull out...those 4 items will make or brake the race for him. I'm not sure he can get much faster in the middle of pool (unless he gets a lot bigger before this weekend).

50 Fly - 43.92 - if he gets his butt up higher in the pull phase of the stroke he'll kick stronger. He's done it in short spirts...not really expecting it this weekend.

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Bear

100 Free - Seeded 7th - 1:14.03 - needs to work on gliding a bit more to maintain speed...

50 Breast - Seeded 11th - 49.46 - not really his best time, and this is still a work in progress so I doubt he get a PB here...

100 Back - Seeded 11th - 1:25.23 - man I hope he races this and isn't so tied up with his form...

200 Free - Seeded 9th - 2:40.47 - see 100 free and multiply it by 2...

200 IM - Seeded 6th - 3:06.64 - will bust his butt in this one, but I believe he'll be pretty fatigued from the 200 free and I don't expect a good time.

50 Back - Seeded 12th - 39.23 - see 100 Back...

100 Breast - Seeded 11th - 1:46.29 - see 50 Breast

50 Fly - seeded 12th - 39.66 - form is getting better, but I bet fatigue gets him here

Breeze · 11-15-2012, 05:05 PM

Martha Bass Swim Meet @ Baylor Swim Club in Chattanooga TN

It was a real good meet for the family. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to outline all 3 kids results right now, so I'm going to do them one at a time...
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Bailey

50 Breast - Seeded 7th - 45.44 - Bailey looked strong in this race, as she got a great pullout and was moving good through the water, keeping the momentum forward rather than up and down. She was seeded 7th, she finished 6th and was just .3 from 5th...She swam a personal best time of 44.95

100 Back - Seeded 10th - 1:26.59 - looked good in this race early...late she seemed to run out of gas and I still think this is due to not having been with the team from the beginning of the season, and some of it is she isn't working hard enough at practice. She finished 12th, but she also posted a personal best time of 1:26.02.

50 Free - Seeded 11th - 34.19 - Bailey's personal best is actually a 33.96, which was swum in October of last year before she really started ingraining the bad left arm in her freestyle. The 34.19 seed time was right before the state championships in February of this year...this race she swam a 34.65. This was accomplished even with her really focusing on keeping the stroke clean. I expect we could see a real drop in this time soon if she can make the new stroke more muscle memory and allow herself to focus on racing not form.

50 Back - Seeded 12th - 39.38 - looks good like the 100 Back, but unlike the 100, she didn't run out of gas and she posted a personal best 38.25, which is over a full second improvement. Not bad considering she is relearning the arm portions of this stroke.

100 Breast - Seeded 4th - 1:35.90 - The seed time is her personal best and it was swum in her first meet with Chattahoochee Gold in mid October...she improved on it here, and she improved by 1.13 seconds, posting a personal best 1:34.77

50 Fly - Deck Entered - The coach has been very pleased with Bailey's efforts and she rewarded her by allowing her to swim in the 50 fly. She was under orders to maintain form over racing but she got to do both. The girl next to her in the race had a good stroke and Bailey raced her as best she could without risking breaking from. She posted a very respectible 38.16, her personal best was at SA time trials earlier this fall, but a great time that could lead to much better ones down the road.

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Breeze · 11-16-2012, 02:39 PM

Brett

50 Breast - Seeded 12th - 39.82 - Brett looked good in this race, he really pushed (pulled) through and he managed to tie his personal best time 39.82. This was good because the last time he raced his time was slower by a good bit. This helped get his confidence up for the meet.

100 Back - 1:29.77 - still progressing nicely. Swam another personal best time of 1:28.57, and after watching his video last night he said, man I need to move my arms faster (exactly what I've been saying for weeks), hopefully because he saw it himself it will sink in and he'll actually do it. If so, I could see 3 seconds falling off of this time the next time he swims it.

50 Free - 34.38 - This event was a turning point for Brett. He swam poorly in this one, coming in 1.3 seconds slower (35.68)than his seed time. He was expecting a big improvement and when he didn't swim well he was ready to quit for the day. He was very upset and he didn't want to do his 100 IM, which was almost immediately after his 50 free...

100 IM - 1:29.71 - He complained, begged, whined and argued about swimming this one, all because he was so disappointed in his time and he's comparing his times to the other 12 years olds and he feels he pales in comparison...but we convencied him to tell his coach he didn't want to swim this and his coach told him, he didn't care, he was going to swim it - so he got in line. He didn't do well, again coming in just under 1 second slower (1:30.66), but at least he swam it.

200 IM - NT - my statement in the initial write up that he had a 200 IM time may not have been accurate. I know he swam it long course, but maybe he didn't swim it short course because my quick search on USA swimming didn't turn anything up. Regardless, his improved strokes looked real good in this one and he was pretty strong throughout the race. He opened with a 43.15 fly, not an awesome time, but at this point it was the 2nd fastest 50 fly he had ever swum, and he still had 150 more yards to race...His back was a respectible 46.31...he was very disappointed in his breast leg which was a 50.02 (I think because he used the stroke to catch his breath for the finish), and he finished the free in a 41.23. All in all he swam a 3:00.71 time and a personal best. It probably doesn't sound that great, but at the time it was good enough to be Bear's 200 IM time from a month ago by 6 full seconds. That is a huge accomplishment for Brett and it illustrates how much better his "other" strokes are getting.

50 Back - 41.48 - slightly slower time of 41.53 - I believe because he wasn't fully recovered from the 200 IM

100 Breast - 1:29.77 - really tried to sprint this for the full 100 and he improved his best time by 1.17 seconds posting a 1:28.60. Did better on pullouts, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.

50 Fly - 43.92 - Brett's goal on his back and fly is to be sub 40 right now, and based on his time in the 200 IM, I felt he might challenge it. When this race started he was scooting along doing pretty well. He tried not to breath to much so he could stay high in the water. At the turn it looked like he might be able to do it. However, in the last 3rd of the pool he had to breath several times and it slowed him down. He touched the wall and the final time was...40.01. A personal best and a huge improvement. Plus a real motivator for next time.

Breeze · 11-19-2012, 08:14 AM

Bear

100 Free - Seeded 7th - 1:14.03 - Bear was very strong in this race, got out with a 34.87 came home with a 37.03...finished with a personal best 1:11.90 and an improvement of 2.13 seconds. He also finished 4th overall and beat the top Gold 100 yard swimmer in his age group.

50 Breast - Seeded 11th - 49.46 - The new stroke is starting to come around. He posted an improved time of 47.21 and finished 7th overall. 46.70 is actually his personal best, but this was his 2nd fastest time every, and an improvement of a couple of seconds over what he had been swimming with Chattahoochee Gold.

100 Back - Seeded 11th - 1:25.23 - I talked to him a little before this race and told him he had to be more aggressive going into the walls. I told him by slowing down inside the flags it was taking him too many strokes to get back to full speed and it was killing his times. As expected Bear sucked it up, and went hard in and out of the walls...and it paid off. Personal best time of 1:24.42, finished 7th overall

200 Free - Seeded 9th - 2:40.47 - Again Bear swam well in the longer freestyle event. He got out with a 36.04 opening 50, then coasted to a 40.68 2nd, and a 40:48 3rd, closing with a good 38.95. Ending with a personal best 2:36.11 and improving by 4.36 seconds. He finished 5th overall and again just edged out the top freestyler on the team. As good as this swim was, his coach wants more effort in the middle 100. She want all splits to be below 40 seconds (and will push to sub 39 by the state meet in February). Bear did earn a Southeastern state cut here, but it appears to be only Tennessee related so he won't be able to take advantage of it...

200 IM - Seeded 6th - 3:06.64 - This was probably the most exciting race of the weekend for me. Bear was right next to the top dog (same one he beat in both the freestyles listed above) and the two of them flat raced each other the entire way...best way to illustrate this is to show you the splits...

50 Fly
Bear - 39.57
Jack - 39.80

50 Back
Bear - 1:22.44 (42.87) - note Bear has a poor back to breast turn which hurt his time
Jack - 1:22.49 (42.69)

50 Breast
Bear - 2:14.98 (52.54)
Jack - 2:15.93 (53.44)

50 Free
Bear - 2:52.71 (37.73)
Jack - 2:52.40 (36.47)

Bear finished 5th overall...and his time was a personal best and an improvement of 14+ seconds...

Bear earned a Southeasten Cut time here too...

50 Back - Seeded 12th - 39.23 - The more aggressive walls helped out here again. Posted a personal best time of 38.64, finished 11th overall.

100 Breast - Seeded 11th - 1:46.29 - The improved breaststroke really showed up here...he swam th e opening 50 in 48.35 and closed with a 49.99, overall it was a personal best time of 1:38.34, and he was able to finish 7th.

50 Fly - seeded 12th - 39.66 - finally all the effort of the weekend catches up to Bear and he isn't able to post a personal best. He gets a time of 40.83...not significantly off his typical time. He still has a hitch at the bottom of his stroke that needs to get worked out. The coach is planning to work with him in an extra practice on Tuesday (11/20)...

Note: For his efforts, Bear was named the Chattahoochee Gold, Gold Level Team's Swimmer of the Meet Award Winner...

Breeze · 11-26-2012, 01:21 PM

Lanier Aquatics Winter Invite - Gainesville, Ga, 11/30 - 12/2

There is a meet this weekend, but only Brett is invited this time. It is a big meet because it runs as a prelim / finals, which is the same format as the state meet, and is rare for most events. Brett will be swimming the following...

50 Free
100 Fly
50 Breast
100 Free
100 Breast
100 IM

Not much to report on these races, and since I'm going to be in Jacksonville setting up a remote office this week, I won't have much time to get into details. I'll update the results next week...

Breeze · 11-27-2012, 06:41 AM

Lanier Aquatics Winter Invite - Gainesville, Ga, 11/30 - 12/2

Quick update: This meet will also feature relays, and we were hopeful that Brett would be in one. Unfortunately, there are only 3 11/12 boys going to the meet. I have raised the possibility of Bear swimming just the relays to give them a 4th, but I don't think it is going to fly. This is very disappointing to me, as swimming in a relay for Gold would have been a big boost to Brett's self confidence and motivation...

Breeze · 12-10-2012, 08:28 AM

Lanier Aquatics Winter Invite - Gainesville, Ga, 11/30 - 12/2

Below are the results of Brett's meet. I have to admit, I can't comment in detail on his immediate reactions after his races, because he didn't sit with me during the meet. I could only see the expressions on his face and body language...

This event was a split into preliminaries that were held each morning and then A finals for the top 8 times and B finals for 9-16...were swum about 5 hours later...

Day 1

50 Free - Started off the meet, and for the second straight time he hasn't improved on this race. He posted a time in the same general area of his personal best 34.38 with a 35.04, but he didn't seem happy. He is working hard in improving his free kick and I know he feels he should be faster at this point.

100 Fly - Brett's fly has been improving dramatically at practice. His coaches have been telling him for weeks that he's getting so much stronger at this stroke and that they could see him being a really strong butterflyer by the time he's fully grown. I believe this reinforcement was instrumental in the fact that he didn't get too uptight prior to this race. He entered with a personal best time of 1:43.86...he finished with a time of 1:35.82...a huge improvement a personal best and it earned him a spot in the B finals later that evening.

50 Breast - Brett's breast looked strong as he really worked hard through the stroke. He was a little quick to come out of his pullouts, but he posted a 39.50, bettering his personal best by .32, and earning a spot in the A final...

-------------------------------------------------------------

Day 1 - FINALS

100 Fly - Didn't expect much here. As the two session schedule really takes a lot out of kids and especially smaller kids like Brett...However, he attacked the 100 fly again, and he not only posted another good time, he posted another personal best, and he didn't just improve on the personal best from the morning, he destroyed that time finishing with a 1:31.56

50 Breast - Brett's breast suffered from the morning session as he posted a time of 40.47. He was disappointed, but the coach told him not to worry about it. That he was tired and needed to go home and get some rest, and that he had gotten off to a great start.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Day 2

100 Breast - Came in with a personal best of 1:28.60, finished with a time of 1:26.92 and was 6th overall, earning a spot in the A final

100 Free - looks good early, really fades late. Finishes with a 1:16.33, about .4 slower than he personal best...

100 IM - With his improved fly and back, I keep expecting a big drop here...and his fly and back looked strong in this race. His year round personal best in this event was a 1:29.71...(though he's been much faster in Summer League)...and he posted a 1:25.99 in this race for another personal best. Unfortunately, he was only an alternate for the B final....

-------------------------------------------------------------

Day 2 - FINALS

100 Breast - The efforts of the last two days really came down on Brett hard. He swam well, and in fact, was pretty much in the same relationship during the race with the kids that finished around him in preliminaries, but he was slower (as were all the other kids in his heat) and he posted a time of 1:29.43, well off of his morning time.

-------------------------------------------------------------

All the coaches were extremely complementary of Brett...and they keep encouraging him to work hard and assuring him that once he grows he'll be beating most of the kids that are currently faster than he is because they are bigger and stronger...

Breeze · 12-11-2012, 09:39 AM

General Update

We have another swim meet this weekend and it is a Gold Team hosted one...which makes it big. This meet could go a long way for determining who are swimming in the relays at State. Unfortunately, Bear is home from school today with a stomach bug, and Brett missed practice yesterday for the same reason (though he appears to be better today). Hopefully, this doesn't sap them of energy and we can have a good showing.

Also more sad news on Bailey's SA friend Lexi. I'm not sure where things were when I last updated her health. I believe she was about to have a second surgery on her knee (the one that was operated on first). That operation went fine and she was starting to practice again, when she managed to step off a curb awkwardly and broke her ankle. Then a few weeks later, she got her finger stuck in the chain of a swing when someone was on it, and it broke. Now we've learned that her 2nd knee will also require a 2nd surgery. The doctors are already talking about needing to do knee replacements when she is in her 20s...

I'll update the event list for this weekend soon...

Breeze · 12-12-2012, 08:27 AM

General Update

Brett received the practice award for the swimmer putting forth the most effort over the last week...

Bear got the hardest worker award for dry land practice...

Breeze · 12-12-2012, 08:33 AM

South Pole Meet @ Cumming Aquatic Center - 12/15-12/16

Bailey

200 Freestyle - 2:52.54 - seeded 8th. Hasn't swum this in a very long time. The time posted goes back to around February of last year. I expect she'll improve on this...

100 IM - 1:25.20 - seeded 7th. I could see an improvement in this race, as she's been working harder in practice and her stamina should be better, but I don't expect much of an improvement.

50 Butterfly - 38.16 - Seeded 8th. Bailey's best time is in the low 37s, so I expect her to beat her seed time. Especially given that she has been cleared to race everything now.

100 Breaststroke - 1:34.77 - Seeded 5th. Bailey can be the fastest Gold Girl with a good swim.

100 Freestyle - 1:16.49 - Seeded 10th. Another old time as she wasn't allowed to swim the event because of her injury. I expect she'll beat this by a good bit...

50 Breast - 44.95 - Seeded 10th...Big race here for Bailey, as she's the first seed for Gold 10U girls, but the second seed is only .7 seconds back...if she can beat the other girl it will put her in line to be the Breaststroker on the A relay at state.

100 Butterfly - NT - is there any better indication that she's been cleared to race everything than seeing she'll swim the 100 fly for the first time? She could beat Bear's time if she doesn't run out of gas...

200 IM - NT - first time swim for Bailey...she'll do well, but I'm betting fatigue grabs here before it is over and she won't beat Bear's time (not really surprising), but she might not beat Brett's either...we'll see...

Bear

200 Freestyle - 2:36.11 - Seeeded 5th. Had a big improvement here in his last meet, not sure he can do it again. Especially given the stomach bug this week.

100 IM - 1:27.40 - Seeded 4th. I expect an improvement here, as long as he is healthy and not worn out from the 200 Free. He should be a good bit faster than Bailey at this point, so I could see him posting a time in the 1:23.xx range...

50 Backstroke - 38.64 - Seeded 4th. With strong turns could post a personal best. He got out of the conservative, let's don't bang our head into the wall type turns in the last meet...if he carries it over it will help.

50 Freestyle - 33.57 - Seeded 5th. A big race for Bear...he's seeded 4th for Gold Swim Club and he needs to stay in the top 4 to be on the A free relay at state.

100 Backstroke - 1:24.42 - Seeded 6th. Good turns and this time drops...a good bit.

100 Fly - 1:31.34 - Seeded 5th. Depends on strength and if he can maintain form. Last time he swam this, he had to catch is breath on the 75 yard turn. If he can keep from doing that, he should drop time.

200 IM - 2:52.71 - Seeded 2nd...the kid seeded ahead of him is the same kid he raced stroke for stroke with at the Martha Bass meet last month. Bear only trails him by .3 seconds. He could win this outright with a good swim.

500 Freestyle - 7:10.17 - Seeded 6th. - Not sure his time improves after he'll swim a tough 200 IM...but I won't count him out either...

Brett

200 Freestyle - 2:47.61 - Seeded 9th. Hard to get a measure on this one. Brett's kicking has gotten better, and in general his freestyle is better, but in the last few freestyle races he hasn't posted a personal best. My bet is here, he won't either...just not sure where the disconnect in speed is...

200 Backstroke - NT - First time swimming this event. No idea what sort of time he'll post...

200 Breaststroke - NT - This isn't the first time Brett has swum the event. His personal best is 3:17.XX from last year around this time. And that time would be good enough for 2nd Seed. I expect he'll do much better than his best time, given that he's been improving on the shorter breast swims and he seems to do better in the longer ones...

100 Butterfly - 1:31.56 - Seeded 8th...I can't believe he's seeded 8th in the fly. I'm so proud of how hard he's worked on this. He probably won't post a personal best given that he just got that time 2 weeks ago...and it was such a HUGE improvement at the time...

100 Freestyle - 1:15.93 - Seeded 22nd. Brett will really want to go fast here to keep his time better than Bailey's, we'll see if he can start improving on the freestyle again...

100 Backstroke - 1:28.57 - Seeded 15th. If he can increase his arm rotation, he'll improve his time. Form is solid, so just need to go harder...

Breeze · 12-14-2012, 09:58 AM

South Pole Meet @ Cumming Aquatic Center 12/15 - 12/16

Quick Update...

The schedule of events was released and we found out that Bear is scheduled to be in the last 200 IM and the first 500 Free with only 25 Frees in between. That means he'll finish the 200 IM and then swim the 500 Free about 15 minutes later...

The coach admitted she messed up. He was only supposed to be in 1 of the 2 races, but she's going to let it ride if she can, because she's interested to see how he handles it.

At least he should be extremely tired Sunday evening so I shouldn't have any problems with him wanting to go to bed...

Breeze · 12-15-2012, 11:00 PM

oh the emotions of swimming...wow...I'm worn out, and it's only the first day of the meet...

Breeze · 12-17-2012, 11:32 AM

South Pole Meet Results

Bailey

Day 1

200 Free - This was the first time Bailey swam the 200 Free since being released from restrictions due to the shoulder injury. Her best time coming in wasn't her seed time of 2:52.54, but it was 2:50.82 swum in January of 2012, so I expected an improvement, and I got one. She posted a personal best time of 2:44.23. She looked good but I think she conserved her energy a bit too much...here are her splits:

38.20
41.37 (1:19.57)
43.47 (2:03.04)
41.19 (2:44.23)

I think she'll be able to improve on this one next time she swims it (more on that later)...

100 IM - it was way back in Februrary the last time Bailey swam a 100 IM in a year round event, so she was able to improve again, posting a personal best time of 1:22.96. Her fly looked very strong but a poor dive...way too deep, ended up costing her some time. The splits...

Fly/Back - 38.67 (10th fastest opening 50)
Breast/Free - 44.29 (4th fastest closting 50)...a bit surprising given I felt she'd falter due to fatigue and her breast isn't in peak form right now.

50 Fly - Bailey's fly, while different from what it was with regards to technique is once again looking really strong. She improved on her personal best time by almost a second and a half posting a 36.57.

100 Breast - swimming is such a funny sport, especially for growing kids. One day they can really have a stroke going well and then a month later that stroke is so far off you're amazed...that's the case here. In November she sway a great 1:34.77, this time she managed just a 1:37.36. Something isn't quite right, so I'm sure there will be some tweaking taking place in practice for the next couple of weeks. I will say after watching the video, her breat in the IM was much stronger than her 100 breast (may have been trying to hard, which cost her in form)

Day 2

100 Free - This time Bailey's freestyle from the very beginning looked strong. The dominating kick was back, and her pull was significantly better. She got in a good body position and moved well through the water. Fatigue did catch her here, as she opened with a 33.54 (4th at the turn), and closed with a 38.17, ended up 7th...and the back half split was 8th...final time was 1:11.71 (the strength of this swim leads me to believe there is more speed for her in this stroke if she can maintain her form.

50 Breast - after talking with the coach on day 1, Bailey tried to clean up her stroke a bit. It still wasn't sharp, but the body position was good and the effort was there. She managed a personal best 44.35.

100 Fly - Bailey was very concerned about swimming this for the first time. She started off good, but she ended up swallowing water and she stopped. However, after catching her breath the started off again and nearly won her heat, posting a time of 1:26.91, losing by only .6 of a second. To futher explain how well Bailey swam her, the girl she nearly beat in her heat finished 2nd overall, and the girl that won the event was actually 11 (she turned 11 on the second day of the meet, giving her the right to swim as a 10 year old). Had she not stopped, she would have probably finished with around a 1:24.xx time, or better (though to get started in fly from the middle of the pool with no momentum). Unfortunately, the time doesn't count as she was DQed for stopping...

200 IM - following the problem in the 100 fly, Bailey was concerned about this race as well. But the fly leg went good, and from there she was solid...here are the splits

Fly - 38.40 (5th)
Back - 45.71 (1:27.82) (6th)
Brst - 51.57 (2:15.68) (4th)
Free - 39.09 (2:54.77) (4th)

Overall she finished 5th...

So 8 swims, 6 personal bests, 1 decline, and 1 DQ...

Breeze · 12-18-2012, 11:44 AM

South Pole Meet Results

Bear

Day 1

200 Free - came in with a 2:36.11, finished with a personal best 2:35.48. His freestyle is looking much stronger now that he has added a bit of a glide to the stroke. Splits were:

35.95
39.45 (1:13.59)
40.18 (1:55.88)
39.90 (2:35.48)

100 IM - In this race Bear was right next to his friend on the team that just out-touched him in the 200 IM in the meet in Tennessee. This time they were practically even at the first turn...but Bear opened about a half second lead in the back. Then in the turn to the breast, Jack tried to do a bucket turn, but wasn't close enough to the wall and he fell a couple of body length's back. Bear swam a strong Breast, and finsihed strong to post a personal best 1:23.80...his fly/back split was 38.75, the breast/free split was 45.05.

50 Back - Bear got a terrible start, late off the wall, and really really deep (the kid really likes the underwater work, and he's strong with it, but in this case he over did it badly). This put him behind. Then to make matters worse, he botched his turn...he ended up off on his count and was on the wrong arm when he flipped...ultimately he posted a 39.77...

50 Free - Bear closed with a strong 50 free, dropping his time over a full second to 32.46...

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Day 2

100 Back - again another bad, start. Slow and deep, costs him. The first couple of turns were good, the 3rd was horrible...and it costs him in time as well, but even with all that his improved form and strength shine through with a personal best 1:22.00

100 Fly - Bear and Jack were right next to each other again, and again they really pushed each other. Bear had the lead at the 50 by just over .2 seconds swimming a 40.92, but in the back half Jack closed hard in the last 25 and beat Bear by .6...Bear posted a personal best 1:26.59

200 IM - This event was a little irriating to me. The coach really wanted Bear to focus on the 500 free (and as I mentioned in the pre-race write up it was only going to be about 15 minutes after the 200), and so she told him to just swim the event easy. My thought was, either have him not swim or swim hard. By swimming easy all he'll do is race a 200 at a moderate rate, still fatigue his muscles and adversely impact his 500...he still managed to swim a 3:06.52...

500 Free - Bear started out fine, then went conservative, then really picked it up. Here are his splits...

37.14
41.42 (1:18.56)
41.82 (2:00.38)
40.98 (2:41.36)
41.63 (3:22.99)
41.56 (4:04.55)
40.02 (4:44.57)
39.51 (5:24.08)
39.74 (6:03.82)
37.83 (6:41.65)

The most amazing thing to me is that he did this 15 minutes after swimming a 200 IM and his last 200 of this 500, he swam in 2:37.10...his opening 200 was 2:41.36, and his 200 Free time from day 1 was 2:35.48...he swam the last 200 only about 1.5 seconds slower than his 1st event on the 1st day...

Edit to note: Also this is an improvement of almost 30 seconds...

So 8 swims, 6 Personal Bests, 1 drop, and 1 coaches decision to coast

Breeze · 12-19-2012, 04:18 PM

South Pole Meet Results

Brett

Day 1

200 Free - I know I've said this before, that the coaches have told Brett his hard work was about to start paying off. And they were right. Brett came into this event with a 2:47.61...and left with a 2:34.09...that is faster than both Bailey and Bear. This was a HUGE improvement (@13.5 seconds) and he left the pool completely pumped up. He ran over to his coach with a beaming smile on his face. He actually managed to finish 8th out of 47 swimmer...in a freestyle event. His splits...

36.07
39.46 (1:15.99)
40.01 (1:55.54)
38.16 (2:34.59)

The real cool thing was, for the first time in a long time, I saw Brett race the stroke. Brett wanted to beat the kid next to him, and he did it...he trailed early, but held on and out worked him in the last 50. That was good to see...

Also it was good to see that the opening 100 for this race 1:15.99 was almost exactly the same as Brett's best 100 free time coming into this meet 1:15.93, which led me to believe he'd have a very good 100 Free later...

200 Back - a first time every swim for Brett, and he looked good. Actually, he looked better in the long back than the sprint backs because his long deliberate stroke looks more at home...he did the following splits...

42.79
45.80 (1:28.94)
44.97 (2:13.56)
44.57 (2:58.13)

I was pleased he broke 3 minutes. He managed to finish 11th out of 25, which isn't terrible either, especially for a kid that hated backstroke not that long ago. In fact, as recently as October he set a personal best in the 50 back with a 42.77...and when you look at his splits for a whole 200 it becomes pretty obvious how much better he's gotten and how quickly.

200 Breast - Brett was seeded high in this event, and was pumped up for it. When the race started he was quickly into 2nd place, behind a kid that was about 2x his size. Brett trailed early, but by the 75 turn he was beginning to close, only to fall behind again coming off the walls. This process continued until the 150 turn, where Brett was able to stay closer, he then took the lead at the 175 turn and pulled away down the stretch. He posted a solid 3:03.xx. This ended up begin good enough to win the event initially. Which was Brett's first ever outright win in a year round event. He was pumped. However, he was once again DQed for 1 hand touch on the last turn. In the video it looks like he may have anticipated the touch, and done a pitter patter rather than 2 hands simultaneously. This is aggrevating to me, and heart breaking to Brett.

However, interestingly Brett's victory would have only lasted 24 hours. The next day during a 200 Race, they allowed a swimmer to do the 200 Breast, and he beat Brett's time. Not sure what that was about (other than allowing the kid to get a cut time for State), but because it didn't impact Brett I didn't pursue it.

100 Fly - Brett scratched. He was too upset over the DQ to race. His energy was sapped and he was crushed. He wasn't with me, and it wasn't my decision to allow it. He was sitting with the coaches. He had to do a punishment swim for the scrach on Monday, but in all honesty that was probably for the best...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

100 Free - Brett's strong 200 translated to a strong 100 and he opened with a 34.43 (personal best in a 50 free is 34.38) and he closed with a 37.4 to finish with a personal best 1:11.85 and a 4 second improvement. Again the pumped up feeling from yesterday returned...

100 Back - The strong efforts from Saturday returned and Brett improved by 4.5 seconds posting a 1:24.03, and he left some time in the pool by gliding to far on each of the turns...

100 Breast - DECK ENTERED - after the DQ in the 200 Breast, the coach had us put him in the 100 to get his confidence back. He almost missed the race because he was confused by the lane timer as to whether he was supposed to be there or not. He ended up jumping up on the blocks and diving in almost immediately. He finished 6th overall with a personal best time of 1:26.58.

50 Fly - After the strong 100 fly performances just a few weeks ago, I hoped this would show major improvement, and it did...about 1.6 seconds of improvement and in a 50 that can be a bunch. He finished with a personal best time of 38.41.

So he ended up with 6 PB, 1 DQ, and 1 Scratch

Breeze · 12-19-2012, 04:22 PM

I'll try to get some video to a dropbox account in case anyone would like to see some of the races...

I'll also try to take some time to update personal bests and where they stand for cut times...

Breeze · 12-24-2012, 07:40 AM

General Update

Bear has bronchitis, and is having to do breathing treatments twice a day and an inhaler twice a day. He missed a couple of practices and will probably miss a couple more.

Breeze · 12-24-2012, 11:12 AM

Official Short Course Personal Bests - 2012

Brett

50 Free - 34.38
100 Free - 1:11.85
200 Free - 2:34.09
500 Free - NT
50 Back - 41.48
100 Back - 1:24.03
200 Back - 2:58.13
50 Brst - 39.50
100 Brst - 1:26.58
200 Brst - 3:17.53
50 BFly - 38.41
100 BFly - 1:31.56
200 BFly - NT
100 IM - 1:25.99
200 IM - 3:00.71
400 IM - NT

------------------------------------------------------------

Bailey

50 Free - 33.96
100 Free - 1:11.71
200 Free - 2:44.53
500 Free - NT
50 Back - 38.25
100 Back - 1:25.66
200 Back - NT
50 Brst - 44.34
100 Brst - 1:34.77
200 Brst - NT
50 BFly - 36.57
100 BFly - NT
200 BFly - NT
100 IM - 1:22.96
200 IM - 2:54.77
400 IM - NT

-------------------------------------------------------

Bear

50 Free - 32.46
100 Free - 1:11.90
200 Free - 2:35.48
500 Free - 6:41.65
50 Back - 38.64
100 Back - 1:22.00
200 Back - NT
50 Brst - 46.70
100 Brst - 1:38.34
200 Brst - NT
50 BFly - 39.66
100 BFly - 1:26.59
200 BFly - NT
100 IM - 1:23.80
200 IM - 2:52.71
400 IM - NT

Breeze · 12-24-2012, 11:33 AM

2012 Gold Team - Short Course Update

The team updated the season's top 10 times on 12/10, I have added in my kids times from the 15th and here are where they stand...

Bailey

50 Free - 7th
100 Free - 4th
200 Free - 6th
50 Back - 4th
100 Back - 6th
50 Brst - 3rd
100 Brst - 2nd
50 Bfly - 3rd
100 IM - 3rd
200 IM - 3rd

-----------------------------------------------------

Bear

50 Free - 2nd
100 Free - 3rd
200 Free - 3rd
500 Free - 2nd
50 Back - 6th
100 Back - 4th
50 Brst - 4th
100 Brst - 3rd
50 Bfly - 2nd
100 IM - 1st
200 IM - 2nd

--------------------------------------------------------------

Brett

50 Brst - 6th
100 Brst - 6th
200 Brst - 3rd

Breeze · 12-24-2012, 11:48 AM

2013 Eastern Sectional Time Standards

With Bailey and Bear having qualified for State in virtually all the events, the drama associated with the state cuts is gone. So I'm now posting the Sectional Cuts. We still have a ways to go to get there, with only 3 events left to post times, but it is worth watching...

Girls

50 Free - 31.09
100 Free - 1:09.09
200 Free - 2:29.09
500 Free - 6:31.39

50 Back - 36.39
100 Back - 1:18.29

50 Breast - 40.09
100 Breast - 1:28.29

50 Fly - 35.29
100 Fly - 1:21.59

100 IM - 1:19.29
200 IM - 2:48.19

----------------------------------------------

Boys

50 Free - 30.69
100 Free - 1:07.69
200 Free - 2:25.59
500 Free - 6:36.19

50 Back - 36.69
100 Back - 1:18.09

50 Breast - 40.59
100 Breast - 1:28.99

50 Fly - 34.89
100 Fly - 1:20.79

100 IM - 1:18.09
200 IM - 2:47.69

Breeze · 12-24-2012, 11:53 AM

2012 Georgia Short Course State Cut Times

Brett has shown significant improvement this year but he still has a long way to go in order to get state cuts in everything but the Breaststroke. Here are the current cut times for Breast in the 12 year old age group:

50 Breast - 38.29
100 Breast - 1:22.99
200 Breats - 2:58.29*

*Note: Brett has this state cut already, by virtue of his swim in the Long Course State Championships last year.

Izulde · 12-24-2012, 11:56 AM

That's awesome to see all those PBs

Breeze · 12-24-2012, 01:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Izulde

That's awesome to see all those PBs

Yeah, I've needed to do a level set with updated information all in one place. It can get a bit confusing to remember everything...even with my write ups, and having it all in once place helps.

Breeze · 01-14-2013, 11:19 AM

SCAT Meet @ GA Tech 1/19 - 1/20

This is a prelim/finals meet for all the sub 100 yard events. So it is possible that the kids will swim dual sessions on both Saturday and Sunday.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Brett

100 Breast - Personal Best - 1:26.58 : State Cut - 1:22.99
It is pretty obvious Brett isn't going to get the state cut in this event. Too much time to drop in too short a period of time. However, He comes into this event seeded 11th, and the top 10 will make the A finals, and the boy in 10th has a .24 second faster seed time. and the boys in 9th and 8th are both around .75 faster coming in, so making the A final is a resonable goal. In Brett's last 4 races (only counting the prelims not the finals at the Gaineville meet) he's gone from a 1:31.88 to 1:28.60 to 1:26.92 to 1:26.58...so he's improved a bunch in the this event this season.

50 Free - Personal Best - 34.38
Continuing to improve with is freestyle as his kick slowly improves. He's not going to get anywhere near the top 20 to even make the B final, but he could improve on his time again.

500 Free - NT
This will be a first for Brett, as he swims a true distance event. I will be surprised if he doesn't do reasonably well here. My bet is he goes very conservative with is effort (his history says he will) to make sure he'll have the energy needed to finish, but because he's never been good at kicking in freestyle his arms and shoulders are strong and typically in practice during long sets he tends to stay with the better swimmers. He won't place in the top 10 or anything, but it will be interesting to see where his time stacks up with Bears.

50 Backstroke - Personal Best - 41.48
Brett is seeded 15th in this event, and if you had told me he'd be anywhere close to that coming into this season I'd have told you that you were crazy. He legitimately should make the B final,he has no shot at A and it would take a terrible swim or some really great times by those behind him for him to get shut out of the B final.

200 Breaststroke - Personal Best - 3:17.53
The personal best listed above is a very old time. Brett swim a 3:03.xx but was DQed in his most recent meet. I'd expect he should get the 3:03 time again, which could get him to 11th overall...
--------------------------------------------------------------

Bailey

200 Free - Personal Best - 2:44.23 : Sectional Cut - 2:29.09
Just getting back into swimming Freestyle, Bailey has done a nice job of getting going again. She is seeded 9th here, and could easily get into the top 7 with a good swim. Top 5 is probably out of the question as she'd need about a 10 second drop to get there. Sectional cut is also out of the question, and honestly, this one isn't really reasonable to expect she'd be able to get there before then end of February.

100 IM - Personal Best - 1:22.96 : Sectional Cut - 1:19.29
Bailey is seeded 9th here, and based on how they seed the events she should get a good lane for prelims with a couple of girls that are swimming in the 1:19 range, and she should also qualify for the A finals which will be a fast heat. If Bailey races this hard (which she usually does), she could get pulled to that Sectional Cut time. My bet though is she'll end up around a 1:20.5 time.

100 Back - Personal Best - 1:26.02 : Sectional Cut 1:18.29
Bailey's back is improving, but she still needs to get a better feel for the underwater stroke. Body position has improved greatly. I expect an improvement here, but I don't think she can swim the 1:22.xx that it will take to make the A final, so she'll probably be in the B final.

500 Free - NT
Like Brett this is a first time effort. Bailey doesn't do as well as the boys in the longer distance swims. She is more of a kicker than the boys and he tires out before the end of the race. I do think she could make the top 5 in this event, and she should get the state cut time of 7:20.99

200 IM - Personal Best - 2:54.77 : Sectional Cut 2:48.19
Bailey is seeded 4th overall here, and she's only raced this event 1 time. I'm hoping she has a better feel for what this race requires and she'll be able to just a bit harder. She could get a top 3 finish, and honestly I believe this Sectional Cut is within reach. 6 seconds seems like a bunch of time, and I don't expect her to get it, but it is doable.

100 Fly - NT : Sectional Cut 1:21.59
Bailey swam a 1:26.9x in the meet last month, but was DQed for stopping. I'm not sure how fast she'll actually be able to go if she doesn't stop, but I expect it will be in the top 10 and make the A final, as the 10th place person right now has a seed time of 1:32.59. My guess is she's looking at a 1:24.xx.

100 Breast - Personal Best 1:34.77 : Sectional Cut 1:28.89
Seeded 7th coming in, but she's still working on narrowing her kick to reduce drag. Given all the events she has in front of this one, I expect the form flaw and fatigue will cause her to not improve here.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Bear

200 Free - Personal Best - 2:35.48 : Sectional Cut - 2:25.59
Bear continues to improve in his freestyle events, especially the longer ones as he pushes himself through the pain to go harder and faster. I don't thik he can get to the Sectional Cut, but he's seeded 6th and I could see him getting a top 5 (2 of the kids in front of him turn 11 and age up after this meet).

100 IM - Personal Best 1:23.80 : Sectional Cut - 1:18.09
This is one event that Bear has not been as pleased with the results. While he's dropped time from a 1:27.xx earlier in the season, he sees where he's done better than that in the Summer and he wants to post better times in year round races. He worked in a private lesson on 1/13 on all of his strokes and also on his back to breast turn. The turn work could help a bunch. He comes in seeded 10th, and will have a hard time holding onto that spot in the top 10 unless he posts a strong swim, because the 11th and 12th swimmers are only .1 behind.

50 Fly - Personal Best 39.66 : Sectional Cut - 34.89
During the private lesson on Sunday the coach noted that Bear is "pulling himself to the surface" coming off of walls and at the start, which is causing his timing to be off as the water slows down the arm recovery. This ends up making his timing wrong for the entire race. This is worse in fly, and the coach feels if she can get this ironed out it could make a huged difference in his times. We'll see...

100 Back - Personal Best 1:22.00 : Sectional Cut - 1:18.09
Bear's personal best here comes from the meet last month, and in that race he had 1 terrible turn and 2 others that were mediocre at best. If he cleans those up, he'll improve by a couple of seconds. He seeded 9th, and a time of 1:20 might get him in the top 5, which is a good goal here.

200 IM - Personal Best 2:52.71 : Sectional Cut - 2:47.69
As good as Bear did here when he swam it in Chattanooga, I think he can do even better. He's getting stronger with all of his strokes and he pushes hard on the longer swims. He's seeded 4th, and might be able to get into the top 3...of course he could finish outside of the top 5 as well. Unfortunately, I don't think he can get to a 2:47.6 to get the sectional cut, but he wants one
bad, maybe he really drives through on this one because he feels it is in striking distance.

50 Back - Personal Best 38.64 : Sectional Cut - 36.69
Bear really should in my opinion be doing better here. He's had some bad starts recently, and poor turns turn that are killing him. I really think if he puts it all together he could challenge the Sectional Cut.

100 Breast - Personal Best 1:38.34 : Sectional Cut - 1:28.99
Seeded 10th in this one, and he's been really working hard on dropping the hands deeper in the water during the pull phase to get a better grab and more momentum with his upper body. Unfortunately, that also has thrown his timing off a bit. We'll see if he can get it all put together this weekend. He's seeded 10th. If he can make the A final, he will be doing really well.

100 Free - Personal Best 1:11.90 : Sectional Cut - 1:07.69
Seeded 9th, and could get all the way up to challenge for 5th with a good swim, but with fatigue from the weekend might also end up out of the top 10 and the A final

Breeze · 01-16-2013, 08:54 AM

General Updates

Recently, Emily and Lexi from Bailey's old Swim Atlanta group have moved over to join us at the Chattahoochee Gold pool. They appear to be really enjoying the change in philosophy, the extra coaching and the nicer facilities.

While Lexi has returned to the pool she is, like Bailey when she first started back after her injury, on a restricted workout regimine.

Bear took a private lesson over the weekend as I mentioned in the pre-event write up above. He took is follow up lesson last night, and the coach urged him to shallow out his dives and turns some as this appears to be the biggest drag on him getting to the surface with his timing in tact. He apparently did real well once he made the adjustment...hopefully it will translate to faster times this weekend.

Breeze · 01-21-2013, 10:36 AM

SCAT Meet @ GA Tech 1/19 - 1/20
--------------------------------------------------------------
Brett

Day 1

Brett and I got up at 6 on Saturday morning to get down to Tech for the meet, but when we arrived and walked into the natatorium there was a horrible smell. Apparently, Tech was changing out backup generators and failed to configure it correctly so exhaust poured into the building overnight. I’m sure you can imagine the burned oil smell. The meet start was delayed while they tried to ventilate the facility. After about an hour and half wait, they cancelled the morning session and moved it to the evening.

I took Brett home and stayed for a couple of hours before bringing the twins back for their afternoon session. This change in routine really through Brett for a loop (as he doesn’t do change well), and when it came time for Brett to leave for the evening session he was over it and not interested in going. He did go and here is how he did…

100 Breast - Personal Best - 1:26.58 : State Cut - 1:22.99
Brett’s start and initial pullout were good, but he didn’t seem completely into the race. He did ok, given his mindset and the fact the by the time the evening session rolled around he was pretty much through is medication for the day, so focus was an issue. He posted a 1:27.45…After this race, first thing he said to me was…”well, that sucked”…

50 Free - Personal Best - 34.38
Brett, his coach, and I were all hopeful for a decent size improvement here, but it didn’t happen. He did improve, but on marginally…34.21

500 Free - NT
This is the event I was the most eager to see…however, it was already after 10 PM when the 50 Freestyle races completed, and given that Brett had to get up at 6 on Sunday, his coach told him to scratch this event and go home to get some sleep….

Day 2

Sunday morning, and Brett got up and was ready to go. He was once again excited about racing…

50 Backstroke - Personal Best - 41.48
I have to admit that I missed this race. I can tell you that we discussed the fact that his coach had been urging him for some time now to increase his stroke rate. I told him that his form was good now, but that he really need to give the faster arms a try, and I made him understand that if it resulted in a poor time there was no harm, that he needed to start experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t so that he can lean to “race” the stroke better.

He apparently did based on his coach’s comments to him, but he still had a very poor finish, as he continues to not trust his stroke count coming into the wall. He did improve dramatically on his time, posting a personal best 39.52. He was extremely excited with this time because he has now gotten all of his strokes below 40 seconds (unfortunately, this excitement didn’t last very long – I’ll explain later)

200 Breaststroke - Personal Best - 3:17.53
Before this event, Brett and I discussed really focusing on the pullouts, as they continue to be a killer in his attempts to improve his time. He was going to try a bigger dolphin kick, and he was going to try to get an earlier grab on the water to increase his trust. He did a little better at it, and his stroke was still strong in the middle of the pool. As expected he got a personal best, but he also did much better than the DQ time from last month, getting a 3:01.41

--------------------------------------------------------------
Bear

Day 1

200 Free - Personal Best - 2:35.48 : Sectional Cut - 2:25.59
Bear started out looking very strong, in this event, he was next to the same kid he swam his great 500 Free against last month, and again he was working hard to stay with this kid (who will be 11 in a couple of weeks). He did extremely well, once again cutting a significant amount of time and getting a personal best 2:32.57

100 IM - Personal Best 1:23.80 : Sectional Cut - 1:18.09
Again, Bear fails to make significant improvement in this event. He does improve with a 1:23.16, but not the drop he wanted. Watching the race he looked good in all of his stroke, so I wasn’t sure where the problem was until…

50 Fly - Personal Best 39.66 : Sectional Cut - 34.89
This race started, and it became pretty clear that Bear’s transitional phase of his fly, and the adjustments to try and get his timing better were causing him to really struggle. He appeared to be thinking about the stroke too much and it was slowing him down considerably. The rest of his heat was leaving him well behind and he posted a pedestrian 41.27. He was extremely disappointed with this swim, but the coaches reassured him that his form was much better, and the speed would come. This slow fly also is undoubted the indicator of why his IM time didn’t improve any more than it did.

100 Back - Personal Best 1:22.00 : Sectional Cut - 1:18.09
Bear looked tired, or deflated in this race. He really was deliberate and almost disinterested. Not sure if this is a holdover from his sickness a few weeks back or a hangover from the bad fly swim. Regardless he again post a poor (for him) time of 1:25.67

Day 2

200 IM - Personal Best 2:52.71 : Sectional Cut - 2:47.69
As I mentioned in the pre-event write up, Bear views this event as 1 of his real shots to get a sectional cut. Unfortunately, given his slow fly, I expected he would not come close to his personal best time, and he didn’t. He posted a 2:59.97 way off of his personal best. In the race, Bear’s fly was slow and caused him to lose touch with the swimmers on either side of him, which removed, so some extent his ability to race the event. In comparing his splits from his personal best and this race, it appears that the fly is the biggest problem, but the sickness also has to be having some impact, as he failed to match his split on any of the strokes…

Code:

Personal Best		SCAT Meet
Bfly – 39.57		Bfly – 41.26
Back – 42.87		Back – 44.69
Brst – 52.54		Brst – 52.93
Free – 37.73		Free – 40.46

50 Back - Personal Best 38.64 : Sectional Cut - 36.69
Given the poor performance at the end of Saturday and in the 200 IM to start Sunday, this became a big event for Bear. He needed something positive or he might just shut it down…He improved…marginally, but he improved. He even found me in the stands and gave me a thumbs up from the water after the finish. Time – 38.27

100 Breast - Personal Best 1:38.34 : Sectional Cut - 1:28.99
Bear’s breast continues to look stronger, and he did post a personal best 1:37.02

100 Free - Personal Best 1:11.90 : Sectional Cut - 1:07.69
Bear again didn’t look strong here…which surprised me a bit, given his improvement in the 200 Free on Saturday. But it was the end of the meet for him, and I do believe he is still dealing with the almost 2 weeks of being out of the pool while he was sick. Time – 1:13.63

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bailey

Day 1

200 Free - Personal Best - 2:44.23 : Sectional Cut - 2:29.09
Bailey did improve in this event. She swam a strong race and dropped 6 seconds to a 2:38.66, and there is more time out there for her to drop. She is still learning how much she can push herself on the distance events, but again, I don’t think she’ll get anywhere close to the 2:29.09 number she’d need for sectionals.

100 IM - Personal Best - 1:22.96 : Sectional Cut - 1:19.29
Bailey’s improved fly, back and free really helped here as she posted another personal best time of 1:20.77. Her breaststroke has become a problem. She’s gotten sloppy with is, coming up high in the water with her head up, and her kick has gotten extremely wide and slow. We’ll be getting her some lessons to work on cleaning this up before State…

100 Back - Personal Best - 1:26.02 : Sectional Cut 1:18.29
The backstroke for Bailey has improved significantly. She’s gotten the hang of the correct arm motion and is now able to do it without thinking much about it, and her times are starting to reflect that. She still needs to get stronger with the pull phase, but her body position is allowing her strong kick to translate to speed and her pull is much improved. She posted a personal best time of 1:22.13

500 Free - NT
I almost screwed this race up for Bailey. I was interested in watching Bear’s back (which was right before Bailey’s 500 free), and typically, there is about a 10 minute break heading into the 500s, but this time there wasn’t – so I had to rush down to the pool deck to get the lap counting signs. Given this was her first time the 7:02.67 is a good effort…and a state cut...

Day 2

200 IM - Personal Best - 2:54.77 : Sectional Cut 2:48.19
Given how well Bailey had looked I expected that she would improve here, and maybe significantly. She looked strong early, but her fly was clearly a problem again. In fact, she didn’t even beat her personal best posting a 2:55.91 to illustrate the problems with her breaststroke…below are the splits from her PB 200 IM and the one this weekend…

Code:

Personal Best			SCAT Meet
Bfly – 38.40			Bfly – 36.74
Back – 45.71			Back – 44.42
Brst – 51.57			Brst – 54.82
Free – 39.09			Free – 39.93

100 Fly - NT : Sectional Cut 1:21.59
So my guess of a 1:24.xx completely underestimated the time her swallowing water and stopping in the previous meet impacted her time. She went out in a strong 37.95, as her new form looked not only fast but fluid. She was able to maintain her speed on the back half and she didn’t suffer from over fatigue because her new form is so much more efficient…the back half time was 41.36 for a total time of 1:19.31

And we have our first Sectional Cut…and we'll be heading to Greensboro NC in March…now will Bear join her and will she get any other qualifying times???…

100 Breast - Personal Best 1:34.77 : Sectional Cut 1:28.89
The Breaststroke problems became obvious in this event when Bailey posted a 1:38.68, and to be honest this swim was better than her Breaststrokes in both IMs, as I was able to get her attention prior to the race and remind her to look down through the stroke (the coach told her the same thing about 2 minutes later)…got to get this worked out so she can maximize her IMs as well as improve this stroke…With an improved Breast she’ll probably get a sectional cut in IM…

100 Free – Personal Best 1:11.71 – Sectional Cut 1:09.09
I missed the write up on this one pre-event…not sure how I over looked it. Anyway, Bailey’s strong kick and improved stroke showed through here as well. She swam a very strong 1:09.97…which puts her less than 1 second from another sectional time…

-----------------------------------------------------------------

While Bailey’s breakthrough on the fly is marvelous and we are all extremely proud of the sectional cut – it does create some mixed emotions among the boys. Unfortunately, there is a good bit of sibling rivalry that goes on and Bailey’s huge step up seems to overshadow the achievements of the boys…

For instance, Brett, rather than bask in the fact that he is sub-40 in all strokes, is back to the feelings of being inadequate and questioning whether he’ll ever be able to beat her.

And

Bear, for all of his achievements earlier in the year is now struggling with his strokes. He has only a couple of chance left to get his Sectional cut, which he wants 1 bad. This desire is only gotten worse given Bailey’s achievement and it is coming at a bad time for him given his performance this weekend.
Now the wife and I have to delicately balance the egos of the kids and try to get them to focus on their own results and not compare outcomes…

All 3 of the kids will be getting some private lessons the next several weeks. Bailey’s will focus on Breast, Bear will work on fly and cleaning up small stuff, and Brett will be working on increasing stroke rates on non-Breast events, and improving his pullouts and “finishing his kick” in breast…

Breeze · 01-22-2013, 07:04 AM

General Update

Well we may have another reason why Bear's performance was below standard. He got sick again last night, so maybe we aren't completely through the illness of a couple weeks ago. This couldn't come at a worse time, as this will put him out of the pool for at least a couple of days, which will only make the odds of him dropping time and getting a Sectional Cut longer...

Breeze · 01-28-2013, 07:14 AM

General Update

Bear finally got back in the water on Saturday. He did a pretty good job getting through most of practice (had to sit out a couple of time to catch his breath). He also had a private lession on Sunday, as we are getting him some extra help on cleaning up the stroke and trying to get back into race shape as quickly as we can...

Breeze · 01-30-2013, 07:42 AM

General Update

Bear is still struggling to get back in shape, and with his last meet before state coming up on the 8th - 10th...and his best shot at a Sectional Cut being the 500 Free, I'm afraid his chances are slowly slipping away.

Breeze · 01-31-2013, 09:46 AM

General Update

Bear threw up again this morning. My heart is breaking for him...at this point he might be hard pressed to say on the A Free Relay and the B Medley Relay at State...much less get the sectional cut...

09-07-2012, 11:12 AM	#151
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Short Course Season Goals - Bailey Right now Bailey's goals would be almost exactly the same as Bear's. However, Bailey's chances of achieving those goals are much slimmer... First, the shoulder issue she is currently dealing with will limit her ability to practice and thus reduce her improvement. If this can get cleaned up before November, then the impact will be significantly reduced and Bailey should have time to catch up before the state meet in February. Getting the state cuts in all strokes shouldn't be a huge deal as she already has almost all of them. She's only missing....the 50, 100, and 200 Free. Obviously, if she can't practice the chances of getting the Sectional Cut will become much more difficult. However, like Bear she's only about 3 seconds from that time in several events. Second, making a relay at Swim Atlanta is much tougher...The sheer number of Swim Atlanta swimmers will make it difficult...Swim Atlanta has over three times as many kids in the program compared to Chattahoochee Gold...so much more competition for the 8 relay spots. Also Swim Atlanta has some very high end swimmers. For instance, there are 2 sisters that are both 10 and under and both are ranked in the top 3 nationally for the age group in multiple strokes. They will undoubtedly get 2 of the 8 relay spots. Based on what we find out in physical therapy her goals may be downgraded a bit... Last edited by Breeze : 09-07-2012 at 11:13 AM.

09-12-2012, 01:17 PM	#154
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Chattahoochee Gold Time Trials @ Cumming Aquatic Center - 9/15 The boys will be cranking off the season this Saturday. The will both swim 3 events at the time trials... Brett *50 Free* - Brett's short course personal best is 35.70...but that was swum in February, and he has improved his form significantly since then. In fact, if I use a conversion tool to take his best long course time from July (38.68), it states his time for short course should be around 34.12...so hopefully we'll see a significant improvement here... *50 Back* - Brett's back is also getting better. He still over reaches across his head a bit, which doesn't allow him to get his arms in a strong pull position, but he's much more comfortable on his back. His best short course time is 42.38...again, I'm hoping for an improvement...but it will probably come down to - does he trust his count on the turn and finish. *50 Breast* - This is one of the state cuts that Brett thinks he'll be able to get. He's personal best is 41.93 (year round short course), he did swim 41.72 at the Forsyth County Championships last year...to get the state cut he'll at least have to get to 38.29 (though this is subject to change as the new cut times haven't been released yet)... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bear *50 Free* - I did some research on Chattahoochee Gold and found out that had Bear been on Gold last year during short course, he would have swum on the B relay at the short course state championships. He needs to swim well in this stroke, as there are 3 very strong swimmers moving up from 8U. He comes in with a personal best time of 35.65. His long course converted is 33.14... *50 Fly* - Bear's best time here is 39.76 with a conversion time of 37.64...his form here keeps getting better, even if it hasn't translated to speed yet. Hoping we see some drop this weekend. Interesting note...In my research on Gold, I found out that Bear would have also represented the Gold team at state in the medley relay in either back or breast...yes breast... *50 Breast* - This is one of the only events Bear doesn't have a state cut. He is very close (assuming the time doesn't drop signifcantly when the new times come out). He has gotten stronger in this event...and I think he has a pretty good chance of getting his cut. His time coming in is 46.70 (current cut time is 45.79)... Last edited by Breeze : 09-12-2012 at 01:24 PM.

09-14-2012, 09:53 AM	#155
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	SA Time Trials @ Cumming Aquatic Center - 9/16 Bailey's season starts on Sunday, and unlike the boys, we'll get a good baseline on all the strokes... *50 Free* - One of the few strokes Bailey doesn't have a cut in...she was extremely close at the end of the last long course season...and could get the cut during the meet. Her current best is 33.96 the cut is 33.49... *50 Back* - Bailey got a bit of instruction on proper form from Brett (who still doesn't do it exactly right yet...but regardless)...and it has seemed to help a bit. I'll be interested to see if it is translating to improved times. She has the cut based on Long Course...and her best SC is 39.38... *50 Breast* - Bailey's breast is starting to look stronger again. Her form has been better as she's stayed lower in the water and continued to push forward, rather than the up and down motion she got into in the middle of the season last year. Of course, she could overwork when racing and fall back into the bad from trying to go to fast. We'll see...best time is 45.44 *50 Fly* - Bailey's fly has looked real strong. She has just built on her summer league swimming and her confidence in this stroke is high. Not sure how'll she do on Sunday, as she hasn't raced and 50 in a while, and if she over breathes she'll lose her body position and it will cost her time. But I'm thinking a personal best should happen here, her time to beat is 38.43 *100 Free* - The 100 Free is another stroke that Bailey doesn't have a cut in...her best time is 1:14.94 the cut time is 1:14.59. She could certainly get the cut this weekend. However, I have to say, I'd much prefer her form to hold up and have her be slower than see her revert to the bad form that led to her shoulder injury... One point that I need to add here...because this is the first race of the season, and because she'll be swimming 5 events, I expect there will be a fatigue factor that will potentially impact the last couple of events... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Psych Sheet for this meet has been released and Bailey is seeded: 100 Free - 10th / 8th for 10U - 50 Fly - 11th / 8th for 10U 50 Back - 11th / 8th for 10U 50 Breast - 11th / 9th for 10U 50 Free - 14th / 9th for 10U Note: In the seeding...the first number is the actual seed, the second number removes those swimmers that will age up before the short course state meet... Last edited by Breeze : 09-14-2012 at 01:56 PM.

09-17-2012, 08:45 AM	#156
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Chattahoochee Gold Time Trials @ Cumming Aquatic Center - 9/15 The Chattahoochee Gold Meet went real well...the boys had fun and did a good job... Bear *50 Fly* - Bear's fly is still a work in progress, as he is still trying to learn the longer stroke, which of course can impact times, but he look much better and still managed a strong personal best time of 39.66. But the more interesting thing is that he finished 2nd overall, and the boy that beat him will be 11 by the time the state meet rolls around... *50 Breast* - Still up and down with this stroke. While his form is much better than it was last year at this time, he still lacks a powerful kick and can get to up and down. However, he has a great pullout..was off of his best time posting a 49.46. In case you are curious his time placed him 5th, and his best time would have ben 4th... *50 Free* - Bear again had a personal best...form was a little sloppy, but he busted his butt to post a 34.31. Again this was 2nd overall at the meet, and in fact, it was the same kid that beat him in fly that beat him here... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brett *50 Back* - Brett's back was pretty good...he definately looked more comfortable than he ever has before swimming on his back. He had a nice start and good turn. There are still some flaws in his stroke which are keeping him from increasing the stroke rate enough to go fast, but it appears to be coming along nice. He posted a personal best 41.94 *50 Breast* - Brett, as it typical was quick off the blocks, but behind after everyones pullout. The boy just lacks the strong dolphin kick to propel himself in the pullout. However, once he was up, he was fast...blew past most the field only to lose ground on the pull out after the turn. But he swam strong coming home and finished 2nd overall. He improved his time by 2 seconds to post a 39.82. Like Bear, the boy the beat Brett will age up before the state meet... *50 Free* - Brett's form was much better, as he continues to build on the improvements from the end of last year. He's still not an elite freestyler, but he's now officially caught up with his siblings and he's sitting squarely in the middle of the pack in results. He posted a personal best 34.38 Last edited by Breeze : 09-17-2012 at 08:46 AM.

09-17-2012, 09:12 AM	#157
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Private Lesson Update Following the Chattahoochee Gold meet when signed Bear and Brett up for some private lessons. The reason for the additional work was different for both kids. For Bear, we wanted to further solidify his comfort level with the Gold team. He's really liking the change, and in fact, he received the 1st Red Cap award of the season, given to the swimmer who has worked the hardest in the pool, at dryland, and been well behaved. He was pumped about that...this was just a way to allow bonding time between he and his coaches. Also, as I've said before, Bear is a hard worker, who will push himself to be good. But his strokes are lacking, and we want to clean up mistakes now before he moves up. Brett on the other hand has already moved up, and while he's doing well, we were starting to see signs of struggling. We noticed him cheating (breaststroke kicking) during free kick sets and during fly laps, and we felt that this was mostly because he is so inefficient with his off strokes he has to work to hard just to finish the laps. So the extra work is an attempt to improve form and allow him to be more successful. Bear's work was good, though mostly uneventful. He enjoyed the work and gave the coach all he had. He'll benefit greatly from this instruction, mostly by learning how to "feel" the differences in his stroke and understand the efficiencies in swimming rather than simply trying to overpower everything with hard work. Brett on the other hand had a very interesting session. Before it ever started the coach wanted Brett to point his toes and show how the flutter kick should be done. The whole pointing of the toes was a funny routine as he seemed to not understand what she wanted him to do. However, it became pretty evident that the issue wasn't that he didn't understand, but rather he can't point his toe easily. In fact, the coach asked him to sit on is heals with his toes pointed straight out, so that the top of his foot up to his ankle would be flat on the ground, and he can't do it. He has a flexibility problem with his ankle and this is a big part of what has been holding him back in his off strokes. He will now be doing some stretching exercises to loosen up his ankle and hopefully free things up to improve his kick.... Last edited by Breeze : 09-17-2012 at 09:15 AM.

09-10-2012, 02:05 PM	#152
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Bailey - Update The Physical Therapist basically told us that the muscles in the front of Bailey's shoulder are getting too strong compared to her rhomboids and rotator cuff. She's been given strengthening exercises to do everyday. She'll continue to work with the PT for the next couple weeks. The only restriction she is currently under is not to swim more than 2 days in a row...meaning we'll probably have her swim 4 a week... I'm hoping we get this fixed soon, so she can start going 5 days a week in mid December to get fine tuned before the Short Course State Meet in February...

09-10-2012, 02:10 PM	#153
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	General Update I have some really sad news to report... Bailey's friend Lexi, the girl that had surgery on both of her knees as a 9 year old, has just found out that she has torn the meniscus again in the first knee that was operated on. She will be having surgery later this week... I'm not sure on the time table for her return...she's a tough little girl and extremely competitive, which may be why she's back in this position so soon. I felt she rushed back last time...we'll see how long she'll be out this time. Also, it wouldn't surprise me if Lexi never swam Breaststroke again...

09-18-2012, 12:52 PM	#158
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Swim Atlanta Time Trials @ Cumming Aquatic Center Bailey did very poorly at her time trials. In fact, with the exception of Fly she added about 2 full seconds to every stroke, and in my opinion the only reason she didn't in fly is because Reese was right next to her and she didn't want to lose. The poor performance was alarming and concerning, and as I expected at the time - directly related to her shoulder injury. Initially the conversations about the shoulder indicated that it as causing discomfort, but after the meet we learned that following the 100 free Bailey went to the bathroom and cried because the shoulder hurt so bad. She also admitted that it was painful in all of her strokes, had been hurting at practice for weeks, and got as high as a 8 on a scale of 10. Her swimming has now been completely shut down. She will not return to the pool until the shoulder is better, and once she returns she will be under restrictions to come back slowly in freestyle and to clean up the stroke. This is a problem for Bailey because Swim Atlanta isn't good at stroke mechanics in their lower levels, so I'm not sure who is going to work with her to clean it up, and the older level teams won't allow her to go slow enough to clean it up. We have asked both her SA coach and the Chattahoochee Gold coach how they think we should handle it. I'll let you know what they say...

09-20-2012, 10:09 AM	#159
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Bailey Injury Update Bailey's SA membership has been suspended...since she is injured we won't be going to the pool for a while and the team was nice enough to suspend her account so we wouldn't have to keep paying the monthly dues. We have talked with the doctor and basically this is what we will be doing. 1. Stay out of the pool until the shoulder is feeling better and the middle back is strong enough to counteract the affect of the shoulder being pulled forward by the strong front side muscles. 2. When she starts swimming again she will need to get into it slowly and be monitored very closely to insure her stroke is corrected and she doesn't immediately reinjure the shoulder... 3. once the stroke is cleaned up we will put her back on a team, but she will be on restrictions as to how long she'll be in the pool and how far she'll be allowed to go... ------------------------------------------------------------------ We reached out to the coaches of both SA and Gold to see what they would suggest. I will be posting our correspondence to both teams below so you can see how this has played out...I'd do it in this post, but it will get pretty long...

09-20-2012, 10:32 AM	#160
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Bailey's Injury Update - Swim Atlanta Correspondence Me to coach One of the parents of another swimmer found us after the meet yesterday to tell us that Bailey was in the bathroom crying because her shoulder was hurting her. This was news to us, as our understanding of the injury was that it caused some discomfort, but certainly nothing to the level of causing tears from pain. The doctor told us when we had Bailey examined that if the pain was severe she'd need to stop swimming. Unfortunately, we feel that the pain has been significant for a while, and that Bailey has been hiding it from us so she can stay in the pool. In fact, she admitted last night that she is in pain every day at practice. We feel it is in her best interest at this point to pull her out of the pool for a couple of weeks and hopefully allow the physical therapy to work. Moreover, once she is feeling well, we feel that she's going to need to fix her freestyle before resuming the yardages she is currently practicing, or we'll simply be looking at her reinjuring the shoulder due to poor form. We are strugging to determine the best way to accomplish that. Do you have any suggestions? ---------------------------------- Coach to Me I am sorry to hear that bailey has not been honest to you guys and me about her shoulder. Every time we work on it she says to me it feels better. My question is does she want to swim or be social with her friends? We diffently can try a different group here if she feels aag is to hard. --------------------------------- Me to Coach (Comment: intially I thought the coach was saying that if the practice was too hard we could move her down...so this was my response) I don't think she feels it's too hard...from a work standpoint. I think the issue is that the shoulder is injured and with her having the bad freestyle form swimming so many laps the physical therapy isn't having a chance to work. Then my fear is, even if we get the shoulder right, she'll just reinjure the shoulder unless she can take some time to clean up her form. That's where I think the problem is...getting that form cleaned up to avoid further injury. I certainly am not opposed to backing her down until the freestyle is fixed... ---------------------------------------------------- Me to Coach (comment - after thinking about what the coach said, I realized I may have misinterpreted his meaning. With this second response I was working under the impression that he was thinking as long as Bailey is willing to get away from her friends we have some options available) I may have misinterpreted your email initially. Basically, the social aspect has to be put on hold at this point. She is under doctor's orders to come back slowly with a good bit of supervision to insure her stroke is cleaned up. I know that you can't do that during the AAG practice, so we'll have to find another way for her to re-learn the stroke and to build back to AAG level practices... ----------------------------------------------------- Coach to Me Sounds like a plan. Sure is more than welcome to swim White practices so we are only doing drills and kicking. ---------------------------------------------------- Coach to Me (Comment: He followed up the short response above with this) Just let me know what you guys would like to do. The tuesday thursday group has the most space and Fridays in AAG are the easiest of the days. So she could do White 2days and AAG 1day. Gold group would be an option on Saturdays since they have the whole pool. In the beginning I am not sure she is going to need 4 days in the water. For us that would be the only options we can do for Bailey. I would suggest gold more but am scared that she would want to push it to hard. ----------------------------------------- Last edited by Breeze : 09-20-2012 at 10:33 AM.

09-20-2012, 11:04 AM	#161
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	I should probably provide some explanation of the conversation above... The coach I am communicating with is the same coach for the White team referenced in the emails. He is offering to allow Bailey to slide down 2 team levels (to the second lowest team level). She'd be swimming with good 8 year olds and average 9 year olds. The practices are 3 days a week (MWF or TTS), and they run for 45 minutes. The White practices are just kicking, drills and laps, no interval training so no need to rush through sets. However, the white team (even the smaller TTS group) is still around 30 kids... I think it is also important to remember (and I think I mention it here quite a few posts back)...we noticed that while on the SA Gold team Bailey had developed the bad habit with her left arm in the freestyle last fall, and we pointed it out to the coach and told him that needed to get fixed. He didn't get it fixed and because of that we are dealing with this issue. Now I realize Bailey is partly at fault for not fixing it - this isn't meant to be a blame game. Lord knows I told her repeatedly to focus on fixing it, and I know the coach told her a couple of times, but when she didn't fix it, I feel the team should have taken a more firm stance and drastic approach to clean it up before something bad happened. One of the reasons that we aren't even considering allowing her to move back down to the SA Gold team. Last edited by Breeze : 09-20-2012 at 11:09 AM.

09-20-2012, 11:28 AM	#162
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Bailey's Injury Update - Chattahoochee Gold Correspondence I can't cut and paste emails from Chattahoochee Gold because they responded to my wife's intial inquiry by calling. However, I can and will break down their suggestions and comments... The Gold team was sorry to hear that Bailey was hurting and alarmed that it was a problem, stating it is a huge red flag for a 10 year old to have shoulder injuries. They also commented that it was unfortunate that the problem was with freestyle, because that is the most basic stroke and most of practice is build around that. If the problem was another stroke, she would be able to go through most of practice regularly, but be pulled aside and monitored when the other bad strokes comes up (often this is breaststroke for swimmers).But with free being the problem, she will be limited in the entire practice. Here is how they said they'd handle this situation... To begin with, once she is cleared to begin swimming again, they feel she should do private lessons to work out the kinks in her stroke. This will insure someone is watching and working with her, it will also allow the coach to limit the amount of time she swims. They suggest doing this "until she gets it right". Once she returns to practice with the team, Gold suggests having her initially isolated from the rest of the team (in the injured lane). Make sure one of the coaches or volunteers keep an eye on her at all times. Still limit what she does and keep practice times to about 30 minutes Once she has graduated to real practice, keep her in the back of the lines, especially during freestyle, and keep reinforcing the correct mechanics and monitoring her for backsliding. Last edited by Breeze : 09-20-2012 at 11:29 AM.

09-22-2012, 12:54 AM	#163
Izulde Head Coach Join Date: Sep 2004	Seems to me like CG has the better idea of how to handle this situation. __________________ 2006 Golden Scribe Nominee 2006 Golden Scribe Winner Best Non-Sport Dynasty: May Our Reign Be Green and Golden (CK Dynasty) Rookie Writer of the Year Dynasty of the Year: May Our Reign Be Green and Golden (CK Dynasty)

09-22-2012, 01:14 AM	#164
Izulde Head Coach Join Date: Sep 2004	Oh and just now caught up on State, which I missed because I was in Japan at the time and not reading the board as regularly. Congratulations to you all on your successes there. __________________ 2006 Golden Scribe Nominee 2006 Golden Scribe Winner Best Non-Sport Dynasty: May Our Reign Be Green and Golden (CK Dynasty) Rookie Writer of the Year Dynasty of the Year: May Our Reign Be Green and Golden (CK Dynasty) Last edited by Izulde : 09-22-2012 at 01:14 AM.

09-24-2012, 09:22 AM	#165
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Thanks Izulde...appreciate you following along... We have basically laid out the situation to Bailey and she understands the advantages of moving to CG. She isn't happy about leaving her friends, but she's prepared to make the move. She won't be able to get in the water for another 3 weeks or so...but once she does, she'll move over. Following your swimming thread. Good luck...

10-01-2012, 11:26 AM	#166
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	General Update There is a swim meet this weekend at GaTech, and I will be updating the boys' events shortly, but here is where things currently stand... Since we have taken Bailey completely out of the pool her shoulder is going much better. There is no constant aching any more, and we just put her in the pool for a VERY short private lesson on Saturday. The coach really worked hard on her form, and I don't thing she even finished 5 laps. We are planning to put her in the pool 1 night this week for a similar type of effort, and then again next week as we slowly ease back into this. Bear is not feeling well. He started practice on Thursday but got out early due to feeling poorly. He didn't go Friday, as we took him to the doctor who said it wasn't strep, just a virus. He tried again on Saturday, but again cut the practice short. To make matters worse he's gotten into poison something (ivy, sumac, oak...not sure), and it is all over his legs and right arm. Brett had quite possibly his best practice ever on Saturday. He was lapping the 3 other girls in his lane, and doing it with pretty good form for him. The practice was 2 hours and he was strong throughout. Then he had a private lesson where the coach was able to get him to understand the free and back kick better. He was kicking more from the hips and he was going much faster. The coach was very pleased...hopefully, he'll remember how to do it and focus on doing it correctly this week in practice. If he does, and he starts building muscle memory for this new kick, his times will drops significantly in the next couple of events...but it is a lot to ask for this weekend... Last edited by Breeze : 10-01-2012 at 11:27 AM.

10-08-2012, 02:33 PM	#167
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	SCAT Fall Invite @ GaTech - 10/6 - 10/7 So I messed up and didn't post the pre-race events and thoughts. So I'm going to post my thoughts heading into each event and the actual results below... *Day 1* Bear 200 Free - Bear heads into this event having finished the week of practice strong after being sick at the end of the previous week. I was hopeful that he would be able to challenge his personal best time of 2:42.61. Bear did swim a strong race. He was unfortunately seeded with a NT and therefore had a pretty weak heat. With no one pushing him he managed to post a 2:40.98. That was good enought to finish 13th overall in the 9/10 age group. 50 Back - Bear's backstroke has gotten much more consistent under Gold coaching. They have forced him to focus on rotating his body without moving the head. He's starting to get it, as his head is much more still, but he tends to sway the hips rather than pivoting them. Still all-in-all a better stroke. His personal best coming in was 40.48...leaving the race it was 39.90. Now when he starts being able to swim this stroke without thinking about technique I think his time will drop a good bit. 100 Breast - Bear's breast is still a work in progress. He was showing signs of improvement in the stroke, but Gold is making a slight change to his kick in an effort to get his hips up a bit, and it has reduced his power. Thus he is swimming slowly. He didn't have a short course time in the event...but he did qualify for the state with his long course performance last season. He ended up swimming a 1:46.29. This isn't really a very good time considering his conversion time from long course puts him around a 1:37.7...He's got work to do in this stroke again...and unfortunately, it's also going to hold back his IM until he figures it out. 100 Fly - This is Bear's first time swimming the 100 fly and he is working to retool this stroke as well. He is much further along with this one than Breast, but he still has moments, and his rythem can get off, but he's still pretty solid here. I did have concerns with him swimming a 100 fly as the 4th event of the day, I was afraid fatigue would be a big problem, but he handled it like a champ and posted a good 1.31.34, which beats the state cut by 6 seconds... 200 IM - Another first time attempt at a race, and again I was concerned about a 200 IM at the end of a long day. But again Bear handled it like a champ. He posted a time of 3:06.64, and got another state cut. His splits ended up being 41.01 - Fly, 48.63 - Back, 55.57 - Breast, 41.43 - Free. He really took it a bit too easy on the back...and of course the Breast as I mentioned above is still a problem, but a good swim. ------------------------------------------------------ Brett 200 Free - Brett's 200 Free marked the first time he swam the event in short course. In long course over the Summer he managed a personal best of 3:13.87...converted to short course stated he should swim a 2:47.87...he actually posted a 2:47.61... 100 Breast - based on Brett's improvement during time trials in the 50 breast, I expected a moderate improvement here, maybe a second or so...he swam a great race and posted a personal best time of 1:29.77 an improvement of 2.41 seconds...this is an event that he is hoping to earn a state cut in, but unless he really hits a growth spurt it isn't going to happen as he's still 7 seconds slow. Coach is going to work with him now on increasing his stroke rate but not at the expense of the glide phase of the stroke. He told Brett in his post race talk that due to his short stature there is no possible way to be efficient enough at this stage of his life to beat kids that are over a foot taller, and he's going to have to do more strokes per lap to keep up. This explains why the 200 Breast is the one stroke he has his cut in, because the efficienty allows him to maintain his strength over the longer race... 100 IM - With his improved strokes I was really hoping for a personal best here, but while his strokes looked stronger...his turns were poor and it was obvious that he was thinking about the technique more than racing. He posted a pedestrian 1:31.68. 50 Fly - Brett's fly has gotten much better, and he goes through spurts where he can be fast, but he lacks the stamina in this event and with it being at the end of the day, I felt he might struggle through. I was hopeful that he might break his best time of 42.22, but he cam up short with a 43.92. -------------------------------------------------------------- *Day 2* Bear 50 Fly - wasn't sure what to expect here. I'm afraid given the work he is putting in on this stroke, I won't know for sure what to expect until later in the season, my thoughts were this could go anywhere...it could be a couple seconds faster to several seconds slower than his time a time trials a few weeks back. As it turns out...it was about the same. He came in with a 39.66 and finished this race with a 39.93. 100 Free - Bear looks strong swimming his freestyles, as he really powers through the water. He isn't the most efficient, but he works hard. He same in with a best time of 1.16.40...and I felt that was within reach, especially given his personal best in the 200 the day before. And, I was right, he posted a very good 1:15.96... 100 Back - this was an event that Bear hadn't done in a while in fact, ironically, the best time he posted was the first time he ever swam it, and with him swimming very deliberately so he can make sure the stroke is right, I didn't expect the time to fall and it didn't 1:27.71 100 IM - Bear like Brett is real technical with his stroke right now, and until he become second nature his times are going to suffer. That, plus his breast is way off where it was at the end of the year last year, I felt he wouldn't do well here...and he didn't 1:31.18, well off his personal best. 500 Free - Bear was a little intimidated by this event. And I have to say I was a bit concerned for him, especially with it coming as the last event after 2 heavy race days. But before the race he got excited as he was telling me I needed to get on deck to handle the lap counters well before his 100 IM event started lining up. He swam the event, and did a nice job. He really needs to work on the glide phase in this stroke as he worked hard for all 20 laps. He posted a time of 7:10.17 and qualified for state by a 11 seconds...not sure he wanted to qualify for state ------------------------------------------------------- Brett 50 Breast - Brett's second day started with the 50 Breast, and I was hopeful he'd continue his level of improvement, but he basically matched his time from the time trials posting a 40.06, only .2 slower. The good news is he still was the second gold swimmer to finish in the race and the first will age up before state...actually...this is where the stroke rate conversation mentioned above occurred. 100 Free - Came in with a 1:18.35 and with his improved kick and form I felt this was a good shot for a personal best. He looked good, turns were a bit sloppy and dive was too deep, but he still posted a nice 1:17.50 50 Back - his back looks so much better it is amazing, but it hasn't been translating to speed yet, and he still isn't comfortable on his back going into the walls, which can hurt in time, and in this case did. In fact, if he had just going straight into the wall without peaking for it he would have had a personal best as it turned out he posted a 42.77 off of his best by about .4. 200 IM - As I expected coming in, Brett was very uptight for this one. I didn't expect a great swim, but I did think he'd come in around 3:12 or so, based on Bear's time. He actually outperformed that posting a 3:10.14, but was DQed for underwater recovery on the fly (not sure if they got the right reason as I didn't see this error, but it doesn't really matter as I have a baseline for this event moving forward). note: quick key update in case you were wondering...RED=has/earned state cut: GREEN = Personal Best (Red overshadows Green), Bold just provides a quick look at results... Last edited by Breeze : 10-08-2012 at 02:34 PM.

10-12-2012, 11:43 AM	#168
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	General Info - Bailey Update Bailey has gone to a couple of private lessons recently and her form is coming along. No idea about speed because the coach isn't allowing her to go fast yet, to prevent her from reverting back to bad habits. She also had her first "team" practice last night. Basically she went through warm ups and did the first 3 drills with the team, then she was pulled out. The coach wants to get her back in the pool, but she wants to bring her back very slowly. She'll continue to practice with the team a couple times a week, and will still have a private lession 1x a week to really focus on cleaning up mistakes. She is entered in the meet next weekend, but she'll only do a couple of events per day, and she'll be under strict orders to maintain form...(details on that when I talk about the meet)...

10-17-2012, 11:42 AM	#169
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Gold Invite @ Cumming Aquatic Center - 10/19-21 Brett The coaches have told us several times that they have been extremely impressed with Brett's efforts recently. They are seeing huge improvements in his form and they expect that his times will start dropping significantly soon. Unfortunately, I don't think it will be this weekend... 100 Free - *Seed Time 1:17.50* - his kick here has definately improved, but I don't think he's capable of doing the flutter kick at a hard pace for a full 100. He just doesn't have the stamina yet with those muscles. I could however invision a personal best here. 50 Back - Seed Time 41.94 - again a huge improvement in form. Still needs to work on not overreaching with the arms to the point his hands reach above his head, thus lengthening the stroke and slowing it down. If he picks up the rotation of the arms, and attacks the walls he could drop a good bit of time. Even if he just swims the same way he's been doing it recently he could get a personal best. Ideally, if he could break 40.00 he'd be thrilled... 100 Breast - Seed Time 1:29.77 - not sure what to expect here. He dropped time at his last meet, just a few weeks ago, so not sure he'll better it this time around. If he isn't faster, he'll be upset, but honestly he has a long way to go in this one to get the state cut, so in the long run, it won't matter as long as he doesn't get upset if he posts a slower time. 100 IM - Seed Time 1:31.68 - Actually, Brett has swum this event faster than the seed time. In fact, his personal best coming in for year round meets is 1:28.53, and his best if you count Summer League is 1:26.35. This is where the coaches are expecting to see improvement first. Because his "other" strokes have gotten so much better, they expect to see this one drop due to improvements in the Back and Fly legs in particular. We'll see, I think Brett holds back a bit in this race to conserve energy, and until he starts racing from the gun, he'll continue to post similar times, even if he is doing it more efficiently. I do expect he should be the seed time, and there is a decent probability if he isn't too fatigued from the earlier races that he could also beat his year-round personal best, I don't however expect him to beat his Summer League time. 100 Fly - Seed Time NT - Brett like Bear in the last meet will be facing this race for the first time, and I can tell you he'll be stressed about it. He really isn't comfortable trying new races, especially in his weaker strokes. He swims 100 flys in practice regularly now and he does pretty well with it, but I expect he'll get DQed. There are 2 reasons for this...in practice when he swims fly, if things get crowded he'll switch to breast arms so he doesn't collide with anyone else...but this quick transition and the easy in which he makes it, leads me to believe he'll do it when he gets tired in the race at least once. Also like the last meet when he was DQed in the IM on the fly leg...we learned that the error occurred right at the wall when he did a short stroke and didn't get his arms above the water going into the wall. Also a bad habit that he could easily repeat. I'm not really concerned about these issues. When he gets bigger and stronger he'll be able to work through the first, and the more he swims fly the better he'll get at the second. 100 Back - Seed Time NT - another first time swim for Brett, and another one he'll be stress about. However, he swims a good bit of back in practice and other than being sloppy on the walls he's doing it pretty well, even if it isn't terribly fast. I don't expect a great time, as he'll probably go conservative in the race, but he should do fine. I am concerned he'll get sloppy on the walls and get DQed because he is too cavalier with them at practice, but if he does he does and hopefully he'll learn to tighten up his focus at practice as a result. 50 Breast - Seed Time 39.82 - interesting and important one here for Brett. He didn't beat his personal best at the last meet, and he will be racing the best of the Gold team. He need to be the top finishers for kids that will be 12 as of the end of February (when the State Meet falls) to help improve his chances of being on the relay team. It will be tight. Hopefully, we get a good dive and strong pull outs... 200 Free - Seed Time 2:47.61 - This is an event that Brett could improve on. He'll have to figure out how to best use his legs to get through a 200 and still provide some momentum, because he clearly won't be able to kick hard for all 8 laps. But his improved kick, strong upper body and better form still lead me to believe a personal best is well within reach. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Bear I tried to talk Bear into swimming the 500 free again at this meet. This time it would have been on Friday and it would have been the only thing he would have competed in for the day. I expect he would have done much better since he would not have been as fatigued going into the race, but he wasn't interested... 100 Free - Seeded 3rd (1:15.96) - Bear is seeded 3rd going into this race, behing 2 kids he practices with everyday. He'll want badly to beat them and he typically does well in his first few events (often to the detrement of the ones that come later in the day), so I could see a personal best here, though my guess is he still finishes no better than 3rd. 50 Back - Seeded 3rd (39.90) - Bear's back is coming along. He's still a little bit deliberate with the stroke, but the body position is better, and he's starting to pivot rather than sway, which is helping. Not sure what to expect here, because if he puts it together and really races it he could improve by a couple of seconds if he's still thinking to much, I'd expect only a slight improvement (assuming he has a good turn and stays out of the ropes). 50 Fly - Seeded 3rd (39.66) - very much like back it will all depend on if Bear trusts the new stroke and races it, or if he thinks about it too much...he's within half a second of 2nd place in this one. He could improve by a bunch or come in with a very similar time. My bet is a slight improvement. 100 IM - Seeded 4th (1:13.18) - like Brett, this really isn't his personal best. In year round swimming I have his best time as a 1:26.94 and for Summer League it is a 1:23.53. I don't think we'll touch that 1:23 time, though if he did he'd probably finish 2nd in this race. I do think something around his year round personal best is certainly possible. However, the key is his Breaststroke, which has slowed down considerably since long course/summer season, due to some technical changes in the way he swims it. He's still working through those...for him to get a PB he'll need to to swim the back half much better than the 48.29 from a few weeks ago (with most of that time being the Breaststroke leg). 50 Free - Seeded 3rd (34.31) - This is a key race for Bear as it has relay implications moving forward. He needs a strong swim here to create some cushion for the State Relay team. There are a bunch of kids crowded around Bear's time so this will be close. Hopefully, he gets his good start, because I know he'll work like the devil until he gets to the wall. I'm really hoping to start to see a drop in this time, just not sure if we'll see it yet or not. If practice is any indication he should, because Bear gives it all he's got everyday he's there... 100 Back - Seeded 3rd (1:27.71) - See the 50 back...same issues apply here. Really eager to see how this goes. Hoping he'll increase his stroke rate without sacrificing form or stroke length. If he does could be a big improvement, I don't think we are quite ready for this yet, so I'll guess a small increase. 50 Breast - Seeded 8th (49.46) - the seed time isn't actually a personal best...his best was in December of last year when he posted a 46.70. This slower time is from the Gold team...and it indicates the slower speed due to the change in technique. This is about 3 seconds off his best time from almost a year earlier. Increased size and strength should have created speed so the slower time is disappointing. Hopefully, he'll start to turn the corner and we'll see a drop...but I'm not convinced he's ready for that yet... 200 Free - Seeded 1st (2:40.98) - Bear is seeded 1st in this, which is exicting, but this is his last event of the weekend, and typically he's usual spent by this point in time, so I'd be surprised if he actually posts a personal best in this and wins the event. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bailey Bailey's event this time around could be quite funny...which is not something you typically think about when it comes to a swim meet. Here is the situation, in many of Bailey's events, the coach entered her with a seed time about 10 seconds slower than her personal best. This was done to hopefully prevent her from trying to race too hard and destroying her new form that she's been working on. Bailey is super competitive so I'm not sure how well this philosophy is going to work...but add to that the order, from the coach, that she is not to win any of her heats or else she'll have to sit out of practice for a week, and this could get down right comical. Even with Bailey's slow deliberate stroke to concentrate on form, she's passing many of the other slower swimmers at practice. I don't believe with this new stroke that she is 10 seconds slower than her best time, but she'll be racing people that are that slow. Not sure how she's going to lose these races...maybe she'll just hang on the walls during turns for an extended period of time. I can't wait to see how this plays out. 50 Back - Seed Time 40.38 - This time isn't far off her best...but because it is backstroke, as long as the form is good it shouldn't hurt her shoulder...this will be a key race. If her form is bad here, her weekend might be over. The coach isn't going to take any chances, and a bad form on the first race would be a red flag... 100 Breast - Seed Time 1:47.52 - This is 10 seconds slower...breast doesn't seem to bother the shoulder as bad, so she might have a hard time not racing this one. I'm also not sure that the coach would care on this stroke, as her form here is pretty good (Brett has a lot to do with that...) 50 Free - Seed Time 44.19 - This is also about 10 seconds slower than her best time. This is the other key race as it is the one stroke that she is really working to rebuild the fundamental on it. She has to focus on form, or I'm sure the coach will make her No Show for the rest of the meet... 100 Back - Seed Time 1:36.59 - 10+ seconds off her best time. I can see this one working out for her as she lazily strokes and glides through the race... 50 Breast - Seed Time 55.44 - 10 seconds...we'll see what happens here. As I said in the 100 Breast...coach might not be so strick with this stroke... Last edited by Breeze : 10-17-2012 at 11:45 AM.

10-23-2012, 09:41 AM	#170
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Gold Invite Results Bailey Bailey had a very good meet and she did exactly what she needed to do, which was maintain form even in the face of competition. This was a huge step forward and hopefully, she'll get to start racing more moving forward. *50 Back* - Her first race was quite entertaining. As I mentioned in the preview, she was under strict orders not to win her races, even if she was entered in a heat with swimmer that are typically 10 seconds slower than her time. In this case the difference was more like 5 seconds...but in a 50 yard race, 5 seconds is a lot of time. The race started and Bailey was well out in front off the blocks and through the underwater part of the race. She was very deliberate with her strokes, but she still finished first at the 25 yard turn. She was slopply with the turn, mostly because she was catching a peek at the other swimmers, but coming off the wall, she was still in first. From there she really shut it down, with long, lazy strokes. To give you a visual perspective, if you go to the Y and watch an older person swim back for exercise, then you've got a pretty good representation of Bailey coming home in the back half of her race. She ended up posting a 45.02. *100 Breast* - Bailey asked and was given permission to race this event, due to the fact her Breast is pretty good technically and it doesn't hurt her shoulder. Her seed time was a 1:47.52, her actual personal best was a 1:37.52. She was strong through the stroke, she stayed low and pushed forward for the full 100. She finished with a personal best time of 1:35.90. I do think the excitment of getting to race helped...but this is very promising as she hasn't even been able to do full practices until just a few days prior to this race. Hopefully when she gets in better shape she'll be able to improve on he 50.38 back half split. *50 Free* - This was the pivitol event for Bailey. She had to maintain her form...and she did. She looked very good, kicking hard and using long arms and keeping her wrists and shoulders in the correct position. She swam a 38.43. The interesting thing is that this is only 4 seconds off her personal best, with her approaching the race with the mindset to not go fast. I'm hopefully, this means the improved form will allow her to increase her speed once she is freed to race the stroke. *100 Back* - Because Bailey's 50 back the first day was so good, she was given the permission to race the stroke as long as her form held. Which it did...she did pretty well. She was racing, but deliberately...She didn't come close to her personal best of 1:25.66, but her time of 1:29.9 was very good under the circumstances. *50 Breast* - Bailey was also given the ability to race this event. Though she didn't remember that initially. After pullout, she took 3 very slow, very easy strokes...before she apparently remembered that she could race. She ended up posting a 46.51, which is ok, but not her best time of 45.44 and actually it is also slower than her opening 50 from the 100 Breast the day before which was a 45.52. I expect once she is in better shape, this time will drop a good bit... ------------------------------------------------------------------ Brett *100 Free* - Brett's improved form and kick is really starting to pay off, as he posted a personal bes time of 1:15.93...a second straight time drop in this event and this time he cut another 1.57 seconds. As good as this sounds, it easily could have been a lot better. Brett's turns were awful (that is a theme that will be repeated a good bit)...the worst was the turn at the 50 mark. He fliped so early, that he almost couldn't touch the wall to push off. He completely lost all of his momentum. That turn alone cost him at least 2 seconds, probably more. It is a terrible mistake for a kid that has been swimming year round as long as he has, but it is also one that he can quickly correct...so looking forward to see how much faster he might be moving forward. *50 Back* - another personal best with a time improvement of .46 seconds and an overall time of 41.48. Again could have been better with better wall work. Flipped to his belly way to early and had to coast into the wall for the turn, and slowed down on the finish, but at least he didn't try to peek at the wall. *100 Breast* - this was one of the few disappointments from the weekend. The 2 seconds Brett dropped in this even from the previous meet, he put back on this time. He finished with a 1:31.88...and the inability to generate enough force on the pullouts is killing him. We are planning to have him work with a coach this weekend on turns and pullouts... *100 IM* - Brett improved on his time from the last meet by about 2 seconds posting a 1:29.71, but it wasn't a personal best. His fly, back and free look so much better I'm a bit surprised by the fact wasn't a best time, but I believe it was due to slow turns... *100 Fly* - First time the kid has swum this event, so obviously it is a personal best. But the big news wasn't his time, but that he didn't panic about it. He simply got up, got in line and dove in when the race started. He posted a pedestrian 1:43.86...but he did it, and his form early was pretty good (before he fatigued). Also one of the best moments of the meet for me happened in this event. Another boy on Brett's team, Hunter, a big kid and a strong swimmer, was in the lane next to him. Obviously, he finished well before Brett, but as Brett was coming down on the last 25, every time he lifted his head to breathe, Hunter was cheering and urging him on. It was nice to see him get support from the better swimmers. (Oh, and he didn't get DQed as I predicted he would) *100 Back* - the other first time event...and he again did it without any anxiety. He was a strong (for him) 1:29.77, and again it could have been much better...terrible walls. Same problems with flipping to the belly too soon for the flip, flipping to far from the wall, and then not finishing on the wall. In fact, his last stroke went over the wall and he ended up hitting the touchpad timer with his head. He easily could have been a couple seconds faster... *50 Breast* - this was again disappointing. He came in .84 seconds slower than his personal best with a 40.66... *200 Free* - I was really interested to see this race, because with his improved form, I really felt that he might drop several seconds. As it turns out he added 3...the problem was....you guessed it Turns. Also fatigue as this was his last race on the second day...2:50.81 --------------------------------------------- Bear Bear did a nice job overall. He swam well with many personal bests, but...and this is going to sound bad I'm sure, but he lost several races to some kids he practices with Grant1 and Grant 2, and I really want him to beat these two. I don't tell him this, and I don't put pressure on him, but Bear works so much harder than they do at practice and I just want to see Bear get in that top relay team, and with both of these kids in front of him, he'll be hard pressed to make it... *100 Free* - Bear finishes the event 5th overall with a personal best time of 1:14.04 and improvement of almost 2 seconds. Unfortunately, he lost to both of the Grants here. He was really racing Grant 2 the whole time as they were back and forth but he ended up being out touched by .12 seconds *50 Back* - 6th overall...and a personal best of 39.23. He raced this better than he has recently, but he was still a bit deliberate. Also, he had an incident in practice where he cracked his head swimming back and messing up his wall count. Ever since, he's been very timid on the walls which is costing him time. (Lost to both Grants again). *50 Fly* - 5th overall...this time it wasn't a personal best...40.38. Early his stroke looked good...late he seemed to get stuck with the arms and his head was too high...beat Grant 1, Grant 2 didn't swim it... *100 IM* - 2nd overall...1:27.40, off his personal best by .5 seconds. Needs to charge the wall in the back, and get stronger in the Breast (though it didn't look bad in this race)...to get below his best time moving forward. Beat both the Grants bad in this one... *50 Free* - 6th overall - personal best time of 33.57...finished 3rd for Gold swimmers, which is good but...still lost to Grant 2... *100 Back* - Bear started feeling bad right before this race. He had an upset stomach and quite queezy. He still managed a personal best 1:25.23 and finished 4th overall. *50 Breast* - Bear was still not feeling well in this one, and he swam a very slow 50.67. It is the first time he hasn't broken 50 in this stroke in a while. The coach told us not to worry about it. That he has just started getting the wide elbows that she's looking for, and she'll now work with him on the second part of the pull phase which should greatly improve his time. But we are still looking at a learning curve. *200 Free* - Bear overcame his nausea to swim a personal best in a 200 yard race. I was very proud of the determination and effort. He posted a 2:40.47 and improved by .51 seconds. He finished 4th overall, but the only bad part is he lost to both Grants... Last edited by Breeze : 10-23-2012 at 09:42 AM.

11-09-2012, 06:48 PM	#171
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Martha Bass Swim Meet @ Baylor Swim Club in Chattanooga TN We have our only out of town meet this season in Tennessee this weekend. Bear has been swimming well in practice, Brett works real hard when he goes, but he hasn't wanted to go as frequently and I'm not fighting him at this point, and Bailey is still getting ramped up so we'll see how it goes. I'm not going to get into to much detail, but I did figure I'd at least give a high level overview... -------------------------------------------------------------------- Bailey *50 Breast* - Seeded 7th - 45.44 - she can move up here with a good swim. I haven't seen her really get this stroke going in a while and if she does she could drop some time here. *100 Back* - Seeded 10th - 1:26.59 - only starting to learn correct arm strokes. Could mean a personal best if she puts it together. *50 Free* - Seeded 11th - 34.19 - my bet is she's still too deliberate to go fast. Gotta maintain the correct stroke or she'll be yanked from the meet. *50 Back* - Seeded 12th - 39.38 - see 100 back... *100 Breast* - Seeded 4th - 1:35.90 - no shot to win, but could get 3rd or second with a good swim. -------------------------------------------------------------- Brett *50 Breast* - Seeded 12th - 39.82 - didn't do well in this one last race. Would like to see a much stronger pullout this time. If he does, I can almost guarantee a personal best. *100 Back* - 1:29.77 - starting to creep up on his siblings with his time. *50 Free* - 34.38 - slowly getting the kick better and it is paying off a little bit at a time. *100 IM* - 1:29.71 - with his improved strokes I hope he doesn't go out conservatively in order to save energy. He could really drop a bunch of time by racing this one hard. *200 IM* - NT - he actually has a time here, just not sure what it is. I just hope he swims it without having a panic attack. *50 Back* - 41.48 - got to increase the effort to go faster here... *100 Breast* - 1:29.77 - pull out, pull out, pull out, pull out...those 4 items will make or brake the race for him. I'm not sure he can get much faster in the middle of pool (unless he gets a lot bigger before this weekend). *50 Fly* - 43.92 - if he gets his butt up higher in the pull phase of the stroke he'll kick stronger. He's done it in short spirts...not really expecting it this weekend. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Bear *100 Free* - Seeded 7th - 1:14.03 - needs to work on gliding a bit more to maintain speed... *50 Breast* - Seeded 11th - 49.46 - not really his best time, and this is still a work in progress so I doubt he get a PB here... *100 Back* - Seeded 11th - 1:25.23 - man I hope he races this and isn't so tied up with his form... *200 Free* - Seeded 9th - 2:40.47 - see 100 free and multiply it by 2... *200 IM* - Seeded 6th - 3:06.64 - will bust his butt in this one, but I believe he'll be pretty fatigued from the 200 free and I don't expect a good time. *50 Back* - Seeded 12th - 39.23 - see 100 Back... *100 Breast* - Seeded 11th - 1:46.29 - see 50 Breast *50 Fly* - seeded 12th - 39.66 - form is getting better, but I bet fatigue gets him here

11-15-2012, 05:05 PM	#172
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Martha Bass Swim Meet @ Baylor Swim Club in Chattanooga TN It was a real good meet for the family. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to outline all 3 kids results right now, so I'm going to do them one at a time... -------------------------------------------------------------------- Bailey *50 Breast - Seeded 7th - 45.44* - Bailey looked strong in this race, as she got a great pullout and was moving good through the water, keeping the momentum forward rather than up and down. She was seeded 7th, she finished 6th and was just .3 from 5th...She swam a personal best time of 44.95 *100 Back - Seeded 10th - 1:26.59* - looked good in this race early...late she seemed to run out of gas and I still think this is due to not having been with the team from the beginning of the season, and some of it is she isn't working hard enough at practice. She finished 12th, but she also posted a personal best time of 1:26.02. *50 Free - Seeded 11th - 34.19* - Bailey's personal best is actually a 33.96, which was swum in October of last year before she really started ingraining the bad left arm in her freestyle. The 34.19 seed time was right before the state championships in February of this year...this race she swam a 34.65. This was accomplished even with her really focusing on keeping the stroke clean. I expect we could see a real drop in this time soon if she can make the new stroke more muscle memory and allow herself to focus on racing not form. *50 Back - Seeded 12th - 39.38* - looks good like the 100 Back, but unlike the 100, she didn't run out of gas and she posted a personal best 38.25, which is over a full second improvement. Not bad considering she is relearning the arm portions of this stroke. *100 Breast - Seeded 4th - 1:35.90* - The seed time is her personal best and it was swum in her first meet with Chattahoochee Gold in mid October...she improved on it here, and she improved by 1.13 seconds, posting a personal best 1:34.77 *50 Fly - Deck Entered* - The coach has been very pleased with Bailey's efforts and she rewarded her by allowing her to swim in the 50 fly. She was under orders to maintain form over racing but she got to do both. The girl next to her in the race had a good stroke and Bailey raced her as best she could without risking breaking from. She posted a very respectible 38.16, her personal best was at SA time trials earlier this fall, but a great time that could lead to much better ones down the road. -------------------------------------------------------------- Last edited by Breeze : 11-16-2012 at 02:43 PM.

11-16-2012, 02:39 PM	#173
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Brett *50 Breast - Seeded 12th - 39.82* - Brett looked good in this race, he really pushed (pulled) through and he managed to tie his personal best time 39.82. This was good because the last time he raced his time was slower by a good bit. This helped get his confidence up for the meet. *100 Back - 1:29.77* - still progressing nicely. Swam another personal best time of 1:28.57, and after watching his video last night he said, man I need to move my arms faster (exactly what I've been saying for weeks), hopefully because he saw it himself it will sink in and he'll actually do it. If so, I could see 3 seconds falling off of this time the next time he swims it. *50 Free - 34.38* - This event was a turning point for Brett. He swam poorly in this one, coming in 1.3 seconds slower (35.68)than his seed time. He was expecting a big improvement and when he didn't swim well he was ready to quit for the day. He was very upset and he didn't want to do his 100 IM, which was almost immediately after his 50 free... *100 IM - 1:29.71* - He complained, begged, whined and argued about swimming this one, all because he was so disappointed in his time and he's comparing his times to the other 12 years olds and he feels he pales in comparison...but we convencied him to tell his coach he didn't want to swim this and his coach told him, he didn't care, he was going to swim it - so he got in line. He didn't do well, again coming in just under 1 second slower (1:30.66), but at least he swam it. *200 IM - NT* - my statement in the initial write up that he had a 200 IM time may not have been accurate. I know he swam it long course, but maybe he didn't swim it short course because my quick search on USA swimming didn't turn anything up. Regardless, his improved strokes looked real good in this one and he was pretty strong throughout the race. He opened with a 43.15 fly, not an awesome time, but at this point it was the 2nd fastest 50 fly he had ever swum, and he still had 150 more yards to race...His back was a respectible 46.31...he was very disappointed in his breast leg which was a 50.02 (I think because he used the stroke to catch his breath for the finish), and he finished the free in a 41.23. All in all he swam a 3:00.71 time and a personal best. It probably doesn't sound that great, but at the time it was good enough to be Bear's 200 IM time from a month ago by 6 full seconds. That is a huge accomplishment for Brett and it illustrates how much better his "other" strokes are getting. *50 Back - 41.48* - slightly slower time of 41.53 - I believe because he wasn't fully recovered from the 200 IM *100 Breast - 1:29.77* - really tried to sprint this for the full 100 and he improved his best time by 1.17 seconds posting a 1:28.60. Did better on pullouts, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. *50 Fly - 43.92* - Brett's goal on his back and fly is to be sub 40 right now, and based on his time in the 200 IM, I felt he might challenge it. When this race started he was scooting along doing pretty well. He tried not to breath to much so he could stay high in the water. At the turn it looked like he might be able to do it. However, in the last 3rd of the pool he had to breath several times and it slowed him down. He touched the wall and the final time was...40.01. A personal best and a huge improvement. Plus a real motivator for next time.

11-19-2012, 08:14 AM	#174
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Bear *100 Free - Seeded 7th - 1:14.03* - Bear was very strong in this race, got out with a 34.87 came home with a 37.03...finished with a personal best 1:11.90 and an improvement of 2.13 seconds. He also finished 4th overall and beat the top Gold 100 yard swimmer in his age group. *50 Breast - Seeded 11th - 49.46* - The new stroke is starting to come around. He posted an improved time of 47.21 and finished 7th overall. 46.70 is actually his personal best, but this was his 2nd fastest time every, and an improvement of a couple of seconds over what he had been swimming with Chattahoochee Gold. *100 Back - Seeded 11th - 1:25.23* - I talked to him a little before this race and told him he had to be more aggressive going into the walls. I told him by slowing down inside the flags it was taking him too many strokes to get back to full speed and it was killing his times. As expected Bear sucked it up, and went hard in and out of the walls...and it paid off. Personal best time of 1:24.42, finished 7th overall *200 Free - Seeded 9th - 2:40.47* - Again Bear swam well in the longer freestyle event. He got out with a 36.04 opening 50, then coasted to a 40.68 2nd, and a 40:48 3rd, closing with a good 38.95. Ending with a personal best 2:36.11 and improving by 4.36 seconds. He finished 5th overall and again just edged out the top freestyler on the team. As good as this swim was, his coach wants more effort in the middle 100. She want all splits to be below 40 seconds (and will push to sub 39 by the state meet in February). Bear did earn a Southeastern state cut here, but it appears to be only Tennessee related so he won't be able to take advantage of it... *200 IM - Seeded 6th - 3:06.64* - This was probably the most exciting race of the weekend for me. Bear was right next to the top dog (same one he beat in both the freestyles listed above) and the two of them flat raced each other the entire way...best way to illustrate this is to show you the splits... 50 Fly Bear - 39.57 Jack - 39.80 50 Back Bear - 1:22.44 (42.87) - note Bear has a poor back to breast turn which hurt his time Jack - 1:22.49 (42.69) 50 Breast Bear - 2:14.98 (52.54) Jack - 2:15.93 (53.44) 50 Free Bear - 2:52.71 (37.73) Jack - 2:52.40 (36.47) Bear finished 5th overall...and his time was a personal best and an improvement of 14+ seconds... Bear earned a Southeasten Cut time here too... *50 Back - Seeded 12th - 39.23* - The more aggressive walls helped out here again. Posted a personal best time of 38.64, finished 11th overall. *100 Breast - Seeded 11th - 1:46.29* - The improved breaststroke really showed up here...he swam th e opening 50 in 48.35 and closed with a 49.99, overall it was a personal best time of 1:38.34, and he was able to finish 7th. *50 Fly - seeded 12th - 39.66* - finally all the effort of the weekend catches up to Bear and he isn't able to post a personal best. He gets a time of 40.83...not significantly off his typical time. He still has a hitch at the bottom of his stroke that needs to get worked out. The coach is planning to work with him in an extra practice on Tuesday (11/20)... *Note: For his efforts, Bear was named the Chattahoochee Gold, Gold Level Team's Swimmer of the Meet Award Winner...*

11-26-2012, 01:21 PM	#175
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Lanier Aquatics Winter Invite - Gainesville, Ga, 11/30 - 12/2 There is a meet this weekend, but only Brett is invited this time. It is a big meet because it runs as a prelim / finals, which is the same format as the state meet, and is rare for most events. Brett will be swimming the following... 50 Free 100 Fly 50 Breast 100 Free 100 Breast 100 IM Not much to report on these races, and since I'm going to be in Jacksonville setting up a remote office this week, I won't have much time to get into details. I'll update the results next week...

11-27-2012, 06:41 AM	#176
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Lanier Aquatics Winter Invite - Gainesville, Ga, 11/30 - 12/2 Quick update: This meet will also feature relays, and we were hopeful that Brett would be in one. Unfortunately, there are only 3 11/12 boys going to the meet. I have raised the possibility of Bear swimming just the relays to give them a 4th, but I don't think it is going to fly. This is very disappointing to me, as swimming in a relay for Gold would have been a big boost to Brett's self confidence and motivation...

12-10-2012, 08:28 AM	#177
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Lanier Aquatics Winter Invite - Gainesville, Ga, 11/30 - 12/2 Below are the results of Brett's meet. I have to admit, I can't comment in detail on his immediate reactions after his races, because he didn't sit with me during the meet. I could only see the expressions on his face and body language... This event was a split into preliminaries that were held each morning and then A finals for the top 8 times and B finals for 9-16...were swum about 5 hours later... Day 1 *50 Free* - Started off the meet, and for the second straight time he hasn't improved on this race. He posted a time in the same general area of his personal best 34.38 with a 35.04, but he didn't seem happy. He is working hard in improving his free kick and I know he feels he should be faster at this point. *100 Fly* - Brett's fly has been improving dramatically at practice. His coaches have been telling him for weeks that he's getting so much stronger at this stroke and that they could see him being a really strong butterflyer by the time he's fully grown. I believe this reinforcement was instrumental in the fact that he didn't get too uptight prior to this race. He entered with a personal best time of 1:43.86...he finished with a time of 1:35.82...a huge improvement a personal best and it earned him a spot in the B finals later that evening. *50 Breast* - Brett's breast looked strong as he really worked hard through the stroke. He was a little quick to come out of his pullouts, but he posted a 39.50, bettering his personal best by .32, and earning a spot in the A final... ------------------------------------------------------------- Day 1 - FINALS *100 Fly* - Didn't expect much here. As the two session schedule really takes a lot out of kids and especially smaller kids like Brett...However, he attacked the 100 fly again, and he not only posted another good time, he posted another personal best, and he didn't just improve on the personal best from the morning, he destroyed that time finishing with a 1:31.56 *50 Breast* - Brett's breast suffered from the morning session as he posted a time of 40.47. He was disappointed, but the coach told him not to worry about it. That he was tired and needed to go home and get some rest, and that he had gotten off to a great start. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Day 2 *100 Breast* - Came in with a personal best of 1:28.60, finished with a time of 1:26.92 and was 6th overall, earning a spot in the A final *100 Free* - looks good early, really fades late. Finishes with a 1:16.33, about .4 slower than he personal best... *100 IM* - With his improved fly and back, I keep expecting a big drop here...and his fly and back looked strong in this race. His year round personal best in this event was a 1:29.71...(though he's been much faster in Summer League)...and he posted a 1:25.99 in this race for another personal best. Unfortunately, he was only an alternate for the B final.... ------------------------------------------------------------- Day 2 - FINALS *100 Breast* - The efforts of the last two days really came down on Brett hard. He swam well, and in fact, was pretty much in the same relationship during the race with the kids that finished around him in preliminaries, but he was slower (as were all the other kids in his heat) and he posted a time of 1:29.43, well off of his morning time. ------------------------------------------------------------- All the coaches were extremely complementary of Brett...and they keep encouraging him to work hard and assuring him that once he grows he'll be beating most of the kids that are currently faster than he is because they are bigger and stronger...

12-11-2012, 09:39 AM	#178
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	General Update We have another swim meet this weekend and it is a Gold Team hosted one...which makes it big. This meet could go a long way for determining who are swimming in the relays at State. Unfortunately, Bear is home from school today with a stomach bug, and Brett missed practice yesterday for the same reason (though he appears to be better today). Hopefully, this doesn't sap them of energy and we can have a good showing. Also more sad news on Bailey's SA friend Lexi. I'm not sure where things were when I last updated her health. I believe she was about to have a second surgery on her knee (the one that was operated on first). That operation went fine and she was starting to practice again, when she managed to step off a curb awkwardly and broke her ankle. Then a few weeks later, she got her finger stuck in the chain of a swing when someone was on it, and it broke. Now we've learned that her 2nd knee will also require a 2nd surgery. The doctors are already talking about needing to do knee replacements when she is in her 20s... I'll update the event list for this weekend soon...

12-12-2012, 08:27 AM	#179
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	General Update Brett received the practice award for the swimmer putting forth the most effort over the last week... Bear got the hardest worker award for dry land practice...

12-12-2012, 08:33 AM	#180
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	South Pole Meet @ Cumming Aquatic Center - 12/15-12/16 Bailey *200 Freestyle - 2:52.54 - seeded 8th. Hasn't swum this in a very long time. The time posted goes back to around February of last year. I expect she'll improve on this... 100 IM - 1:25.20 - seeded 7th. I could see an improvement in this race, as she's been working harder in practice and her stamina should be better, but I don't expect much of an improvement. 50 Butterfly - 38.16 - Seeded 8th.* Bailey's best time is in the low 37s, so I expect her to beat her seed time. Especially given that she has been cleared to race everything now. *100 Breaststroke - 1:34.77 - Seeded 5th. Bailey can be the fastest Gold Girl with a good swim. 100 Freestyle - 1:16.49 - Seeded 10th.* Another old time as she wasn't allowed to swim the event because of her injury. I expect she'll beat this by a good bit... *50 Breast - 44.95 - Seeded 10th...Big race here for Bailey, as she's the first seed for Gold 10U girls, but the second seed is only .7 seconds back...if she can beat the other girl it will put her in line to be the Breaststroker on the A relay at state. 100 Butterfly - NT* - is there any better indication that she's been cleared to race everything than seeing she'll swim the 100 fly for the first time? She could beat Bear's time if she doesn't run out of gas... *200 IM - NT* - first time swim for Bailey...she'll do well, but I'm betting fatigue grabs here before it is over and she won't beat Bear's time (not really surprising), but she might not beat Brett's either...we'll see... Bear *200 Freestyle - 2:36.11 - Seeeded 5th.* Had a big improvement here in his last meet, not sure he can do it again. Especially given the stomach bug this week. *100 IM - 1:27.40 - Seeded 4th. I expect an improvement here, as long as he is healthy and not worn out from the 200 Free. He should be a good bit faster than Bailey at this point, so I could see him posting a time in the 1:23.xx range... 50 Backstroke - 38.64 - Seeded 4th. With strong turns could post a personal best. He got out of the conservative, let's don't bang our head into the wall type turns in the last meet...if he carries it over it will help. 50 Freestyle - 33.57 - Seeded 5th. A big race for Bear...he's seeded 4th for Gold Swim Club and he needs to stay in the top 4 to be on the A free relay at state. 100 Backstroke - 1:24.42 - Seeded 6th. Good turns and this time drops...a good bit. 100 Fly - 1:31.34 - Seeded 5th. Depends on strength and if he can maintain form. Last time he swam this, he had to catch is breath on the 75 yard turn. If he can keep from doing that, he should drop time. 200 IM - 2:52.71 - Seeded 2nd...the kid seeded ahead of him is the same kid he raced stroke for stroke with at the Martha Bass meet last month. Bear only trails him by .3 seconds. He could win this outright with a good swim. 500 Freestyle - 7:10.17 - Seeded 6th.* - Not sure his time improves after he'll swim a tough 200 IM...but I won't count him out either... Brett *200 Freestyle - 2:47.61 - Seeded 9th. Hard to get a measure on this one. Brett's kicking has gotten better, and in general his freestyle is better, but in the last few freestyle races he hasn't posted a personal best. My bet is here, he won't either...just not sure where the disconnect in speed is... 200 Backstroke - NT* - First time swimming this event. No idea what sort of time he'll post... *200 Breaststroke - NT* - This isn't the first time Brett has swum the event. His personal best is 3:17.XX from last year around this time. And that time would be good enough for 2nd Seed. I expect he'll do much better than his best time, given that he's been improving on the shorter breast swims and he seems to do better in the longer ones... *100 Butterfly - 1:31.56 - Seeded 8th...I can't believe he's seeded 8th in the fly. I'm so proud of how hard he's worked on this. He probably won't post a personal best given that he just got that time 2 weeks ago...and it was such a HUGE improvement at the time... 100 Freestyle - 1:15.93 - Seeded 22nd.* Brett will really want to go fast here to keep his time better than Bailey's, we'll see if he can start improving on the freestyle again... *100 Backstroke - 1:28.57 - Seeded 15th. If he can increase his arm rotation, he'll improve his time. Form is solid, so just need to go harder... Last edited by Breeze : 12-12-2012 at 10:51 AM.*

12-14-2012, 09:58 AM	#181
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	South Pole Meet @ Cumming Aquatic Center 12/15 - 12/16 Quick Update... The schedule of events was released and we found out that Bear is scheduled to be in the last 200 IM and the first 500 Free with only 25 Frees in between. That means he'll finish the 200 IM and then swim the 500 Free about 15 minutes later... The coach admitted she messed up. He was only supposed to be in 1 of the 2 races, but she's going to let it ride if she can, because she's interested to see how he handles it. At least he should be extremely tired Sunday evening so I shouldn't have any problems with him wanting to go to bed... Last edited by Breeze : 12-14-2012 at 10:00 AM.

12-15-2012, 11:00 PM	#182
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	oh the emotions of swimming...wow...I'm worn out, and it's only the first day of the meet...

12-17-2012, 11:32 AM	#183
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	South Pole Meet Results Bailey Day 1 *200 Free* - This was the first time Bailey swam the 200 Free since being released from restrictions due to the shoulder injury. Her best time coming in wasn't her seed time of 2:52.54, but it was 2:50.82 swum in January of 2012, so I expected an improvement, and I got one. She posted a personal best time of 2:44.23. She looked good but I think she conserved her energy a bit too much...here are her splits: 38.20 41.37 (1:19.57) 43.47 (2:03.04) 41.19 (2:44.23) I think she'll be able to improve on this one next time she swims it (more on that later)... *100 IM* - it was way back in Februrary the last time Bailey swam a 100 IM in a year round event, so she was able to improve again, posting a personal best time of 1:22.96. Her fly looked very strong but a poor dive...way too deep, ended up costing her some time. The splits... Fly/Back - 38.67 (10th fastest opening 50) Breast/Free - 44.29 (4th fastest closting 50)...a bit surprising given I felt she'd falter due to fatigue and her breast isn't in peak form right now. *50 Fly* - Bailey's fly, while different from what it was with regards to technique is once again looking really strong. She improved on her personal best time by almost a second and a half posting a 36.57. *100 Breast* - swimming is such a funny sport, especially for growing kids. One day they can really have a stroke going well and then a month later that stroke is so far off you're amazed...that's the case here. In November she sway a great 1:34.77, this time she managed just a 1:37.36. Something isn't quite right, so I'm sure there will be some tweaking taking place in practice for the next couple of weeks. I will say after watching the video, her breat in the IM was much stronger than her 100 breast (may have been trying to hard, which cost her in form) Day 2 *100 Free* - This time Bailey's freestyle from the very beginning looked strong. The dominating kick was back, and her pull was significantly better. She got in a good body position and moved well through the water. Fatigue did catch her here, as she opened with a 33.54 (4th at the turn), and closed with a 38.17, ended up 7th...and the back half split was 8th...final time was 1:11.71 (the strength of this swim leads me to believe there is more speed for her in this stroke if she can maintain her form. *50 Breast* - after talking with the coach on day 1, Bailey tried to clean up her stroke a bit. It still wasn't sharp, but the body position was good and the effort was there. She managed a personal best 44.35. *100 Fly* - Bailey was very concerned about swimming this for the first time. She started off good, but she ended up swallowing water and she stopped. However, after catching her breath the started off again and nearly won her heat, posting a time of 1:26.91, losing by only .6 of a second. To futher explain how well Bailey swam her, the girl she nearly beat in her heat finished 2nd overall, and the girl that won the event was actually 11 (she turned 11 on the second day of the meet, giving her the right to swim as a 10 year old). Had she not stopped, she would have probably finished with around a 1:24.xx time, or better (though to get started in fly from the middle of the pool with no momentum). Unfortunately, the time doesn't count as she was DQed for stopping... *200 IM* - following the problem in the 100 fly, Bailey was concerned about this race as well. But the fly leg went good, and from there she was solid...here are the splits Fly - 38.40 (5th) Back - 45.71 (1:27.82) (6th) Brst - 51.57 (2:15.68) (4th) Free - 39.09 (2:54.77) (4th) Overall she finished 5th... *So 8 swims, 6 personal bests, 1 decline, and 1 DQ...* Last edited by Breeze : 12-18-2012 at 11:45 AM.

12-18-2012, 11:44 AM	#184
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	South Pole Meet Results Bear Day 1 *200 Free* - came in with a 2:36.11, finished with a personal best 2:35.48. His freestyle is looking much stronger now that he has added a bit of a glide to the stroke. Splits were: 35.95 39.45 (1:13.59) 40.18 (1:55.88) 39.90 (2:35.48) *100 IM* - In this race Bear was right next to his friend on the team that just out-touched him in the 200 IM in the meet in Tennessee. This time they were practically even at the first turn...but Bear opened about a half second lead in the back. Then in the turn to the breast, Jack tried to do a bucket turn, but wasn't close enough to the wall and he fell a couple of body length's back. Bear swam a strong Breast, and finsihed strong to post a personal best 1:23.80...his fly/back split was 38.75, the breast/free split was 45.05. *50 Back* - Bear got a terrible start, late off the wall, and really really deep (the kid really likes the underwater work, and he's strong with it, but in this case he over did it badly). This put him behind. Then to make matters worse, he botched his turn...he ended up off on his count and was on the wrong arm when he flipped...ultimately he posted a 39.77... *50 Free* - Bear closed with a strong 50 free, dropping his time over a full second to 32.46... --------------------------------------------------------------------- Day 2 *100 Back* - again another bad, start. Slow and deep, costs him. The first couple of turns were good, the 3rd was horrible...and it costs him in time as well, but even with all that his improved form and strength shine through with a personal best 1:22.00 *100 Fly* - Bear and Jack were right next to each other again, and again they really pushed each other. Bear had the lead at the 50 by just over .2 seconds swimming a 40.92, but in the back half Jack closed hard in the last 25 and beat Bear by .6...Bear posted a personal best 1:26.59 *200 IM* - This event was a little irriating to me. The coach really wanted Bear to focus on the 500 free (and as I mentioned in the pre-race write up it was only going to be about 15 minutes after the 200), and so she told him to just swim the event easy. My thought was, either have him not swim or swim hard. By swimming easy all he'll do is race a 200 at a moderate rate, still fatigue his muscles and adversely impact his 500...he still managed to swim a 3:06.52... *500 Free* - Bear started out fine, then went conservative, then really picked it up. Here are his splits... 37.14 41.42 (1:18.56) 41.82 (2:00.38) 40.98 (2:41.36) 41.63 (3:22.99) 41.56 (4:04.55) 40.02 (4:44.57) 39.51 (5:24.08) 39.74 (6:03.82) 37.83 (6:41.65) The most amazing thing to me is that he did this 15 minutes after swimming a 200 IM and his last 200 of this 500, he swam in 2:37.10...his opening 200 was 2:41.36, and his 200 Free time from day 1 was 2:35.48...he swam the last 200 only about 1.5 seconds slower than his 1st event on the 1st day... Edit to note: Also this is an improvement of almost 30 seconds... *So 8 swims, 6 Personal Bests, 1 drop, and 1 coaches decision to coast* Last edited by Breeze : 12-19-2012 at 06:41 AM.

12-19-2012, 04:18 PM	#185
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	South Pole Meet Results Brett Day 1 *200 Free* - I know I've said this before, that the coaches have told Brett his hard work was about to start paying off. And they were right. Brett came into this event with a 2:47.61...and left with a 2:34.09...that is faster than both Bailey and Bear. This was a HUGE improvement (@13.5 seconds) and he left the pool completely pumped up. He ran over to his coach with a beaming smile on his face. He actually managed to finish 8th out of 47 swimmer...in a freestyle event. His splits... 36.07 39.46 (1:15.99) 40.01 (1:55.54) 38.16 (2:34.59) The real cool thing was, for the first time in a long time, I saw Brett race the stroke. Brett wanted to beat the kid next to him, and he did it...he trailed early, but held on and out worked him in the last 50. That was good to see... Also it was good to see that the opening 100 for this race 1:15.99 was almost exactly the same as Brett's best 100 free time coming into this meet 1:15.93, which led me to believe he'd have a very good 100 Free later... *200 Back* - a first time every swim for Brett, and he looked good. Actually, he looked better in the long back than the sprint backs because his long deliberate stroke looks more at home...he did the following splits... 42.79 45.80 (1:28.94) 44.97 (2:13.56) 44.57 (2:58.13) I was pleased he broke 3 minutes. He managed to finish 11th out of 25, which isn't terrible either, especially for a kid that hated backstroke not that long ago. In fact, as recently as October he set a personal best in the 50 back with a 42.77...and when you look at his splits for a whole 200 it becomes pretty obvious how much better he's gotten and how quickly. *200 Breast* - Brett was seeded high in this event, and was pumped up for it. When the race started he was quickly into 2nd place, behind a kid that was about 2x his size. Brett trailed early, but by the 75 turn he was beginning to close, only to fall behind again coming off the walls. This process continued until the 150 turn, where Brett was able to stay closer, he then took the lead at the 175 turn and pulled away down the stretch. He posted a solid 3:03.xx. This ended up begin good enough to win the event initially. Which was Brett's first ever outright win in a year round event. He was pumped. However, he was once again DQed for 1 hand touch on the last turn. In the video it looks like he may have anticipated the touch, and done a pitter patter rather than 2 hands simultaneously. This is aggrevating to me, and heart breaking to Brett. However, interestingly Brett's victory would have only lasted 24 hours. The next day during a 200 Race, they allowed a swimmer to do the 200 Breast, and he beat Brett's time. Not sure what that was about (other than allowing the kid to get a cut time for State), but because it didn't impact Brett I didn't pursue it. *100 Fly* - Brett scratched. He was too upset over the DQ to race. His energy was sapped and he was crushed. He wasn't with me, and it wasn't my decision to allow it. He was sitting with the coaches. He had to do a punishment swim for the scrach on Monday, but in all honesty that was probably for the best... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *100 Free* - Brett's strong 200 translated to a strong 100 and he opened with a 34.43 (personal best in a 50 free is 34.38) and he closed with a 37.4 to finish with a personal best 1:11.85 and a 4 second improvement. Again the pumped up feeling from yesterday returned... *100 Back* - The strong efforts from Saturday returned and Brett improved by 4.5 seconds posting a 1:24.03, and he left some time in the pool by gliding to far on each of the turns... *100 Breast - DECK ENTERED* - after the DQ in the 200 Breast, the coach had us put him in the 100 to get his confidence back. He almost missed the race because he was confused by the lane timer as to whether he was supposed to be there or not. He ended up jumping up on the blocks and diving in almost immediately. He finished 6th overall with a personal best time of 1:26.58. *50 Fly* - After the strong 100 fly performances just a few weeks ago, I hoped this would show major improvement, and it did...about 1.6 seconds of improvement and in a 50 that can be a bunch. He finished with a personal best time of 38.41. *So he ended up with 6 PB, 1 DQ, and 1 Scratch*