Good morning Blue Fins,

That was a close meet yesterday. Actually, going in I gave North Penn the slight advantage of winning both the boys and girls meets. It would be close, but they are well balanced this year and have a couple of strong swimmers in all age groups. So, if we were going to win, we needed our strategy to work well and for our swimmers to meet the challenge and excel. 

The North Penn girls had a clear advantage to win the 8/U and 9/10 age groups; we had a clear advantage in the 13/14 and 15-21 age groups. So, it would come down the our 11/12 girls to win the day for us. Similarly, the North Penn boys were strong in the 8/U, 9/10, and 11/12 age groups, whereas we only had an advantage in the 13/14 and 15-21 groups. The closest group was the 9/10 boys..., but still, it was not good odds, they clearly had posted faster times prior to this meet.  

11/12 Girls - We needed to win the medley relay and get that 7 point lead. Actually, we took a risk and put LeLe Waldman in three individual events, hoping she could win all three. But that means our relays would not be as strong; I thought the medley would hold on and take 1st though. With that combo, it should wrap up the 11/12s and seal the deal for our win. Of course, that's not what happened. Our relay disqualified... :(  . Please, no shame on any swimmers, it happens; it's part of the sport. Actually, in my junior year of high school I disqualified our medley relay at the county championships costing us 20 points. We ended up losing the championships by 18 points, so I know what it feels like. Back to our 11/12 girls...,  with the loss in the medley relay, I didn't know how we would make up the 7 points. To be continued -   

9/10 Boys - The only chance we had was to take a high risk strategy and load neither relay. No matter what, North Penn's best four would beat our best four in both the medley and free relays. If we guessed wrong and chose the wrong relay to load, game over. Even if we guessed right, there would be two individual events we could not cover sufficiently and they would get those extra 1st places and our other unloaded relay would still likely lose too. So, what to do? If you can't win the outside game (relays bracket all individual events), hope North Penn has a few absences, load up the inside (individual events) with Kayden Cullen and Nikolai Lowe and try to go 1-2 in one of the events. A 1-2 in swimming is like a haymaker of punch. It is a an 8-1 swing in points, same value as 7 point relay win. If you can't win even one relay, go for a 1-2 somewhere individually. It's not likely to happen, it's a risk, but it's your only chance. However, surprise, surprise..., North Penn had no medley relay!! Which means they probably had a few absences. I started feeling pretty good, 7 points just for our medley relay finishing is a good start. Of course, as fate would have it, this relay disqualified too... ugh. Then in the 50 Free, the one event I thought Kayden and Nikolai had a chance to go 1-2, Nikolai's goggles fell off and we only went 1-3. :(

So, there I stood, after event 24, and thought, "Well, that's it, I'm going to stand here for the next four hours knowing that after 8 years we finally will have a meet in which both our boys and girls will lose simultaneously, and there's not much I can do about it. It's not even going to come down the final events, we lost this meet in the medley relays. Oh well, it was a good run."

To be fair though, every swimmer on this team has DQ'd before. Just be thankful the DQ usually happens at a time that it doesn't really matter. If we are a good enough team, it wouldn't make a difference, we'd win anyway. We would not have 5 different age groups, swimmers ages 6 to 21, some just beginning, some going to Nationals, all putting their hopes or disappointments on the shoulders of just one athlete who made a mistake. 

As I was saying though, I started coaching this team 10 years ago, and it's been 8 since we've had a double loss. BUT THEN..., seemingly from no where, Elena Bays dropped more than 3 seconds in the 50 Free and unexpectedly took 2nd, giving us the 1-2 with Katherine Torrealba. Then again, Violet Wieller dropped more than 2 seconds in the 50 Breast and unexpectedly took 1st! Actually, our 11/12 girls swam their hearts out. Our overall team improvement rate was 41%, but the 11/12 girls had a super high 73.68% improvement rate, and overcame our beginning deficit to win their age group. Thus, with that, we earned another team point, and won the overall meet 3-2! 

As for the 9/10 boys..., it was kind of funny. :) Chase Stahl was swimming the 50 Breast, just going through the motions, not even realizing he was right behind a North Penn swimmer two lanes over. With almost half a lap left in the race he suddenly looked to his left and realized he was close! At that point he started sprinting his heart out! With each stroke he was getting closer and closer to pulling even. Normally, I say, "If you look, you lose", which is true. However, in this case I'm glad Chase looked, got motivated, and poured it on. Funny thing is, he KEPT LOOKING... LOL. So, he'd catch-up, look, fall behind..., catch-up, look, fall behind. I'm on the side of the deck yelling, "Stop looking, stop looking!" Finally though, at the flags he just looked at wall, "phew...", drove his legs home, and out touched his opponent. This gave us the unexpected 1-2, along with Kayden Cullen. 

As with the 11/12 girls, this 8-1 swing made up for the 7-0 deficit we started with. That's when the rest of our strategy kicked in, winning the inside only (individual events). So, by the time we got to the last relay we were up by 9. North Penn won the relay as expected, but to no avail. In the end, the age group score was 31-29, in our favor, and thus secured the overall 3-2 team win. 

By the way, just in case your unfamiliar with PennDel YMCA scoring rules, here's a quick breakdown. There are five age groups; swimmers score points in events for their age group; each age is a "team" point, for a total of 5. So, whichever team wins the majority of age groups, or team points, wins the meet (3-2, 4-1, or 5-0). However, like in the case with us yesterday, sometimes it does come down to just two individual swimmer points. :)

I'll send results with exemplars (team spirit, sportsmanship, and excellence) Monday afternoon.  

See you on deck,

Coach Drake