USA Swim Sectionals - March 25-28, 2010

We are now on a break.  For the next 11 days, there is no swim practice.  No swim meets, no swimming at all.  Short course has ended, long course begins on April 10th.  What will we do with our time?  Well, after all the busy times of Holy Week and Easter, there will be college visits over spring break...to check out, what else, college swim programs. 

 

Sectionals came and went.  The Nat in Indianapolis was host this year, which made it nice and convenient for us:  13 miles travel and no overnights! 

 

Sectionals were long course, so Matt was not trained in long course after swimming all these months of short course, and the good thing from the weekend, is that he did not lose as much momentum as he usually does switching between the two.  He pretty much went in and came out really well.  Even swimming against a bunch of college kids. 

 

He swam 4 swims and 3 relays.  Went in seeded 6th of 77 in the 50 Free, and finished 6th.  Went in seeded 16th of 90 in the 200 Free, and finished 10th (but 8th in time).  Went in seeded 10th of 71 in the 100 Back, and finished 12th (but 11th in time).  Went in seeded 13th of 100 in the 100 Free, and finished 9th (but 6th in time).  One cannot jump between brackets during finals, so that is why his time was better in three of the swims than his actual placings, you get to keep your time, so that's what is most important.  

 

All his relays finished second, which was not bad considering Daniel and Harrison were on spring break at their schools and were cruising literally with their families instead of swimming at the meet. The last relay of the meet was the 400 Medley:  Nik at backstroke, John at breaststroke, Mike at butterfly, and Matt at freestyle.  In the relays, they only swim the fastest in the finals session, so in the relays, a team could finish faster in the morning and keep their time, so that in the evening finals, if that team had a better time, they could place in the top 8.  And so it happened. The amusing part was that the guys didn't know that when they were swimming, they thought they were swimming against the fastest teams, so as you can see from the photos, Matt is anchoring and way ahead of anyone else coming into the finish (meaning there was not the usual pressure of bringing it home), so when he touched in, they thought they had gotten first, but a team from the morning session had a faster time, so Matt's team ended up second. 
Although they were disappointed, it did bring home the fact that just because you think you have it all in the bag, you shouldn't ever let up. 

 

That said, it was a wonderful season full of lots of firsts and new accomplishments.  Time to retire the yards and swim in meters.  Time to work on long course times.  But first, starting Friday, it's time for spring break!