Matt, John, Coach Chris (and fellow relay swimmer), and Harrison at Short Course USA National Swimming in Ohio at OSU this past weekend.
Since I wasn't able to be at Nationals, I didn't get my usual round of photos. Harrison's mother send me a few, so thanks to Crystal, here is a great photo of the CSC boys' relay team at Nationals.
This is not just your normal every common day boys' relay team as you might have noticed. The boys only had three qualify for Nationals with the appropriate time cuts needed, and since a relay needs four men, there was going to be no relay team for the CSC boys National team. "Was" being the operative word.
In USA swimming, as long as you are registered with USA swimming, in good standing, and have the appropriate time cuts, you can swim in USA swim meets. So, Coach Chris rose to the occasion. (He's 35, incidentally, and I am allowed to say his age as it is on all the psych sheets from the meet, etc. where they list the swimmers and their ages...public knowledge.)
Chris trained, and trained, and trained some more, so that he could qualify to be the fourth man on the relay team. The guys were loving it.
Chris qualified and they had their National relay team! How wonderful is that? Pretty wonderful. The guys were so happy that they were going to get to swim relays because Chris made it possible for them to do so.
They did great...their times were really good for where they are all at and each one of them contributed in major ways to the whole team. I think the three boys spent a good deal of time with their mouths open and their jaws dropping at how well Chris did and what a great swimmer he is...a whole new and deeper respect for hard work and dedication was born.
One very fun aspect of this particular relay team is that all the other relay teams were composed of four men, each specializing in their particular swims, all of them sprinters as relay teams are usually made up of guys who can sprint fast to the finish. In the Freestyle Relays, you will have four really fast freestylers. In the Medley Relays, you have four really fast sprinters in their swims, i.e. backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, and freestyle because each leg of the Medley Relay is composed of a different stroke.
Because we did not have the appropriate qualifiers for Nationals to make up the relay team, we were operating with three freestyler sprinters (Chris, Harrison, Matt) and one distance (non-sprinter) breaststroker (John). Try to make that work!! For the Medley Matt swam backstroke, John his breaststroke, Harrison swam the butterfly, and Coach Chris swam the freestyle.
They did good...they didn't finish last and they had a great time...who knew? It's a well-coached team that can even dream of putting that together.
Congratulations to a great showing at Nationals, guys! We are all so proud of you and all your talent and hard work. And, Chris, Thank You for making it all possible.