From the Coaches - Swim Meet Round-up
Swim Meet Round-Up
As we head into the Holidays this week, the coaches wanted to highlight the many successes so far this season. As a club we have so far attended 1 Time trial, 2 participation meets, 2 NovaTech meets, and 4 Age Group meets. Our membership has seen many strong performances from first time racing all the way to new club records. It has been an exciting few months!
Club records:
At Acadia we saw two club records fall. Lily Zwicker achieved her first Club record in the 10&under girls 100 free. Lily's time of 1:10.68 broke the record of 1:10.90 held by Katie Aucoin since 1998! Brody MacPherson in the 13-14 boys 200 breaststroke with a 2:34.92. This broke the longest standing records, that of Ian Jackson who set it in 1988 with a 2:38.37.
At Acadia we saw the long standing women's 1500m free scm record broken by Sophia Deane with an 18:00.68, breaking the record held by Liz Weis since 1998 of 18:07.57.
Brody MacPherson broke his own record in the 13-14 Boy's 200 breaststroke scm with a 2:34.73, down from his previous 2:34.92.
Well done Crusaders!
Candy Cane Wrap Up
Our final meet of the 2023 calendar year took place this past weekend in Truro, it was our first heats and finals meet of the 2023-2024 season
We had 50 swimmers in attendance from the Senior, Junior, Gold, Blue and Fundamental 3 groups. This resulted in 362 individual swims, and 16 relays with 198 Swimmers finals appearances the Crusaders had over 50% return to race at night. Of our finals swim we saw 71 podiums. A big shout out to Nadav and Hayden both of whom got added to our relays at the last minute to fill in for our sick and injured teammates. It was wonderful to see swimmers supporting their Crusader teammates in every session, especially in finals where the Crusader presence could not be ignored!!
Congratulations to all of our swimmers who saw themselves achieving new standards and graduating through our competition program.
Participation to Level 1
Diego Calderon
Bella Kou
Ellie Cormier
Ellie Herman
Madeline McLennan
Walter D’Addario
Lorena Almeida
Rachel MacInnis
Sunwoo Lim
yuri Lim
Lilah Gillespie
Level 1 to Level 2
Diego Calderon
Bella Kou
Meena Watson
Madeline McLennan
Jude Lang
Jenna Sinclair-White
Nia Chaudrey
Kornii Costyuk
Molly McQuaid
Level 2 to Age Group
Oliva Maciorowski
Clara Jonacs
Aurora Parasram
Chloe Mayne
Maeve Van Blaricom
New AAA Qualifiers
Ainsley MacPherson
Hayden Doucet
Nadav Arie
Eric Schillinger
FUNdamentals 2 and 3
The FUNdamentals have successfully completed two meets so far this season and have done an amazing job. Karley and I have noted some positive behavior during races and lots of team support, which is key for a positive meet experience. There have also been lots of PB and move ups. We would like to say that we are proud of all our swimmers and hope to keep up the fantastic work in the new year!!
Blue
Blue swimmers have been doing incredibly well at their meets so far this season! Age Group swimmers have had the opportunity to race at 4 different meets, finishing off at the Candy Cane Invitational earlier this month. Blue saw 3 swimmers (Egor, Bowen, and Kyrie) have the opportunity to race in finals at Candy Cane, which is an amazing experience for our young swimmers! NovaTech swimmers have had the chance to race at 2 meets so far this year, and we've seen a number of swimmers graduate to the next level of competition. The Blue swimmers have done a fantastic job at taking what they have learned in practice and using those skills in meets, including building our longer events, tight streamlines off of the wall, and lots of stroke specific feedback into each event. Well done Blue swimmers!
Gold
The Gold group had a great first prelims and finals meet at Candy Cane - solidifying and building on a lot of racing skills as well as meet habits! Each meet so far has allowed swimmers to reflect, and through training they’ve built the skills to apply race plans for the next time they swim a race. Candy Cane showed focus and perseverance throughout the long sessions, and the 46 finals swims from our group often led to significant time drops. Congratulations to those who have achieved AAA qualifying times! It is great to see that as we continue to build athlete independence when it comes to race preparation, we still remain supportive teammates and are excited to cheer each other on. As we enter the new year and next phase of training, we know we will continue to see positive mindsets and drive from this dedicated group of swimmers! Keep up the great work.
At Candy Cane we saw several swimmers have back to back races in finals, a big shout out to Hayden Doucet who had 400Fr and 200Fly on Saturday, Lily Zwicker who had 50 Fly and 200 Back, and Nadav Arie with 100Br and 50 Fly.
Leila & Lauren
Junior
Junior squad has been gradually adding elements of race performance into their training over the 15 weeks of the baseline macrocycle (or Sept.-Dec semester). Aside from fine tuning stroke technique every practice, this has meant learning about and being able to execute changes in pace and following a race plan. With rehearsal type training sessions, the Junior squad is generally more aware and race by race have gained a better ability to control race plans for some of their races. Many experienced their first best average set. This is a challenge that pushes their physical and mental stamina, and yields an individual pace time for freestyle pace training sets. Building pace faster than best average helped many swimmers improve their distance free event times at the December Candy Cane meet. Our next step will be to establish race pace training targets for all events. These times have been calculated for each swimmer and they'll be introduced into our practice sessions for the next macrocycles (semesters) that take us into March.
From the Candy Cane invitational, our first heats & finals meet of the season, many personal best times were achieved. It was great to see so many deserving swimmers earn this reward. One of the things about our sport is that with multiple racing events in a competition swimmers will eventually experience back-to-back races. By this we mean two races that are scheduled very close together, usually 15 minutes or less between race efforts. We could aim to select events that are far apart and minimize this possibility, but the reality is that this double race effort can happen at any level of competition, all the way up to the Olympic Games. Part of the preparation for this can be managed within training efforts, but mostly the swimmer develops this type of race heartiness only by experiencing closely timed race efforts. Sometimes these efforts occur in prelims and sometimes in finals. Either way, the coach and swimmer work out a transition plan that optimizes recovery plan from one race and preparation for the next. One double race effort we noted at CCI - Gabe Vitkin racing the 1500 free followed by swimming anchor on the 4x50 Mixed Free relay.
Senior
The work that the Senior group has been putting in so far this season culminated in a strong showing at the Candy Cane meet. Through the fall Senior has had an emphasis on building a strong aerobic base that saw many distance freestyle sets including a tough 10 x 150 Fr Best average set. This baseline work was designed to get swimmers comfortable with their distance pace and many swimmers saw wonderful gains in our freestyle races with this training. We saw many dominant performances in the 1500 and 800Fr at Candy Cane from Sophia Deane, Luke Ellis, Alex Jonsen-Humble, and Olivia Jodrey. Beyond the aerobic work the Senior group has been working on back to back max effort speed sets. The group has started to catch on that there is often a “bonus” high effort at the end of a big set. Every time a max effort is asked of the swimmers they step up and perform. These big efforts did have a purpose, with our first heats/finals we had many big back to back efforts. The demand to race more than once within a very short time frame is difficult and Candy Cane was used as an opportunity to train this. We had Alex Jonsen-Humble with two back to back races on Saturday 400Fr and 200Fly, Sunday with 1500Fr and the 4 x 50Fr mixed Relay. Idan Arie and Leon Bautista had an impressive showing with 100Fr, 100Br, and 50 Fly all back to back. Finally Luke Ellis showed a strong racing mentality racing the 400IM in a heat all on his own.