William Powers swimming for Brunswick School struck gold setting a new 500-freestyle high school team record of 4:38.19 and also broke the team record in the 200-free at 1:43.29.
Team mates James Simone took third in the 500-free at 4:42.43 & Christian Farricker, a freshman, finished third in the 200 IM with a school record time of 1:55.86
Over the past weekend, Badger Swim Club was represented at the New York State Swimming and Diving Federation and Public High School Championships in Buffalo NY. Badger swimmers represented Fordham Prep, Scarsdale High School, and Rye High School.
Highlights from the weekend were the top 24 place finishes from the Badger swimmers that participated in the meet.
Individual scorers in the meet consisted of Spencer LaFata of Fordham Prep 2nd place in the 200 Freestyle (1:40.52) and Josh Hendell of Scarsdale coming in 10th (1:43.14).
In the 200 IM Scarsdale’s David Bravo was 13th with a time of 1:58.57.
Christian Huber representing Rye took 12th in the 50 Freestyle with a time of 21.68.
In the 100 Butterfly Aristides Speres of Fordham Prep took 11th place with a time of 51.45.
Huber came back with a 10th place finish in the 100 freestyle with a time of 47.50.
In the 500 Freestyle Badger was represented by Spencer Lafata who was 1st overall with a time of Automatic All American time of 4:27.02, Josh Hendell taking third with a time of 4:33.52 and John ( Jack) Loveless 4:42.74.
Badger swimmers along with a strong showing in the individual events, played a big part in the relay events of the meet.
The start of the meet, Aristedes swam the Butterfly leg of the 5th place Fordham Prep 200 Medley Relay, Hendell also aided his school swimming the Breaststroke leg of Scarsdales 12th place Medley Relay.
The 200 Freestyle Relay was another showing for Fordham Prep with Speres and LaFata teaming up to come in 4th overall while Huber swimming on the Rye Relay came in 17th overall.
In the In the 400 Freestyle Relay the final event of the meet the team of Haofenj Liu, Bravo, and Hendell aided Scarsdale in playing 9th overall while the pair of Aristides Speres and Spencer Lafata made up 2 parts of the winning 400 Freestyle Relay capping off a great weekend for swimming.
Congratulations to all the Badger Swimmers who swam and return to training this week.
With a strong showing at the 2016 Senior Metropolitan Winter Championships last weekend, Badger swimmers continued their journey on the Road to Rio and the 2016 US Olympic Swimming Trials which are scheduled to take place on June 26 – July 3rd in Omaha, Nebraska.
The meet was a important step in the training and preparation for the professional swimmers Zane Grothe, Ryan Feeley, Cody Miller, Lindsay Vrooman and James Wells along with all the Olympic Trial Qualifiers swimming for Badger Swim Club.
The meet was a challenging due to the new scoring format of the meet, making all swims valuable in the evening finals as the A-B-C-D finals all scored.
On the Men’s side, Badger was able to take the team title with great swims by all its members with some highlighted swims by the professionals and Christian Huber, David Bravo, Spencer Lafata, Ian Bidwell, Josh Hendell, Haofeng Lui, and Jack Loveless. The men swam well in the morning going Short Course and coming back each night and rising to the occasion to swim Long Course Finals.
With limited number of swimmers on the women’s side, the scoring format was even more challenging. Our womens team, lead by Lindsay Vrooman with 4 Individual event wins, paired with Anina Lund and Natalie Eid and the up and coming youth of the Badger Women’s Team fought each night for points. In the end, the womens team was overpowered in numbers and came in second to a LIAC team, which was filled with depth and numbers.
The team swam well with personal bests in both SC and LC and many of the swims qualified for future events that Badger will be training and focusing on. Upcoming meets to watch for fast swimming will be the Arena Pro Swim Series with stops in Orlando Fl., Mesa Az., and Charlotte NC. along with the Texas American Short Course Championships, Metro Junior Olympics and ASCA Single Age Group Championships.
4 x winner
Lindsay Vrooman – Women’s 200/400/800/1500 freestyles
2 x winners
Ryan Feeley 800 Free / 200 Butterfly
Zane Grothe 200/400 Freestyles
Cody Miller 100 Breasstroke / 200 Individual Medley
James Wells 100 / 200 Backstrokes
1 x winners
Spencer Lafata
A note from Badger Parent Advocate, Mike Conaton:
I spent some time recently with a very successful high school coach of a dryland team sport.
I will say, I’m thankful we are parents of swimmers – i.e. athletes in an individual sport measured ultimately by how fast they can swim. Of course our coaches need to be teaching the right strokes and training the kids the right way, but for a large part, swimming can be a sport that has a high correlation between work and improvement/success. In other words, the swimmer tends to get what the swimmer puts into it. While leadership qualities, attitudes, work ethics and other characteristics are certainly important, at the end of the day comparing swimmers’ times can be pretty straight forward.
As we all know, athletes in competitive team sports not only have to perform but also have the added challenge of distinguishing themselves in a much more subjective environment, measured by many variables with different degrees of importance to a biased judge, or coach…rightfully biased by his/her philosophies, experiences, team goals.
The coach I talked to believed strongly in communication with the athlete, AND the parents – to allow first and foremost the athlete to understand those measurement variables and priorities on his team; and secondly to make the parents aware of the same. He knows parents can be very worried and even vocal about their kids’ opportunities with limited positions and large competitive teams. By including the parents, he accepts that he can be observed and even measured every single day by parents who are looking for consistency in his message – one of his many challenges with his parents.
We compared and contrasted our parents and found some common denominators –
Parents mean well
I truly believe parents mean well…we just want the best for our kids. I’m not a psychologist, but I’m sure there are many reasons for this. One simple reason is we love our kids and want them to be happy and do well for THEMselves. I talked to the team sport coach about my belief that parents are an untapped resource. I believe we are coachable, and that the communication he offers is welcomed and a lot better than silence and guessing, leading to potential frustration and even misbehavior. (Not sure he totally agreed about the coachable part, haha). A coach’s ability to project fairness, consistency, confidence and knowledge, i.e. credibility, I told him as a parent, I think goes a long way.
Parents have means
And I’m not an economist either but this generation seems to have means and the mind set to want to see our kids improve and do well at startling costs. The use of private technique coaches, nutritionists, and weight lifting coaches seems to be more and more pervasive in more and more sports. Too bad you can’t buy perspective, which we both agreed parents can benefit from. Again communication and education is key – what does it take to contribute? To play on his team? To improve? To play/swim at the next level whatever that is? There are many high schools and colleges in the world and there is a fit for all of our kids if they want to pursue that level…for themselves. And by the way, I wonder how much of a kid’s inherent character, dedication and hard work, if applied fully, could equal or even exceed the benefit of some of those ancillary tutors…
Parents can be mean
We have all heard the stories of the ugly parents. I think we parents just have to try to keep cool, keep perspective and maintain decency and respect. Coaches put a tremendous amount of time and dedication into taking care of our kids and frankly, probably aren’t compensated commensurately – at least monetarily. They do it in large part because they love helping kids. Above all, we parents always need to ask ourselves how we would want to be spoken to and treated at our work? …at our home? …by people who are supposedly supporting us?
Of course none of us are perfect (including me and especially my use of homonyms you’re thinking), and I don’t mean to preach, but I’d like to think we all try do our best, with our kids top of mind, and hopefully with respect for others around us.
UPDATED INFORMATION
Greetings to everyone.
Yesterday we sent out information regarding a free text messaging service under badgerswimclub and the response to it was overwhelming.
So many have signed up that we have decided to branch out with a second service to help make sure everyone receives the correct information.
We ask that you read the below and sign up for the correct group to ensure you receive the correct info, don’t want the 8 /unders showing up at Lehman College when Senior Team is rescheduled.
All 8/Unders Comp. and Non-Comp, Learn to Swim, Swim School, Non-Comp 11/u
You will need to reply Stop to the reply text you received from Rainedout.com yesterday to end subscription to badgerswimclub
Send a new text to 84483 with the message of badgerswimschool to sign up for your designated group.
Junior Team, comp 10’s and Senior Team
Please continue to use badgerswimclub and or sign up for it by texting 84483 with the message badgerswimclub
ORIGINAL MESSAGE
With Snow in the forecast for Saturday and Sunday, make sure your receiving the most up to date information regarding workouts our plans. Still Check your E-Mail for further info.
The service we are using is Rainedout.com a free text messaging service that is funded by ads that will show up at the end of each text.
This service will allow us to send texts to everyone subscribed of any urgent news, changes or items of interest.
The signup is very easy on your mobile device you will need to text the number 84483 with the content of the message being badgerswimclub (one word)
This will automatically enroll you in the service and receive a response within 2 minutes.
Have your swimmer enroll too.
We will still be emailing you updates, but we strongly encourage you to sign up for this service as this will be our first way of notifying you of anything urgent.
A note from Badger Parent Advocate, Mike Conaton:
There once was a 6 year old who false started in lane one during a meet. He was so embarrassed he grabbed on to the bottom of a ladder and stayed under water as long as he could hold his breath. He finally surfaced to thunderous laughter.
Another 8 year old became so afraid of meets because his goggles kept falling off when he dove in. It became a real worry and caused much anxiety. He wasn’t sure if he ever wanted to race again.
Then there was the 7 year old boy who loved going to practice, but liked swimming at his own pace. He started to become aware of his friend in the next lane over who started to swim a little faster. He wasn’t sure how to interpret that…and he wasn’t entirely excited about racing in meets either. But he loved to swim, at his own pace.
Now the 9 year old, she was a little older and “wiser”, and she started noticing the activities of her non-swimming friends. She had always been a dedicated attendee of practices but her mom was starting to encounter some resistance.
The 10 year old boy loved to swim, but he also loved lacrosse, basketball and soccer. It took a fancy computer program to figure out his weekly practice schedules, and a new tank of gas in the car at least every 5 days…
And many other anecdotes….It’s all good…and normal! I’m just guessing, but parents of young swimmers may be trying to figure out these and other behaviors (all true stories by the way). You are not alone! These are growing kids with many interests and varying degrees of physical, social and mental maturity. Please don’t get too down on them…or yourselves for maybe feeling puzzled and maybe even frustrated. The kids will grow through it and it will all workout. Above all…DO NOT compare your kids to others. It’s meaningless…they are all different shapes and sizes and on different schedules and programs at this age!!
The toughest encounters we had were when the tears flowed and they just didn’t want to go to practice. Our hearts were wrenched by seeing our little kids in such supposed agony…was it really worth it? Was anything really worth that drama? Would it really be the end of the world if they missed one workout? But on the other hand, they and we made a commitment. Would we be horrible parents for making them go? If we gave in, what would we be teaching our kids about responsibility? How could we justify wasting the money we already spent? Money doesn’t grow on trees…
Looking back on it now…those days don’t seem so traumatic…we survived. And you and yours will too. There are no right or wrong answers to the dilemma above of course. I guess sometimes we gave in, sometimes we didn’t…depended on the day, the other kids’ schedules, the homework schedule, the baby sitters schedule, our work schedule, my travel schedule, the dog’s schedule, …and on and on. It’s not easy for sure.
Now, the coaches will want me to say, and I do agree, that dedicated and committed parents definitely put their kids in a better position to excel. But like their kids learning how it works, I believe it’s OK for parents to try to figure it all out too at this early stage, for themselves and their respective households. We all do our best. Now when the kids are older…we can talk about that later. It takes commitment.
I just wanted to offer this pep talk to the parents of the youngsters. It’s way too early to sweat a lot of this stuff. I think the Badger coaches would tell you just try to get them to the pool and they will do the rest. We all get through it and before you know it, they’re off to high school and college (with all kinds of new drama!) Happy New Year!
Exciting News
Metro has just issued the newest Records Update and Badger has 14 NEW METRO SC METER RECORDS
Photo Courtesy of Taylor Brien
Through the eyes of a lens, Swimming World Magazine captured some great moments at the Cera ve Invitational including a great shot of our very own Carly Cummings and Anina Lund.
As reported by Swimming World
“Swimming World intern Grace Schwiederek had a chance to get on deck and capture some of the magic of the evening session of day two. Schwiederek’s photos especially captured some of the faces from behind the scenes.
Along with Schwiederek was Swimming World’s Taylor Brien capturing the action and some candids of the athletes participating in this weekend’s meet.”
Photo courtesy of Taylor Brien
AS REPORTED BY SWIMMING WORLD MAGAZINE
“Bobby Yribarren glances briefly at the opponents to his right as he waits behind the starting block, quickly returning his gaze to the furiously churning turquoise waters at his feet. From an outside standpoint he is like every other swimmer on deck–perhaps a bit nervous, but absorbed in his personal goals for the event. But Yribarren is anything but similar to the young men he is swimming against.
In fact, he is much older than they are.
It has quite literally been a long and winding road for Yribarren to get to this point. The thirty-year-old Harvard University graduate is the oldest swimmer at the 2016 CeraVe Invitational by a wide margin–a whopping six years separates him from the next oldest competitor. In no way has this dissuaded him from returning to the pool.
“It’s definitely humbling, but I’m really happy for the other swimmers,” Yribarren explained of the unusual phenomenon that comes from competing against swimmers 10+ years his junior. “It’s really great to see how fas the sport is getting. A lot has changed [since I was swimming D1].”
“It’s been a process to get him back into any kind of swimming shape,” admitted Badgers head coach John Collins. “We’re happy to have him because he’s a good middle distance, open water type swimmer, and he trains well with the group that I have right now.”
Collins has been coaching the thirty-year-old for just over five months now, as Yribarren found his team in September of 2015. Prior to joining the Badgers, it had been two years since he hit the water competitively. It was during that time period that he went through many changes, the most notable being physical.
“I was 260 pounds at one point,” Yribarren explained. “I couldn’t even see my toes.”
“That’s a big drop, right?” he joked with a thousand-watt smile lighting up his face. Despite continually facing a great deal of adversity, Yribarren speaks passionately and enthusiastically, even about a difficult time in his life. Rather than see it as a road block, Yribarren chooses to see that time period as a “lifestyle change.” It is this optimistic attitude that he believes is crucial in handling the pressure of a competitive swimmer.” [READ MORE]