In a rare late SCY season appearance, Badger Swim club took a small group to Speedo Sectional Championships at Ithaca last weekend with a single goal: swim fast and make cuts. This meet was for the swimmers, and John decided to forgo entering relays to allow the kids to focus on the task at hand. The results were outstanding. Badger swimmers won 8 Individual golds, one silver and four bronze medals. Leading the charge, were Andrew Babyak, Carly Cummings, and Quinn Scannell. Over the course of the weekend, 19 national level cuts were made: 7 Winter Juniors, 4 Summer Juniors, 3 Winter Nationals, 3 Summer Nationals, and 2 US Open. Due to caliber of the swims, we are considering bringing the whole team next year. Due to the caliber of individual swims, this small sectional group placed 8th in the meet (without relays).
We had impressive performances and many personal bests from Andrew Babyak, Maria Burtseva, Jared Copeland, Carly Cummings, Christian Farricker, Kim Jogis, Alexa Lantin, Haofeng Liu, Jack Loveless, Liam Loveless, Jalen Ramjohn, Mary Rotenberg, Paula Scanlan, Quinn Scannell, Asher Stukelman, and Garrett Towne. Complete results can be found at this link.
Some swims of note include:
Andrew won the 1000 with a time of 9:13.09 and qualified for Summer Juniors at NCAC. He followed up with a win in the 500 and 1650. His time of 15:26.79 earned a Winter National berth.
Quinn won the 200FR and 200BK. Her time of 54.67 earned 2nd place in the 100BK and a Summer Junior cut. And, after three other junior cuts spread throughout the weekend, Quinn ended the meet with a 1:57.00 in her win of the 200BK. It was her first US Open cut of the meet. Quinn also won the female High Point award for the meet.
After qualifying for Open Water Juniors, Christian headed to Ithaca with a goal of making Juniors in a pool swim. He earned his first Junior cut in the 400IM with a time of 3:57.25. He later missed the 200FLY Junior cut by .01 with a time of 1:51.60.
Not to be outdone, Carly had a great meet. She won three events: 400IM, 200BR, and 200IM, and her times of 4:12.63 (400IM), 2:12.18 (200BR), and 1:58.77 (200IM) were all Summer National cuts and put her in the mix for an amazing summer.
