Senior Swimmers Get the Short and the Long of It In Charlotte

11/19 - While the rest of the team was having a quiet weekend, eleven of our of our Senior swimmers were attending a unique short course/long course meet in Charlotte.

The meet featured long course prelims and then a super finals in short course yards. (Super finals have full heats of consolation heats but a head-to-head heat for the top two.) Baylor and Collier Stanton and Hannah-Claire Jowers all qualified for evening yards swims. Baylor posted some very fast in-season times winning four of his six events. Collier threw down a fourth place finish in the 800 and Hannah-Claire was 6th in the 100 breast.

In addition Jowers picked up her first AAA (All-Star) and Futures cuts of the year while Nate Beeney got his first AA, and he and Sarah Heppe got their first state cuts.

Up next will be the first Invitational and prelim/finals meet of the season, the Woodie B Malone meet at Dynamo. 

---

Swim-A-Thon In the Books

11/17 - All the groups have now finished their swims for the 2024 Swim-A-Thon and now all that's left is to finish collecting donations and for the last couple swimmers to make up their swims. 

The honor of most improved group goes to Blue this year, dropping 31 seconds per 100 over last year's swims. Gold team was 2nd dropping 21s/100! Junior Team was 3rd dropping 13 seconds per 100. 

Currently we have raised over $17,000 toward our goal of $30,000*.  But only about 60% of the team has participated.  (Gold Team leads fundraising and the race for the pizza party with over $5000.)  Jenna Inlow leads the individual race with Reynolds Bowers in 2nd. In the past we got a big bump on Giving Tuesday using the matching program on Facebook.  It looks like that will no longer be taking place so we encourage everyone to make their donations now as we will wrap up the S-A-T on the 30th

*not all funds will be reflected in the on-line total. Facebook, check and cash donations will only be added if they bring the swimmer over one of the national Swim-a-Thon prize thresholds. 

---

Fall Series Wraps Up With Meet #3 - The Spooktacular

  Spartan Sweeps All Three Meets, Wins Fall Series

11/4 - Spartan Aquatics made a clean sweep of it taking the third and final meet of the GA Fall Series at Freeman Aquatic Center this weekend. Gwinnett Aquatics was second in the meet by just enough to take over 2nd overall in the series after trailing Lifetime through the first two meets. Peachtree Aquatics was fourth.

The meet featured the longer distances in fly and breast and a 1000 free/400 IM session on Sunday, as well as the first relays of the year! It was one of the largest IM/1000 session since the series began.

At the conclusion of the meet the series high point winners were announced. It included 4-time winners Baylor Stanton and Abigail Heizer in the 15O age group. The high point winners were:

• 8U Reynolds Bowers (GA), Andrew Chen (LIFE)
• 9-10 Ava Zielinski (SPAC), Riley Pynn (GA)
• 11-12 Aliana McCann (GA), Ian Hwang (LIFE)
• 13-14 Emily Hardy (GA), Lance Grimm (SPAC)
• 15-18 Abigail Heizer (SPAC), Baylor Stanton (GA) 

For Gwinnett Aquatics Reynolds Bowers, Kate Breiding, Jude El-Alam, Emily Hardy, Aliana McCann, Riley Pynn, Baylor Stanton, Vincent Tuck, and Emery Wells all won events. 

In addition Tuck got his first AA of the season.  Sarah Heppe, Riley Pynn, Lillie Robinson, Addi Shaffer and Ella Wells earned their first A times and Alli Burns and Yuchelle Wong got their first BB times. Nyziah Barnaby, Violet Pincombe, and Isabella Powell got their first B time. 

Ella Wells and Alex Matveev had their first state qualifying swims of the season. 

Up next will be the first Invitational and prelim/finals meet of the season, the Woodie B Malone meet at Dynamo.  All swimmers should attend. 

---

Swimmers Stretch Their Legs at Fall #2

10/21 - Swimmers from Spartan, Gwinnett Aquatics and Lifetime competed in some longer events this weekend at the Fall Series second meet at GAC.  Spartan came out the winner followed by GwinAq then LIFE (just 13 points back).  Events this time included the longer free, back and IM events as well as the 500 (140 swimmers participated in that event Sunday!) 

With just one meet left to go in the series the high point races in a couple age groups is very tight.  You can see the top five in each using the link below.  The current leaders are: Reynolds Bowers, Thomas Nicely, Ava Zielinski, Riley Pynn, Aliana McCann, Ian Hwang, Dakota Stanfield, Lance Grimm, Abigail Heizer, and Baylor Stanton.

The final meet will be in two weeks, November 2-3 at GAC.  That meet will feature the longer fly and breast races as well as 11 and over 400 IMs and 1000s! 

 

Gwinnett Aquatics had a number of extraordinary individual efforts.  Six swimmers combined to win 16 events: Reynolds Bowers, Kate Breiding, Aliana McCann, Lily Nejman, Riley Pynn, and Baylor Stanton. 

McCann and Collier Stanton picked up their first AAA (All-Star) times of the season. Nate Beeney, Kendall Granberry, Paige Johnson, Cate Joyce,
Aaron Passman, Sophia Quinn, Vincent Tuck, Jimmy Wang, and Cole Wright all got their first A times of the season, while Sarah Heppe, Emily Hillensheim, Jaidyn Joiner, Valarie Monroe, and Jude Stanton got their first BB times and Anna Buckley, William Buckley and Abby Wong got their first B times (Wong's first ever!). 

Meanwhile Jude El-Alam, Kendall Granberry, Cate Joyce, Aaron Passman, Vincent Tuck, and Cole Wright got their first state cuts of the season. 

---

More...