New England Seniors Championships - Meet Recap

Dear Member,

This past weekend, our senior athletes traveled to Providence, Rhode Island and Brown University, for the 2022 New England Senior Championships, and what a fun meet it was!

The meet kicked off with a relay & distance session on Thursday evening. In the 200 medley relay our girls teams finished 1^st and 5^th and the boys placed 2^nd and 7^th. Next up was the 1650 Freestyle(mile) where David Steinbrick turned in an absolutely stellar performance! He posted best time splits in both the 500 free and 1000 free on route to his first ever Speedo Futures cut in the mile. David improved his previous best time by over 1-minute to finish 4^thoverall in 15:53.80. The final event on Thursday was the 800 freestyle relays where our girls finished 2^nd and 5^th and our boys placed 1^st and 4^th. 

Friday morning’s session started with the mixed 200 free relay, which consists of 2 male and 2 female swimmers in each team. Our “A” team came up with the win while our “B” relay placed just outside the medals in 4^th place. Next up was the individual 200 freestyle events. Cookie Mahoney had a solid morning swim to book her place in the consolation finals while Lucy Shaw went out fast in her heat and raced back in a new PB of 1:56.48. On the boys side, David Steinbrick, Evan Wardrop and Will Porter all posted best time swims with David dropping 3 secs and qualifying 17^th for finals. In the 100 breast, Hope Taylor had a great morning swim by dropping just over a second to go a new PB of 1:10.44. Cormac McKenney stormed home in his heat to go under the 1-minute barrier for the first time, in a new PB of 58.72. In the boys 100 backstroke both Evan Wardrop and Jack McCormick swam faster than they ever have in this event with Jack posting a solid 1.6 second time drop to go 55.42. In a very strong event for Bluefish, we had Cookie Mahoney, Hope Taylor, David Steinbrick and Cormac McKenney competing in the 400 Individual Medley to close out the session. David and Cormac both posted best times during their races in the heats where they dropped 2 and 3 seconds respectively. Both of them also qualified for finals in that event. 

We started Saturdays session with another relay, this time it was the mixed 200 medley relay where Ethan Schulz had a great fly split of 22.62 on route to his relay placing 2^nd overall. Our “B” relay placed 4^th. The 200 yard butterfly came next and Cormac McKenney was ready for a big swim….and a big swim it was! He dropped almost 3 seconds and placed 2^nd in the C-final with a new PB of 1:56.59. Ethan Schultz, Jack McCormick and Cookie Mahoney were all involved in the splash and dash of the 50 freestyle. Jack and Cookie both blazed to personal best times while Ethan placed 4^th in the “B” final. Another good event for ABF is the 200 yard individual medley, and that event was next on the schedule. Again we had a bunch of PB’s that were achieved with all 5 of our participants going lifetime bests. Cookie Mahoney placed 6^th overall in the “A” final of the girls, and dropped almost a second, as she went a Speedo Futures cut of 2:06.05. Ethan Schultz, Cormac McKenney, David Steinbrick and Will Porter all dropped time in their IM’s with Cormac getting a huge 2.5 second improvement, and his first time under the 2-minute barrier, with a 1:58.32. In the final event on Saturday, Ethan and David fought it out in the 500 yard freestyle. David had an amazing morning swim and qualified for the “A” final with a huge 5-second drop, to post a 4:40.20 in his heat. Ethan saved his big swim for the finals session where he put in an amazing effort, as he blasted a 4:38.60 and a new PB by 3 seconds. Additionally, we entered a few time trial events on Saturday. Will Porter and Evan Wardrop swam in the 100 fly where both of them improved their times by 1 second and 2.5 seconds respectively. Lucy Shaw time trialed the 200IM and had a huge drop of almost 3 seconds as she stopped the clock at 2:10.87. 

The first event on the last day of competition was the 200 backstroke where we had 5 swimmers competing. Again our athletes managed to come up with some great times even though fatigue was definitely starting to play a role. David dropped almost 2 seconds, Will swam a best time and qualified for consolation finals, Evan dropped just over a second and Jack McCormick came up with a big improvement of 2.5 seconds, posting a 2:00.50. Cookie Mahoney, Hope Taylor and Cormac McKenney we’re all involved in the 200 breaststroke, and all of them managed to swim faster than they ever have in that event. Up next was the blue ribbon event of swimming, the 100 yard freestyle. In the girls event both of our participants, Lucy Shaw and Cookie Mahoney dropped best times although Cookie’s improvement came via a very exciting swim-off for a place in the finals. Lucy ended up going 54.78 and Cookie stopped the clock at 52.69 in her swim-off victory. On the boys side, Ethan Schulz placed 5^th overall as he blasted a speedy 46.73. Evan Wardrop had a PB to go under 50 seconds for the first time and Jack McCormick had an improvement of almost 1.5 seconds. Our last individual event of the Championships was the 1000 yard freestyle. After an exhausting 4 days at the pool, David Steinbrick had his work cut out for him. During the morning session, one of the swimmers ranked ahead of him scratched the event which moved David into the fastest heat. This in turn meant that he would be swimming the event during the finals session. Somehow, David had enough left to throw down an astonishing swim where he dropped almost 16 seconds to place 4^th overall with another Futures cut. 

Bluefish Swim Club managed to win the meet by almost 700 points, over Phoenix Swimming and Gator Swim Club(see points table below). Congratulations to our swimmers who fought hard all weekend long! They did a tremendous amount of racing over the course of 7 long sessions with a very high best time percentage. I’d also like to thank the parents that exercised a lot of patience and understanding whilst displaying full support for our athletes and team. 

I hope that you all take some time to relax with family and friends over the holidays and Seasons Greetings to you!

Best

Marcel