CSSC National Team members Carly Chin and Roman Kondrashov, along with White, Blue and Silver Coach Brittany Bellomo, are heading to Texas to compete in the USA Swimming 2024 Southern Zone Age Group Championships, scheduled to take place July 24 – 27 at the FMH Natatorium in Midland. Chin and Kondrashov, both 14 years old, were selected to represent Florida Gold Coast Swimming at the highly competitive, nationally known swim meet, which will feature timed finals for distance events, along with preliminaries and two finals for each of the remaining...

In front of their home crowd at the Coral Springs Aquatic Complex, John Albornoz and Carolyn Levy-Powell each qualified for finals in all of their events to post top finishes at the FGC Long Course Senior Championships, held July 18-21. Albornoz, who very recently turned 15 years old, was competing in his first Senior Championships, but if he was at all nervous it didn’t show. John totaled 93 points during the course of the meet, which was good enough to win the third place award for 15-16 boys individual high...

The Boca Raton High School Aquatic Center was the setting for the accumulation by CSSC of many milestones, with these coming at the 2024 Florida Gold Coast BB North Long Course Championships. The biannual championship meet, held July 5-7, has a dual purpose. In addition to being a championship swim meet formatted with preliminaries and finals sessions, it’s is also the locale for swimmers to attain qualifying times to enter the FGC Age Group Championships and FGC Senior Championships, both following the BB meet. At this 2024 version of the...

The Michael Lohberg Invitational is one of the most difficult championship swim meets to qualify for finals for. While most championship meets have two, three or even four finals heats, the Lohberg meet has just one. Combine that with the fact that it’s a long course meet, meaning only eight lanes swim at night, and you must be at the very top of your game to have a chance to swim finals. Just eight out of, in some cases, 80+ swimmers, get the opportunity to hear their names announced in...

Four members of Coral Springs Swim Club traveled to Lucas, Kentucky to compete in the 2024 USA Swimming Southern Zone Open Water Championships. The open water meet, held May 31 – June 2 and hosted by Kentucky Swimming, jumped off from Sunset Cove Beach at Barren River Lake State Park. Events included individual swims of either 2 or 5 kilometers, relay events of 1200 meter distances, and team pursuit events 2 kilometers long. CSSC National Team members John Albornoz, Reese Balkcom, Addison Palumbo, and Anthony Palumbo were members of the...

Coral Springs Swim Club team members recently competed at the 16th Annual Long Course Summer Kickoff, hosted by North Palm Beach Swim Club, but held at the Central Park pool in Plantation. The Summer Kickoff, June 1-2, featured timed finals sessions both Saturday and Sunday, with the senior swimmers competing in the mornings, and the 12 & under groups going at it in the afternoons. Unfortunately, the weather became a factor on Sunday morning, and four events were cancelled, namely the 13 & over 100 meter backstroke, 200 meter butterfly,...

Close to 40 members of Coral Springs Swim Club made the trip to the west coast of Florida, specifically Naples, to compete in the 2024 T2 Norris Foundation Meet, held during Memorial Day weekend and hosted by T2 Aquatics. Attendance at the Norris Meet has developed into an annual tradition for CSSC, and swimmers ranging in age from 8 – 18 made the journey with their families to continue the team’s participation during this year’s travel meet. CSSC was extremely successful, as five swimmers earned a total of ten gold...

A host of the newer swimmers from Coral Springs Swim Club spent their most recent Saturday morning competing at the Boca Raton Simple Developmental Invite. The Simple Invite meet, hosted by Boca Raton Swim Club, featured Sizzler type events (25 yard distances) for the 8 & under swimmers, along with 50 yard distances of each stroke and the 100 yard individual medley for the 14 & under contingent. The purpose of the developmental meet was to, like a Sizzler, introduce new and inexperienced swimmers to competition and the logistics of...

Reese Balkcom, of CSSC’s National Team, got her feet wet in terms of competitive swimming at the very young age of five years old. Her family was living in Texas at the time, and after completing swim lessons covering everything from being safe in the water to learning the strokes, she transitioned to the competitive swim team in her community. After about five years with her team in Texas, Reese’s family relocated to South Florida and she found a new swim home with Coral Springs Swim Club. She began with...

CSSC’s John Albornoz and Mariana Montes were each victorious in the individual point competitions at the 2024 IMR/IMX Challenge, held April 26-28 at the Sunrise Civic Center pool. An IMR/IMX meet consists of events of varying distances, with swimmers earning a certain number of points depending on the placing of the swimmer. Points are then tallied to determine pentathlon (five events) champions and sextathlon (six events) champions. The distances of the events are shorter within the IMR challenge and longer in the IMX competition. The age category is also instrumental...