Riptides' Winter Invitational Huge Success!
MB Riptides’ Winter Invitational Huge Success
The Myrtle Beach Riptides swimming team hosted the 3rd Annual Winter Invitational January 15-17 at the “Pepper” Geddings Recreation Center. The event hosted teams from South Carolina and North Carolina. For the locally-based Riptides, it was one of their most successful meets with regard to athlete performance. The Riptides accounted for 100 personal best times, 23 team records, 9 new SC Swimming State Championship qualifying times and 2 new Age-group Sectional Championship qualifying times.
Danielle Flaherty led the Riptides setting 7 team records in the 10/Under 50- and 100-yard breaststroke events, 100-, 200- and 1000-freestyle events, 100-backstroke and 200-Individual Medley. Flaherty earned her first SCS State Championship qualifying times in the 50- and 100-breaststrokes, 50-butterfly and 100-backstroke.
Chad Bateson was next with 6 team records in the 11-12 boys’ 50-, 100-, 200-, 500- and 1000-freestyle events and 50-breaststroke. Bateson has also qualified for the Age-group Sectional Championships in the 1000-yard freestyle.
Jack King set 5 team records in his final meet as a 10/Under. King’s records were in the 50-, 500- and 1000-freestyle events, 50-breaststroke and 100-butterfly.
Megan Kingsley set a new benchmark in two events, the 13-14 girls’ 200-breaststroke and 1000-freestyle.
Mackenzie Angwin, Eddie Bateson and Garrett Beauprez each set new records in the 10/Under girls 500-freestyle, 11-12 boys 200-IM and 11-12 boys 100-butterfly, respectively.
Julia Campbell and Beauprez each earned new SCS State Championship qualifying times in the 200-backstroke and 1000-freestyle, respectively.
Head coach James Smith was very proud of how well the swimmers performed, how the Riptides’ coaching staff has developed the swimmers, putting them in position to achieve success and of the entire Riptides’ organization for creating a supportive atmosphere needed to be successful.
“This event was a great event for our age-group swimmers,” said Smith. “Our Senior swimmers were tired, still reeling from the effects of Holiday Training and having participated at another meet just the weekend before, but still swam right on their personal best times.
“The focus for our Senior swimmers has always been the SC Swimming State Championships and the National Club Swimming Junior National Championships. We have about one month to prep for State and two months of prep for Junior Nationals,” Smith continued.
Andi Churchill, Connor Churchill, Ashlyn Dekleva, Ryan Eldred, Zary Gouin, Breah Harris, Sean King, Chloe Ladd, Emily Sabella and Jeremiah Sharp each claimed several personal best times at the meet. Sean King had the Riptides’ largest improvement of 37 seconds in the 200-IM.
Age-group coach Justin Schreer was also very happy with the performances of the age-group swimmers.
“The swimmers have been working very hard this year and its paying off. The system of skill development and training progression we have instilled in this team is working,” explained Schreer.
“We had several swimmers have improvements of more than 20 seconds in events. Without proper skill development, we would never see improvements of this magnitude,” continued Schreer.
