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2005 Long Course Age Group Championship
It was a beautiful weekend for a meet, and Connecticut’s age group swimmers showed us what you get when you mix dedication, hard work, great coaching and love of the sport. The 2005 Long Course Age Group Championship was fast, rewarding and fun. One terrific thing about this sport is that every time you get on the blocks you’re racing not just against the next lanes, but also against your own past achievements. And by that measure, the meet was outstanding. Fully 2/3 of the individual events swum resulted in best times. And of the over 800 swimmers participating, nearly 300 achieved best times for all their events. Congratulations to our swimmers on their fine performance to cap an exciting long course season!
Between those bulkheads there was fierce competition going on. It was easy to see, particularly at Finals, how swimmers were driving themselves to remarkable performances and by doing so lifting those of others. Congratulations to our Combined team winners, Wilton Y Wahoos (10/under, 11/12), Sonoco (13/14), and Aquabears (15/18), as well as all the other individual and team point winners.
Our record books are never safe when Elizabeth Pelton (WYW), Madi Kennedy (OAK) and Daniel Madwed (SHKS) hit the pool, and once again we were thrilled to see them lowering our all-time marks. Great job!
I felt like a zookeeper, surrounded as I was by panthers and cougars, bears and seals, piranhas and caimans, stingrays and dolphins, sharks and wahoos, and, surprisingly, camels and rats.
But let me recognize some of the animals you may not have noticed on your trip to the zoo. The King of Beasts, Kevin Carneiro, kept our Wesleyan timing system going, roaring only very occasionally. The mighty elephant Peter Boucher bore the weight of the Cheshire site on his strong shoulders – and some might be cautioned: he never forgets! As usual Peter called upon fellow pachyderm Ed Steinnagel, who never fails to march to the rescue. Buzzing constantly in the office hive were queen bee LeeAnn German, yellow-jacket Jeff Haynosch and the other tireless worker bees from the CAT team. We set up the computer system in the monkey house, with the highly intelligent and mischievous Rick LaFrenierre, Laura Costigan, Kim Mangan, Nancy Kingman, Dean Hatton, Ann Levine, Elke Higgins, Mark Johnston, and LeAnn Abbott swinging from the vines. Who doesn’t love polar bears, pacing back and forth almost like swim officials, with their leaders Carol Feeney lounging in the sunshine at Cheshire, Jeff Gray lazily scratching himself, Ed Becker playing happily and Mike Huffman taking a refreshing dip in the pool at Wesleyan? In the reptile house there were Chris Hug, Vinnie Savarese and the other CAC turtles who slowly and steadily won the race to get the awards sorted and bagged by Sunday night. A couple of graceful giraffes – Debbie Barriss and Diane Smyth – kindly stuck their necks out to offer help to Nan in preparing for the zoo opening. The many fierce Bengal tigresses from Wilton kept unwanted predators away from our vital food and Finals program supplies. We did not see much of red panda Randy LaRocca – he must have been up in the treetops organizing the Zone team. That colorful parrot Bill Loftus was talking louder and clearer than ever. And while you might be startled to hear me suggest that Nan Cooper is an ape, at least we can agree that of all of us, she is the most highly evolved!
My sincere thanks to all the many volunteers, coaches and especially athletes who made this Championship weekend successful, memorable and inspirational. We hope you enjoy the meet photos. Now rinse those pool chemicals out of your clothes and enjoy the rest of the summer!
Best regards,
Barry Silver
Meet Director
Congratulations to Dan Zeek!!
Age Group Coach of the Year
Christine Pelham, Jr.Coach Representative and Dan Zeek
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