It's been a pretty high paced few weeks for RACE SWAMI. It began with a long, 3-day HAST meet after the 4th of July holiday, trailed by a quick short course yards meet in Park City in mid July, followed still by a Western Sectional Meet in Portland, Oregon, in mid-to-late July, finalized—for some, any way—with the annual Utah Long Course Championship meet at the tail end of the busiest month of long course season. Race Swami ended up finishing 12th overall in the standings.
Best of all, the team garnered it's third state record in four months when Zerin Wolfgramm broke a 20-year old record in the 100 backstroke, smiling admirably at the deck judge who stood overhead as the Z-Man touched the wall in record time.
And though 12th is probably nothing to shout to the Gods about, the feat was not bad when you consider the team did it with a mere 9 swimmers who made it to finals (12 swimmers overall). Further, Race Swami wasn't even in existence before January 2011.
Nonetheless, we were proud of our SWAMIs and we had some terrific races throughout the four-day occasion held at Kearns Fitness Center. All told, we logged a better-than-90%-best time bonanza and had a lot of fun with the races.
After that, most of our kids shut down for the next few weeks but we readied one of our SWAMIs for the Junior National meet hosted by USA Swimming at Stanford's Avery Aquatic Center. Amelia Wolfgramm swam the 200 back and 100 back at the meet and though not accomplishing absolutely everything she had set out to do, picked up some much needed national experience in swimming some fantastic races. She went par for the course in the 100 back and took 3 seconds off in the 200 back. All in all, it was a fun meet and gave Amelia a taste of what it will take for her to reach vast new heights.
The highlight of this trip to thew Bay Area, perhaps, was having dinner with paralympian and good friend Joe Wise, who competes for the Santa Clara Swim Club. The SWAMIs, along with Lily, enjoyed hanging out with the charismatic Joe for a night at the Wise's home. Joe's mother, Marie, baked some unforgettable pasta dishes in order to carbo-load both Amelia and Joe before their big races.
Joe happened to be readying himself for his own big summer meet—the Para Pan Pacific meet held in Canada. Joe, a mitochondrial disease fighter like our very own Lily, ended up finishing out a huge meet in the Great White North by winning three medals and logging three best times. Looks like Joe is well on his way to making the London Games next year.
That about catches you up on the Meets of July... More news to come!
