Strong Season Opener For Largest Tsunami Team Ever!
PCST Finishes 2nd Place Overall Behind Area Tallahassee Aquatic Club
In what became the second largest home meet ever hosted in Panama City Beach, your Tsunamis started the short course season off with a ton of very encouraging swims, including a new Junior National qualifying swim by Michael Duderstadt! While we did not take the overall team title that ended up going to the perennial powerhouse ATAC, we still put together the biggest team we have ever had at a meet and finished the weekend with lots of swims that get us smiling from ear to ear when thinking about the future. Our 122 Tsunamis in the meet showed great strength in the 8 & under division as well as the 13-14, senior age group. But one of the most exciting parts about the weekend was the tremendous improvement our 10 & Under and 11-12 swimmers showed throughout the weekend.
Team Scores
As previously mentioned, ATAC came out on top in a big way...............again. But I have to say, regardless of what the points show, PCST is getting closer and closer to that level and you're going to be pleasantly surprised about where we stand in the next couple of years as our swimmers become more committed to their attendance and training like they do in Tallahassee. But in the meantime, congrats to ATAC for showing once again that their hard work over the last decade has put them in the dominant position they have always wanted to be. And also, congratulations to CMSA for an OUTSTANDING performance at our Paradise Invitational. Race after race, CMSA went 1,2 and showed that they are a strong force in the region as well. Here are some team scores for you to enjoy.
Area Tallahassee Aquatic Club.......................2,149.50 points
Panama City Swim Team...............................1,27450 points
City of Mobile Swim Association.......................715.50 points
Greater Pensacola Aquatic Club.......................569 points
Maclay Northside Dolfins...................................454 points
6 Tsunami Swimmers Finish in Top 5 Overall for High Point
I told you we were strong in the 8 & Under and Senior Divisions! We ended up having three swimmers in each of those age groups total up their points and still be one of the Top 5 Overall in the group. When a meet has nearly 550 swimmers from 13 teams, high points become very difficult to reach and we are incredibly proud of our Tsunamis for getting there. Congrats to the following swimmers for their fantastic performances all weekend long.
8 & Under Girls: Marisa Ashley (Tied-2nd), Isa Gobel (5th)
8 & Under Boys: Tristan Gandy (2nd)
Senior Girls: Victoria Hove (3rd)
Senior Boys: Michael Duderstadt (3rd), Chet Seaman (5th)
17 Team Records Fall at Paradise Invitational!
Often times when a team starts a season, the swimmers will get some good best times because it's been a while since they have swum that course. This is particularly accurate with the younger swimmers because they have been working hard and improving all summer for long course and we got to see a bunch of best times to kick off the short course season at home. However, TEAM RECORDS are faaaaaaassssst! They are becoming very tough to beat and it's one thing to go some best times at the beginning of the season; but it's an entirely other difficult task to break an all-time team record this early in the season. For our swimmers to break 13 individual records and 4 relay records shows just how promising our future is here in Bay County! This is especially true because 3 of the relay records came from the 8 & Under age group, which means we easily have the best group of young swimmers ever coming up through the ranks. Way to go Tsunamis!
New Individual Team Records
Marisa Ashley 8 & U Girls 25 Breast (19.57)
Marisa Ashley 8 & U Girls 200 IM (3:06.46)
Tristan Gandy 8 & U Boys 200 IM (3:10.82)
Kari Troia 11-12 Girls 50 Breast (33.03)
Kari Troia 11-12 Girls 100 Breast (1:12.25)
Kalanne Krause 13-14 Girls 50 Fly (28.15)
Kalanne Krause 13-14 Girls 100 IM (1:07.27)
Michael Duderstadt 15-16 Boys 50 Breast (27.54)
Michael Duderstadt 15-16 Boys 200 Breast (2:11.31)
Michael Duderstadt 15-16 Boys 50 Fly (24.58)
Michael Duderstadt 15-16 Boys 100 IM (54.83)
Victoria Hove Senior Girls 100 IM (1:02.78)
Chet Seaman Senior Boys 1000 Free (10:11.80)
New Relay Team Records
8 & U Girls 100 Free Relay (1:13.23) Isa Gobel, Lily Bradford, Kathryn-Annette McKinney, Marisa Ashley
8 & U Girls 100 Medley Relay (1:20.88) Isa Gobel, Marisa Ashley, Kathryn-Annette McKinney, Kalani Dempsey
8 & U Boys 100 Free Relay (1:15.11) Tristan Gandy, Noah Vaden, Josh Dean, Luke Maggiore
Senior Girls 200 Free Relay (1:45.60) Victoria Hove, Lindsey Gurganus, Jamie McDonald, Nicole Gazia
New All-Time Top 10 Swims
Not many people know that I first got the idea of an All-Time Top 10 list when I was a swimmer at Florida State University. In our annual medial guide, they would always have an updated rankings list of the fastest 10 performers of all time in each event for each gender. That was such a huge motivating factor for me over the years. But our school never promoted it beyond that and I thought it was a huge deal to be in the top 10 of an elite school with such a rich swimming and athletic tradition like FSU. Here with PCST, I always wanted to make it my goal to have the level of difficulty be as high as it was at FSU to make the Top 10. And honestly.........we're getting close! And in spite of that, we still have 33 different swims at our home meet that fall into the category of new All-Time Top 10 Swims! Just amazing guys! You should be very proud.
Swimmers with New All-Time Top 10 Swims
Victoria Hove, Kalanne Krause, Taylor Wilder, Alysiah Stock, Kari Troia, Lindsey Gurganus, Michael Duderstadt, Chet Seaman, Dylan Mock, JD Clutch, Shane Young
**To find the list of All-Time Top 10 Swims go to www.panamamcityswimteam.com and click on "Team Rankings" at the top of the page or check out our latest October Newsletters which can also be found at the top under "Newsletters"
Michael Duderstadt Joins the PCST National Team With First Ever Spring Junior National Time!
No longer can "Duder" be known as the "Bonus King". For the longest time, Michael Duderstadt had 6 bonus qualifying times for the spring NCSA Junior Nationals, but no individual cuts. Well............even though we are in the first meet of the season, that has been thrown right out the window. Duder had a terrific meet and proved very quickly that he is not just a sprint freestyler or a great IM'er, he is also one of the best breaststrokers in the entire Southeastern U.S. His time of 59.17 qualified him for the Spring Junior Nationals, earning him a spot on our "National Team Banner".............which is actually just a piece of paper with the words "National Team" scribbled on it. However, signing that banner has become a right of passage and a prestigious tradition for the top Tsunamis ever and Duder is now a part of that elite squad. Congrats boy!
Swimmers Gets New Southeastern, Sectional and Junior National Qualifying Times!
Although Southeasterns aren't until February and Sectionals/Junior Nationals are not until March, it is still very exciting to have swimmers qualifying that early in the season for those top level meets. While we have had improved our short course meets every year, we do not want to take for granted whether or not that will happen again this year. I would like to encourage all of our new age groupers and up and coming Tsunami Stars to learn the Southeastern Time Standards and get to as many practices as you can so I can type your name up in our next news article! That is the only way we are going to finish in the Top 10 Overall at Southeasterns again this year!
New Southeastern Championship Qualifiers
Tristan Gandy 10 & U Boys (50 Breast)
Kyla Hallam 11-12 Girls (50 Free, 100 Free, 50 Breast, 100 Breast, 100 IM)
Kari Troia 11-12 Girls (100 Free, 500 Free, 50 Back)
Fallon Gelsleichter 13-14 Girls (200 Breast)
Casey Pridgen 13-14 Boys (50 Free)
Dylan Mock 15-16 Boys (50 Free, 100 Free, 500 Free, 200 Breast)
Victoria Hove Senior Girls (50 Free)
JD Clutch Senior Boys (500 Free)
Chet Seaman Senior Boys (1000 Free)
New Sectional Times
Chet Seaman (1000 Free)
Michael Duderstadt (100 Back, 200 Breast)
New NCSA Juniors Times
Michael Duderstadt (100 Breast Individual, 200 Breast Bonus Cut)
33 Tsunamis Rank In Top 10 All-Time For Their Age Group!
Yet another way to show how bright the future is for PCST is to look at the All-Time Top 10 Rankings for each age group. At our home meet with 122 swimmers, we had 33 of them (over 1/4) swim races that gave them new rankings as one of the ten fastest swimmers in the history of PCST. That's very encouraging!! Congrats to the following swimmers who now need to check out "Team Rankings" on our website to see what event(s) they have new rankings in.
8 & Under Girls: Marisa Ashley, Isa Gobel, Kathryn-Annette McKinney
8 & Under Boys: Tristan Gandy
11-12 Girls: Kyla Hallam, Kari Troia
13-14 Girls: Kalanne Krausee, Fallon Gelsleichter, Shannon Doyle, Alexis Hall, Kylie McKinney
13-14 Boys: Casey Pridgen, Chad McGuire, Marat Yakupov, Denver Dangerfield
15-16 Girls: Taylor Wilder, Lindsey Gurganus, Alysiah Stock
15-16 Boys: Dylan Mock, Jonathan Ratliff, Michael Duderstadt, Michael Whitehead, Zach Dietz
Senior Girls: Victoria Hove, Jamie McDonald, Nicole Gazia, Kaitlyn Blais
Senior Boys: JD Clutch, Chet Seaman, Evan Escobar, Brandon Templeton, Shane Young, Zach Stein
With our Tsunamis breaking 200 active year round swimmers in the month of September, it did not come as too much of a surprise that we also broke our all-time team record of swimmers in a meet with 122. Our previous records were 190 last fall in October and 111 in our spring long course meet. The next step for our improved success is going to come as we continue to get more competitive in each age group. With as many new and young Tsunamis as we have, I encourage all of you to look up to our current group of Senior swimmers and strive to be better than they are now! In order to get there, you do not need to be amazing today. You simply need to start coming to practice consistently, train your hardest, be patient, set smaller short term goals to achieve along the way and it will come. If you don't believe me, just ask our fastest national team members how they got there and they'll tell you the same time!
Next up for the Tsunamis is the GPAC meet this weekend for our Seniors as well as the Dothan meet next weekend for our Age Group and Novice swimmers. I can't wait to share good news from both of those meets so swim fast and have a blast!
CATCH THE WAVE!
Coach Jonathan
