Tsunamis Begin 2012 With 3rd Place Team Finish at GPAC Meet!

Duderstadt High Point Award Leads Tsunamis at GPAC Meet!

Of the 37 Tsunamis who participated in the first meet of 2012, none score more points than our very own senior swimmer, Michael Duderstadt.  By winning four individual events, "Duder" also won the overall high point award for the Senior Boys division.  However, it was not Duder alone who pushed PCST towards a 4th place overall team finish and 3rd place visiting team ranking.  There were high scoring Tsunamis in every single age group to help provide the team with over 400 points total on the weekend. 

Throughout the meet, the word that kept coming to mind for me was "encouraging".  Our Novice swimmers had a blast and put up some very impressive swims.  The smiles on their faces brought energy to our awesome age groupers who had an amazing amount of best times.  In turn, the "Little Haddads" from the Age Group often cheered on our senior swimmers who managed to put together some darn good swims considering how tired they are from training at this point in the season.  Between our younger swimmers putting up lifetime bests left and right, and our exhausted senior swimmers coming up with some very impressive swim, I was constantly ENCOURAGED!  :)  It's got me so excited about the rest of the short course season!  But before we move on to the next meet though, please take a second to read through the fantastic results and then take another second to congratulate your teammates on their accomplishments.

PCST Finishes 3rd Place Overall Among 11 Visiting Teams!
The mid January meet has not typically been one the Tsunamis have arrived at in full force.  Our 37 swimmers certainly falls shorter than what we are generally used to when it comes to away meets.  However, it was the 2nd most swimmers we have ever taken to the Winter GPAC Invite, and the most since way back in 2001 when we had 40 competing in Pensacola.  While this number is larger than usual, it was still not enough to top the likes of GPAC, ATAC or Crawfish who were all there with loads of very fast swimmers.  Nonetheless, we scored in every age group and had a terrific first meet of the year, and I am very proud!

Team Scores
Greater Pensacola Aquatic Club (GPAC)....................1,350 points
Area Tallahassee Aquatic Club (ATAC).......................1,052 points
Crawfish Aquatics (CRAW)..............................................654 points
Panama City Swim Team (PCST)..................................438 points
Sunkist Swim Team (Sunkist).........................................333 points

9 Tsunamis Finish In Top 10 For High Point Rankings
On the positive side, it was thrilling to see the Tsunamis have swimmers ranking in the Top 10 in every single age group.  There were, however, a couple of groups we desperately were missing out on.  With virtually no boys in the 10 & Under age group at the meet, the rest of the team had to work extra hard to pick up the slack.  Thankfully, we had a ton of amazing swims and were able to pull out the great team finish. 

It was especially neat to see Kathryn-Annette McKinney finish in the Top 10 overall for 8 & Under girls, considering she only swam one day!  And how cool is it to have two girls in the top 5 for the 11-12 age group?  Did I mention that Cole Tillman is only 11 years old and finished in the Top 10 overall for the 11-12 Boys?   Or how about our newcomer, Dillon Lenhardt for finishing so high in the 13-14 age group?  But when it came down to it, the leader of the meet was Mr. Michael Duderstadt with his overall high point victory in the highly competitive Senior Boys age group.  Congrats to all the Tsunamis who helped out so much with team points!

8 & Under Girls: Kathryn-Annette McKinney (7th)
9-10 Girls: Marisa Ashleey (8th)
11-12 Girls: Kari Troia (3rd); Kyla Hallam (5th)
11-12 Boys: Cole Tillman (10th)
13-14 Girls: Hannah Retherford (6th)
13-14 Boys: Dillon Lenhardt (7th)
Senior Girls: Nicole Gazia (8th)
Senior Boys: Michael Dudersdadt (1st)

5 Different PCST Swimmers Win Individual Events at the GPAC Meet!
One of the themes for the weekend with my Senior swimmers was their use of the new and improved underwater dolphin kicks.  Hannah Retherford has been one of the best at that for a couple years now, but is just starting to learn how to truly use that power in her races.  Does anyone want to guess why she won the 50 Fly at the meet??  You got it........UNDERWATERS!!  Let that be a lesson to all of our up coming Tsunamis.  Get good at your underwater dolphin kicks now and you will dominate races down the road just as Hannah did at GPAC.

Speaking of dominating a race.  Chad McGuire gets the "Dominator" award for his incredible 200 Breast.  For once, he finally went after the race from the beginning and led from start to finish.  With every passing lap he distanced himself even further from the 2nd place competitor who ended up coming in about 10-12 yards behind Chad.  It was a gutsy race in which he got his first ever 13-14 Southeastern qualifying time and I loved watching every second of it.  When our Tsunamis swim with confidence, they really do live up to their name as an unstoppable force of nature!  Congratulations to Michael Duderstadt, Kyla Hallam and Kari Troia for their awesome victories over the weekend as well!

PCST Event Winners
Michael Duderstadt (Senior Boys) 50 Back, 100 Back, 100 Breast, 200 IM
Kari Troia (11-12 Girls) 50 Breast, 100 Breast
Kyla Hallam (11-12 Girls) 50 Free
Hannah Retherford (13-14 Girls) 50 Fly
Chad McGuire (13-14 Boys) 200 Breast

New All-Time Top 10 Swims For Duderstadt, Gurganus, Retherford and Gazia!
Let's face it..........to get into the All-Time Top 10 list in any event these days is a heck of an accomplishment.  But yet, our Tsunami swimmers just keep making it look easy.  Rest assure though, it is not easy by any means!  Each of the swims below were great races, so take a second to congratulate these swimmers for their historical swims.  The most impressive one out of the bunch, however, probably goes to Michael Duderstadt and the 4:12.22 in his 400 IM.  As if the time itself is not already super fast, when you take into consideration the circumstances in which he achieved it, you have to put it near the remarkable category.  Not only was it the 6th race of the day, it was the 14th of the weekend!  That is not easy to do, but it sure was fun to watch.  Well done each of you!

New All-Time Top 10 Swims
Lindsey Gurganus: 200 Back 8th (2:19.00)
Hannah Retherford: 50 Fly 7th (28.63)
Nicole Gazia: 8th (1:06.62)
Michael Duderstadt: 500 Free 5th (4:53.74), 50 Back 3rd (25.01), 200 Fly 5th (2:00.78), 400 IM 3rd (4:12.22)

Plenty of New Alll-Time Top 10 Age Group Swims to Start the New Year!
The fact that there are so many races that some of these swimmers are using to rearrange our age group all-time top 10 list is very................you guessed it...............encouraging.  :)  All this means is that we are going to have to make some tough decisions to determine what events we are going to be swimming at the Southeastern Championships in February.  This is going to be a fast meet and based on the already improving list of our fastest age group swims in history, I would say we have great things in store for our Knoxville trip.

11-12 Girls
Kyla Hallam 50 Free (2nd), 100 Back (9th), 100 Fly (7th), 200 IM (9th)
Kari Troia 50 Free (8th), 200 Free (5th), 50 Back (3rd), 50 Fly (8th), 100 Fly (9th)

13-14 Girls
Michaela Ashley 200 Breast (10th)
Hannah Retherford 50 Fly (3rd), 400 IM (10th)

13-14 Boys
Dillon Lenhardt 50 Breast (6th)
Chad McGuire 200 Breast (7th)

15-16 Girls
Lindsey Gurganus 500 Free (8th), 200 Back (5th)

15-16 Boys
Zach Dietz 100 IM (8th)

Senior Girls
Nicole Gazia 100 Free (6th), 50 Back (6th), 50 Breast (8th), 100 IM (5th), 400 IM (6th)

Senior Boys
Michael Duderstadt 200 Free (3rd), 500 Free (2nd), 50 Back (2nd), 200 Fly (3rd), 200 IM (4th), 400 IM (3rd)

Tsunami Story Time
I absolutely love our Novice and Age Group swimmers!  Whether it was joking around with the age groupers about me standing in line with them to get up and do starts for warm ups, or watching the novice do "2 minutes of bouncing" in the water for their warm ups, I had a blast with them.  After we completed the morning warm up session, I headed over to the stands to find various swimmers and parents to remind them to stop by the other side of the pool a couple times throughout the morning to go cheer for the rest of the Tsunami swimmers in other age groups.  When I entered the stands in front of the shallow area where the younger swimmers were sitting, I was in for a couple treats.

First, I came across one of our youngest Tsunamis name Caroline Freisthler.  She was so adorable sitting their very patiently waiting for her race.  Now, mind you........her first race probably was not for another 40 minutes, but that did not stop her from quietly sitting there with her hands at her sides, cap and goggles on, ready to go!!!  I instantly had to pull my phone out to take a picture because it made me smile so much my cheeks hurt. 

Then, I moved over a section to find Emma Martin with tears in her eyes.  I was worried she might be scared about her race because she is so young and fairly new to the competitive scene.  Of course, I was dead wrong because Emma is a trooper and a star!  It turns out, she was trying to remember what the order of the strokes was for the individual medley (aka I.M.) race.  So once I told her it was fly, back, breast, free, her face instantly lit up as she turned to her parents in a proud but relieved manner and said "see, I told you I knew what it was".  :)  haha!  Never doubt your 6 year old.  haha! 

This coming weekend  we have 66 Tsunamis competing at two different meets, so be sure to keep your eye out for some great swims and results!  We will be taking a team record tying 46 swimmers to the ATAC meet in Tallahassee as well as an additional 20 to the first ever Coast Aquatics meet in Ft. Walton Beach.  Good luck this weekend Tsunamis Stars!!

CATCH THE WAVE!

Coach Jonathan