Junior Nationals Daily Blog
Duderstadt and Ratliff Head To Knoxville, Tennesee For Winter Junior Nationals (Day 1)
Whether you have been with PCST for years, are a newby to the team, or are just a fan who loves to follow PCST along on our journey to achieving greatness in and out of the pool, I hope you enjoy the unorthodox news stories coming your way throughout the week. If you don't......well..........the delete button is just a short click away. If you do though, then sit back, grab your coffee and enjoy the trip to the Winter Junior Nationals with us! Who knows..........maybe at one of the up coming Juniors Nationals, I may be sharing all sorts of fun stories about YOUR amazing experiences at the highest levels of our great sport.
Before I tell you about our travel day.......and yes.........even a day that involved mostly driving was still really fun. And if you haven't noticed, I can tell a story about just anything, haha. I would like to share with you the best way to follow your Tsunami stars Jonathan Ratliff and Michael Duderstadt. And there are plenty of ways. Check it out.
Junior Nationals Psych Sheet (aka "pre-meet rankings")
Check out the link below to see where our boys rank going into the meet. Not only is Jonathan ranked very high for his first Winter Junior Nationals ever, his teammate, "Duder" is ranked 2nd, 3rd and 10th in his three top events! That's in THE COUNTRY guys! Here are their events and webpage link so you can look them up.
Jonathan Ratliff (500 Free, 200 Free, 200 Fly)
Michael Duderstadt (200 IM, 50 Free 100 Breast, 200 Breast)
Live Video Stream
I actually can't find this now, but in the past they have had a live video stream of the meet so you can watch it live. The place to keep checking back is the USA Swimming website at the following link. If anyone finds the video stream elsewhere, email me the link and I'll send it out to everyone.
http://www.usaswimming.org/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabId=2146&Alias=Rainbow&Lang=en
Follow Coach Jonathan on Twitter and Facebook
Yes, my Twitter account is family friendly. I will be tweeting about the meet all week long, including pictures and quick results from time to time. Follow me @TsunamiCoach. And yes, my Facebook page is all things PCST, is family friendly and has no personal stuff on it. It is open to anyone who would like to request me as a friend. Add me as a friend at PcstJonathan on Facebook and you'll get daily updates including pictures from Junior Nationals.
Check Out Duder On "SwimSwam.com"
For those of you who haven't checked it out yet, go to www.swimswam.com. They are VERY up to the minute on all sorts of great meet results, including Junior Nationals. You can follow them on Twitter too. I love seeing what they have to say, especially when it is about our swimmers!! Today, SwimSwam released a news article that provided their list of the "who's who" to watch out for at Junior Nationals. It had about 20 guys and 20 girls roughly and Michael Duderstadt from the PANAMA CITY SWIM TEAM was on there!!! It's on the following link...........pretty cool!!!
http://swimswam.com/2012/12/whos-swimming-at-winter-junior-nationals-2012-psych-sheets/
Estimated Timeline For Our Boys' Swims Each Day
For those of you who want to know when the best time is to send your positive mental thoughts our way, or if you are able to figure out how to watch the live video stream, then here are the times to watch out for our swimmers. Keep in mind that these are EASTERN standard times.
Thursday: Jonathan Ratliff 500 Free (starts 9:38 am); Michael Duderstadt 200 IM (starts 10:28 am), 50 Free (starts 11:08 am)
Friday: Jonathan Ratliff 200 Free (starts 10:49 am), Michael Duderstadt 100 Breast (starts 11:19 am)
Saturday: Michael Duderstadt 200 Breast (starts 9:55 am), Jonathan Ratliff 200 Fly (starts 10:28 am)
Finals Each Night: start at 5:00 each night
Day One: Travel To Knoxville
Okay, on to the fun stuff. On the outside, spending 9 hours in a car with a couple of teenage boys might sound a little scary............well...........one boy and one man according to the newly turned 18 year old .............Mr. Duderstadt. Yeah, sorry boy...........I was 13 when I had my Bar Mitzvah where they called me a "man", and I couldn't have been further from one, haha. So being 18 doesn't automatically make you a man. :) But at least you're a very valuable step forward. :) It's like how Mr. Ratliff may have never been to Winter Junior Nationals before, but he is far from a "rookie". (Sidenote......I may or may not have...........and by that I mean I absolutely did, hashtag "#rookie" today on Twitter when showing a picture of JRat about to jump in the pool for warm ups.) Let's face it though, Duder is getting close to being a "man" and Jonathan actually can't be further away from being a "rookie". We just like to have fun. Bottom line is, both boys are having fun and are ready for a great week.
Do you think I get side tracked easily? :) Back to the trip. We met at Panera at 7:00 am on 23rd Street where I think we scared the lady behind the counter into thinking we had started a new loitering spot for teenagers. The look of concern on her face was pretty genuine, haha. On a cool note though, I snapped a quick photo of the sky as the sun was coming up over the bridge because it was GORGEOUS. If you check this article out on the PCST website, you'll see what I'm talking about (as well as Jonathan's "Rookie" photo and another of Duder at warm ups). Once we finally were ready to head out of town to start our journey, we loaded up our dependable Florida Linen Team Van. Thank you once again to Lyn Retherford for allowing us to travel to Junior Nationals using her company van. For those of you who haven't been to her new cafe called "Miss Linen's Cafe" on Backbeach Road right next to her Florida Linen store, you definitely need to go! I eat there all the time! It's a wonderfull atmosphere with great sandwiches, salads, etc. If you're nice, I'll even let you sit in my reserved spot for "Coach". Don't believe me? Go check it out! :)
As far as the drive went, I can honestly say it was the quickest, easiest long distance drive I have made in............well, forever! The boys got to take naps, I got to sing, we talked, laughed, told stories, and simply had a great time. As if that wasn't fun enough, we stopped north of Atlanta along the way at Jersey Mikes, which is easily my favorite sub shop. Jonathan had the terrific idea of sitting outside, which was very pleasant until this gentleman decided that he absolutely had to have a cigarette right next to us. So I got up after a couple minutes of him rudely blowing smoke at us and asked politely if he would put the cigarette out since we were eating. I said I have two elite athletes here that need to have clear lungs heading into competition for their swim meet. His reply was "swimmers aren't real athletes!" Needless to say, I wasn't too happy about that, so I uppercut him right in the bottom of the chin, then kicked him in the shin. As his head fell down, I gently put him in a UFC style sleeper hold until he passed out. You can't say stuff like that about my boys and get away with it!
In case you haven't figured it out yet............I'm just playing, haha. Just wanted to make sure you were paying attention. But we did eat at Jersey Mikes and Jonathan did choose to sit outside, and a gentleman did blow smoke in our direction. So we just said "way to go JRat" and moved on with our lives, haha. I like my first version better. :)
On the drive itself, we had a great time believe it or not. For me, time flew by, especially for the last few hours when we talked about my favorite show on t.v. "The Walking Dead" and then eventually listened to some great comedy c.d.'s. I think I may have blown Jonathan's mind a little when I told him about the book I'm writing and the psychological twist it provides, haha. It's okay though...........he's #1 in his class academically, so I knew he could keep up with it. :) Before we knew it, we quickly found ourselves in Knoxville by the late afternoon.
After checking into the hotel for a relaxing 25 minutes to stretch out in the rooms, we headed off to the pool. Junior Nationals this year is being hosted at the University of Tennessee where we have participated in the Southeastern Championships for the last two years. One of my favorite parts of the day was when I realized that although we were in a familiar place, it didn't feel like Southeasterns at all. It felt like Junior Nationals should, filled with the excitement, the prestige and the overall extraordinary amount of energy in the building that comes from having that many dedicated elite athletes together. And guess what? This was a simple light afternoon with only a moderate number of teams showing up for afternoon swims a couple days before the meet started. It was that perfect combination of familiar and unknown. :)
We checked the boys into the meet as soon as we got there. This was one of Duder's first real moments of "being a man", as he didn't need a legal guardian to sign his release waiver for him. He was so proud, haha. We were all proud. :) As for Jonathan though, I signed as his guardian during the meet. Sorry buddy............you're mine now!!!
After we got our coaching and athlete credentials that must be displayed at all times throughout the meet, we headed downstairs to get started on our loosen up swim. The timing was perfect because all they needed to do today was a recovery swim to rest up for our fast stuff tomorrow before lighting it up all weekend long in our races. Since we had nearly 9 hours of travel time, the boys needed to swim that out of their system. And that's exactly what they did. Meanwhile, I spent my time hanging out around the pool deck with some of the best coaching minds out there (one of my favorite things to do). I also had to figure out our parking situation, which sounds like I'm going to get a good solid one mile walk to and from the pool everytime we get there. At least I know that will be enough exercise available for me to work off some the extra Mt. Dews I've already ingested on this trip! Tonight though, I got lucky as I found a metered spot right next to the pool that already had 1 hour 53 minutes on it. That came in handy since all I had was a quarter to put in the meter.
Once the boys had completed their workout, we headed to dinner at one of my favorite places in the world. You know it.........FAZOLIS! :) Mmmmmmm! I texted the Head Coach of GPAC a picture of my dinner (which was actually two dinners because I'm a fatty and I love pasta) to tell him that I was cheating on the Pensacola Fazolis and that I hope he understands, haha. Yes, I'm a big big dork and I'm fully aware of it. But the boys actually really wanted Fazolis too, not just yours truly. So it hit the spot for each of us. However, I don't think Duder and JRat were too happy when I got my food and started eating it before they both even had a chance to sit down! They thought I was just lucky, but as their food took longer and longer to come out, I think they realized that I got my food quickly because..................well................don't know how else to put it....................but I'm kinda a big deal at Fazolis. :)
I'm a Platinum member there which means that my food gets brought out immediately, and I get instant hot breadsticks, which I was glad to share with the boys, especially when the gentleman only asked me if I wanted more breadsticks and didn't even look at them. In addition, they also provided me with a bowl of warm water and a nice hot towel to rinse my hands with when I'm done eating. A beautiful woman then came by to feed me chocolate covered marshmellows for my dessert as the boys sat there staring at me with astonished looks on their faces. I think the breaking point of amazement for them was when the owner stopped by the table and offered me a pillow and a ride home in case I wanted to take a nap rather than drive. It's always high class for Platinum members at Fazolis!
Okay.........so I like to embellish a little. Yes, my food did come out a long time before..............no, I'm not a platinum member................and yes..............I'm a big deal at Fazolis, hahaha.
With full and satisfied bellies, we headed back to the hotel to get some rest for the evening. Which means work for me. And since I have more coming my way tonight. I'll say good night to you all. I hope you have enjoyed Day 1 at Junior Nationals at least half as much as I have so far. More to come this week, so pass on all of your love and good luck to the boys as well as our friends at ATAC and CMSA! :)
CATCH THE WAVE!
Coach Jonathan
Second Day in Knoxville Brings TONS of Excitement! (Okay, so maybe it wasn't THAT amazing.) But Still A Good Day!
Whenever you have to travel to an elite level championship meet like this, it's often a great idea to get there a couple days ahead of time so you have a day to shake off the travel, relax and prepare for fast racing the rest of the trip. Today for our PCST National Team, was that day to relax. Of course, that does not mean we sat around and did nothing. :)
The morning began after we took advantage of a nice opportunity to sleep in one morning. We have some early rising coming our way for the rest of the meet, so it was nice to sleep in a bit. Thankfully, the Spring Hill Suites serves breakfast until 9:00 am, so we had plenty of time to get a good meal before heading to the pool for our first workout of the day. I have to say too...........they've got a great breakfast here! Where else can you get macaroni n cheese, spaghettios and Mt. Dew for breakfast??? Oh wait......that was in my dreams. Ummmmm.......hmmmm. Oh yeah........we did had eggs, sausage, oatmeal, cereal, yogurt, orange juice, milk, etc. That's a little better I suppose. :)
For the workout this morning, the boys needed to get some fast swims under their belt to prime their engines heading into racing tomorrow. After a nice relaxing warm up, they did a little speed work and then a couple swims for time. Both Duder and JRat looked spectacular in the water, so they cooled down and hopped out. During our workout, other members of the "Florida Alabama Racing Team" showed up..........aka..............CMSA. Not only do they have a great foursome of boys here who are ready to make some noise on the national scene, they also have two incredible girls who just recently swam amazingly at the Alabama State Championships next weekend. It's going to make for one heck of a weekend together for all of us!
After we finished our morning swim, we headed off to Jason's Deli where they have a great selection of sandwiches, soups, salads, etc. It gave our boys a chance to hang out with their Team F.A.R.T. teammates as well as providing me a chance to catch up with Greg Davis, the Head Coach of CMSA........and one of the greatest coaches I know!
As we all know though, one great meal leads to an even better nap! Since I had a Coaches’ Meeting to go to later in the afternoon, and the boys had a short loosen up swim to do, we figured we might as well go back and rest for the afternoon. I’m not sure exactly how much rest Duder and JRat got though because they were viciously attacked by the evil ticking creature know as the Swatch Monster! Yesssss.......the Swatch Monster lurks nearby. It will attach itself to your wrist without your knowledge. And just when you try to take it off, it lures you into leaving it on with its glorious time telling abilities and fancy colors. You try to sleep, but it haunts you with every tick banging louder and louder as if it were a Thanksgiving parade creeping closer with every passing minute. You could take it off...........maybe hide it in the bathroom where you can’t hear it..........but no. You will never escape the Swatch Monster!
Soooooooooo yeah........Duder’s watch ticks loudly and kept the boys from getting a full nap. I guess I could have just said that.
I, on the other hand, didn’t get any sleep. These long trips out of town certainly take their toll on my work schedule, so I had the pleasure of working all afternoon in between swims. I guess it beats having an encounter with the Swatch Monster though.
After their run in with the time ticking wrist creature, the boys were ready to head back to the pool for their loosen up swim. All they needed to do was stretch, hop in for 700-1000 yards of easy swimming, and that was it. Us coaches though, we had to go to the “General Coaches’ Meeting”, where they go through all the details of the meet and what not. I’ve been going to those meetings for years now and this was easily the least attended meeting I had ever been to. This was mostly because a large number of the coaches and teams were stuck in a massively long line at the pool to get their swimmers checked into the meet (something we did yesterday......high five!!). There were so many teams trying to check in at once, that the lone USA Swimming staff member in charge had to use the assistance of a security guard to help him get coaches and swimmers checked in quicker. It was crazy.
The other reason for the poor attendance was because they had to make the meeting about a 5 minute drive from the pool, which led to a lot of coaches missing the meeting entirely. I guess this is what it feels like to be a veteran coach who’s been to enough national level meets to plan ahead for things like this. I say that, and now I’m probably going to make some rookie mistake later in the weekend, haha.
Once we finally got back together after the meeting, I drove the boys back to Turkey Creek where we were staying so we could grab some dinner at Brixx Pizza. The Tsunami Mommies and Daddy (don’t have a cute creative name for Tsunami Dads, sorry Bruce.) joined us for dinner since they had just arrived an hour or two prior after their long trek to Knoxville. It was a very enjoyable dinner. Yup..........that’s all I have to say about it. Very enjoyable. What? You were expecting some crazy made up story, huh? Well you’re not going to get it! I’ve got very important things to do now that we’re all back at the hotel, so I have to go. For example.......I have to watch my fourth straight episode of Family Guy on TBS right now! This is important stuff, so don’t judge me.
Oh yeah, and there’s that whole “get to bed early so we can be fully rested for an amazing day of swimming” thing that I’ve got going too. We will pretend that's my real reason for going now. :) Tomorrow morning brings the 500 Free for Jonathan Ratliff, as well as the 200 IM and 50 Free for Michael Duderstadt. Keep an eye out for those races and wish them luck! Thanks to all of you who have sent positive messages on Twitter and Facebook, and to those of you who have taken the time to write me back. We all sincerely appreciate it. Until tomorrow!
CATCH THE WAVE!
Coach Jonathan
Ratliff Makes Debut and Duderstadt Makes Championship Finals on Day Three at Junior Nationals!
With a meet that has 900 swimmers, you can imagine what the warm up situation is like here. In addition, there are simply too many teams here to even remotely attempt a controlled warm up, which means you simply make it "open warm up" for a few hours and then move on with your life. Even though we got to the pool at about 7:15 am with the meet starting at 9:00, our boys started the first day of competition in "battle mode" in the warm up pool. It's all a part of the game though, and was certainly expected.
Once Duder and Jonathan made it through the warm up gauntlet, they were primed and ready for their first races of the meet. Starting us off in the 500 free was Ratliff in his first ever Speedo Junior Nationals swim! Although the final result was not a best time for the 16 year old Mosley Junior, it was still a very well swum race and was his 3rd fastest 500 of all time, falling just a few seconds short of his two amazing 4:34's at the State Championships last month. He split the race nearly perfectly, but each 50 time was just a little off his best. It wasn't but only 10 minutes after his race that he immediately started feeling the effects of a full on migraine that was most likely building up since possibly before the 500. By the time he made it through half his warm down, the symptoms were nearly at maximum pain and he unfortunately had to leave the meet to head back to the hotel to rest/sleep all afternoon.
While I'm sure it's not the way Jonathan wanted to start the meet, the great news is that he DID in fact get a ton of rest today and had a couple of great meals this afternoon and evening and was even able to loosen up in the water tonight during finals. I think he is already back to nearly 100%, so I cannot wait to see what we have in store for the rest of the weekend. JRat is ready to rock! :)
As for the "man" of the group...........Mr. Duderstadt. (Although I SHOULD be talking about his father, Bruce, when I say that, I suppose I have to refer to Duder that way for the evening). I say that because he did a "double" of two back to back races today that was very gutsy and somewhat manly. In the 200 IM at prelims, he blew away his best time by a second (which he had previously used to win the Florida State Championships!) by going a blistering 1:49.08 in the 200 IM. That makes him the first Tsunami ever to break 1:50 in a 200 other than freestyle! In fact, one of my coaching buddies who had been in Southeastern Swimming for a long time before moving to California, made a friendy joke, saying "From years ago, who would have thought the Panama City Swim Team would have a swimmer under 1:50 in a 200 IM?" It was of course a very complimentary joke, but one with truth to it! That is one heck of an accomplishment for our young Duder, and it seeded him 5th going into the championship finals at night.
Now for the manly part. Wanna guess just how much time our senior swimmer had to "rest" between the 200 IM and he 50 Free this morning? Go ahead, guess. 30 minutes would be a TOUGH double! 15 minutes would make him like Ryan Lochte over the summer in his quick turn around swims. Nope.........both would be wrong. Duder had approximately 5 minutes from the moment he exited the pool from the IM to the instant they blew the whistle for him to step up for his 50 free. The second he finished the fastest IM in PCST history, he climbed out, walked 15 feet to the diving well and jumped right in to cool down in an attempt to lower his heart rate as much as possible in that short time frame. That was about all he could do and I think he did a spectacular job considering!
Once it was time to step up on the block, Duder was still huffing and puffing a bit. He took two really big deep breaths right before they said "Take your mark". Then he was off, racing again in the shortest fastest race out there. While he did not go his best time of 20.95 that he went in season at the County Championships in October, he still went a VERY fast 21.26 to get 36th overall. And did I mention he won his heat?? That's pretty tough. When I asked him how he felt after the race, I believe his words were "I thought I was going to die." haha! Great job Duder! Can't wait to see you race a fresh 50 one of these days!
After Jonathan had already headed back to recover, and Duder had filled his belly full of Subway (a lunch I think he could eat everyday), we headed home to get some rest. For me that actually involved a 30 minute nap today after getting my work done. Yaaaayyy! For Duder, that meant filling the bath tub up with ice for his "ice bath", which is a form of recovery to help the muscles recooperate after a hard workout.........something he needed after that tough double today. Then he was off to bed to nap and get ready for finals.
The evening started out with one of our very very close friends from ATAC, Cece Williams, absolutely BLOWING AWAY the 500 Freestyle!! She was nothing short of spectacular and I cannot say enough great things about how awesome she swam. The race she had was nose to nose for all 20 laps with a very talented girl from Lakeside in Kentucky. And I have to say, one of my purest joys in swimming is watching the races of my coaching buddies' swimmers with them. Tonight, I got to watch Cece's swim (who I've been close to since she was 9), with one of my best friends and all time mentors, Terry Maul, the Head Coach of ATAC in Tallahassee. He was so excited and we were jumping up and down the entire race whenever she would breath in our direction. When she missed winning Junior Nationals by only a few tenths of a second, there was a pause because she had such a great shot at coming in first and we were soaking in the moment and all the emotions that came with getting a close second place. Then........once Terry realized just how fast she had gone (4:43), which would be 4th all time on the PCST BOYS all time list...........I think it really sunk in and hit him big time because he was as proud as a father! It was really cool to see. Congratulations CeCe! I'm so proud!
Now on to the Panama City Swim Team Show!
Actually, the cool thing about the 200 IM final tonight was not just the fact that it was the first time Duder had made a championship final in an IM race..........it was that he was in the lane right next to one of his best buddies from CMSA, Will Glass. Will was in lane 3 with Duder in lane 2 tonight. In prelims, they were in the same heat but were separated by 5 lanes. Will's coach, Greg Davis, and I joked about how cool it would be if they were right next to each other. Well, we got our wish tonight and the boys did not disappoint! It was a "Team F.A.R.T." final for the first time ever! So cool!
While Will ended up with an insane 1:47.9 to get 4th overall, Duder was not too far behind with a crazy fast 1:49.10, only 0.02 off of his previous best time from prelims. That was good enough to earn him a 6th place finish overall! He started the fly and back a little easier and smoother than the morning, but came charging back big time in the Breast and Free! In fact, his second 100 of the race was the second fastest of all swimmers in the championship final. The only person who split faster on the last 4 lengths was the Junior National Champion himself. It was incredibly exciting to watch and I know Duder has to be super proud. :) Immediately following the race, they required that all swimmers report to the podium to receive their championship medals. Check out one of the pictures I got from his medal ceremony! (on the website news article version)
After watching our CMSA friends get 6th place overall in the 400 Medley Relay, we headed off to dinner at one of my other favorite restaurants, the Olive Garden. In case you could never tell, probably 8 out of my top 10 favorite restaurants of all time are pasta or Italian places. Just saying.
To end Day One of competition, PCST is in 29th place overall in the boys division, making us the 4th highest ranking Southeastern team with 13 points. (Nashville 5th, CMSA 7th, Baylor 9th). These also mark as the first ever Winter Junior National points we have ever scored in team history! How cool is that? Not only are we ranked....but we are ranked high! :)
At the Olive Garden...........ohhhhhhhh...............I can't even do it justice. So instead, I will simply give you a break down of the dinner, which was quite entertaining to say the least.
1) Duder nearly successful convinced our waiter that he and Jonathan were professional ballet dancers.
2) Our waiter thought everything was "EXCELLENT!!!", and wanted to make sure we knew that.
3) Plates that are clean are apparently "very happy plates" according to our waiter.
4) Since clean plates are happy, I took lemon wedges, a piece of a breadstick and leftover spaghetti from Lori Ratliff's plate to make a full on happy face (see picture on the website).
5) Yes, that means I played with my food because Jonathan Ratliff thought I was 40 years old, so I had to make up for him thinking I'm that old by playing with my food at dinner.
6) We decided that Duder's Facebook name of "Duder Michaelstadt" should be changed to "Michael Duderhot". JRat didn't like it, haha.
Tomorrow morning we have a couple more great swims coming our way. In the 200 Free, Jonathan Ratliff will be providing the world with a little taste of his newly found sprinting abilities. Yay! Then just a little after that, Duder will be swimming the 100 Breaststroke, an event in which he is the 2nd seed going into the race. But I'll save you the suspense...........there are a TON of great breaststrokers out there and he's going to have some work to do to hold them off and make a run at the champion. Should be fun!
Until then..........sleep tight. Time for me to rest now that there is no more Big Bang Theory on t.v.
CATCH THE WAVE!
Coach Jonathan
Duderstadt Finishes 2nd in 100 Breast, Barely Missing All Time Junior National Record!
Do you want to really know how exciting today has been? I am just now sitting down to write this news article at 11:30 pm because I have been so busy answering texts, tweet alerts, updating my PcstJonathan Facebook page, updating both Bay County news stations about our results, and well...........just absorbing everything from the day! It sure has been an exciting one!
We started off the morning arriving at the pool at our usual time. The boys are becoming more adjusted to the crowded warm ups and are realizing that it's a "fend for yourself" situation. Although neither of the guys were swimming until much later in the morning, we got to the pool early because the warm up situation only gets worse when the meet starts. The warm up/cool down lanes that are available get so crowded that it looks like a super full bait bucket with the fish jumping out of the water because there isn't enough room for all of them in there. One of my coaching buddies from California described it as the moment when you toss some bait into the water over a school of hungry fish and they all go nuts for it. Either way, I think you get the picture. :)
Mr. Ratliff started off our preliminary session with a spectacular 200 Freestyle! He was scheduled to swim right next to ATAC's Scott Fortier oddly enough, but Scott has been sick all week and has been unable to swim. So we knew one lane next to him would be empty. But then, as he stepped up on the block we realized that the OTHER lane next to him was empty too! At a Junior Nationals meet that rarely has any scratches, that was pretty unusual. So he took advantage of the extra space to himself by holding on for a great 1:42.19 in the event. That was his second best 200 Free of all time and only 0.20 off of his 1:41.99 from the high school state championships. At a meet where going near your best is a major step forward, Jonathan discovered this when he saw that he moved up from a 90th place seed going into the meet, to a 56th place overall finish!!! I told you it was a great swim! The only thing better than the swim itself was the fact that he bounced back so great after a rough first day yesterday. Very proud of you JRat!
In the very next event, Mr. Duderstadt stepped up as the 2nd seed in the 100 Breast going into the meet. However, we knew that it was going to be a tough event because there were more swimmers under 56 seconds than I think I had ever seen before in this event at one meet. Duder rose to the occassion though, as he nearly went his best ever swim in the morning with a 55.16. (He was 55.08 at the state championships). His first 50 split though, 25.95, was a best time and PCST record. Lately, Duder had become to king of the ".0's" because so many of his best times ended in .0 something. For example, his best breast times were 26.0, 55.0, 2:01.0. His best fly is 50.00, back 50.10, IM 1:50.01 coming into the meet and now 1:49.0. Since he broke the 1:50 barrier in the IM, and the 26 barrier in the breast, I told him that the flood gates had opened and the barriers were all going to start falling! Keep reading and you'll find out how right I was!
That time put Duder in 3rd overall going into finals. This turned out to be a great position because of the direction he turns when he swims. We knew he was going to be able to see the competition at finals at the most critical time. However, as Duder was cooling down from his well swum morning breaststroke, Jonathan was loosening back up for another great swim. In addition to his 200 Free today, he signed up for a "time trial" swim in the 100 Fly. Since the only people who can swim these time trials are swimmers in the meet, they are actually so fast that it's just like swimming in the meet itself! Although we haven't particularly trained for the 100 Fly, we knew he would be good and wanted to swim it anyway. His best time was a 52.5 coming into the meet, and he finished just barely off of that with a 52.7, which was still a really great race! He has set himself up nicely for a fantastic 200 Fly in the morning! Great job Jonathan!
In between sessions, Duder helped Jonathan learned the value of a niiiiiice coooooold ice bath. :) This was only his second ice bath ever, and I don't think he's quite gotten used to it, haha. From what I heard, he was considerably more vocal about his pain than Duder was, haha. Sorry Jonathan.............the truth is the truth. :) Of course, Duder has taken tons of ice baths and deals with his pain rather more delicately thanks to his experience in the matter. And I would say it was worth it! You'll find out why soon enough. :)
At finals, both the boys and girls swim in the same section of the pool, leaving lots more room for warm ups. This comes in handy because the meet started at 5:00 and Duder wasn't scheduled to swim until 7:20. So we pushed back our arrival time just a little bit so we could have more time to rest and relax before the evening session. We arrived just in time to watch our Team F.A.R.T. boys (aka CMSA) absolutey rock their 200 Medley Relay! They have now finalled in both medley relays, scoring major points for the team. Mobile has been so good, that they are actually ranked 7th overall in the men's division, and 14th overall in the combined team scores thanks to a crazy fast 1:48.4 tonight in the 200 Free by Paige Madden!! (That makes her #1 in the country for 14 year old girls!) CMSA has been nothing short of spectacular and we couldn't be prouder to call them pretend teammates. :) The other fun part about it is that ATAC is now "pledging" to become a part of team F.A.R.T., hahaha! The boys plan to put together a final contract tomorrow to make them an official member of the Florida Alabama Racing Team. :)
Once the wait was over and we were ready for the breaststrokes to begin, I got to watch one of our long time visiting swimmers race in the girl's 100 Breast final. 14 year old Kennedy Lohman, of Lakeside Kentucky, swam a blistering 1:02.64 in the 100 Breast to finish 5th place overall, and only 0.02 off of 4th! She and her brother, Connor, come down to PCB a few times a year to train with us and have become somewhat of honorary teammates. Connor too has had a great meet with a bunch of best times. It must be that amazing PCST training they get every year that's doing the trick!
Alright.............race time.
Before the start of every finals race, the Top 8 championship athletes have to report to a "ready room", which is the quiet hallway leading to the University of Tennessee locker rooms. Duder is very familiar with this area, not only because of the multiple Southeastern Championships we have had at this pool, but also because of his recruiting visit to Tennessee earlier this season. However, before it was time to head back into the ready room, I noticed that Duder had separated himself from the rest of the group and had gone off on his own for a few minutes behind the diving towers. This is something I taught him last year that he has nearly perfected, and it's just a few moments of clarity to prepare yourself. It's not an overthinking thing.........just a focus thing. The rest of the day, evening and meet, Duder and Jonathan have both been in a great mood and have done a wonderful job of keeping things light rather than getting too serious about it all. And honestly, it's just been a blast all week because of that!
After completing his clarity session, Duder headed back to the ready room after one last fist bump from me. They paraded the athletes out to some music to get the crowd pumped up. I was so excited for the race that I have no clue what the music was, haha. One of my favorite parts from the entire evening was the fact that when they announced "Michael Duderstadt from the Panama City Swim Team" in front of probably a couple thousand people total, there was actually a pretty darn loud cheer! It was very cool. :) Duder was behind the blocks preparing himself with a few chest, arm and muscle slaps that ............well............are pretty intimidating for everyone else. Then came the first long whistle to step up on the block.
At the beep, Duder was off the blocks first with his famous start and underwater pull out that has gained recognition from most coaches from around the country. He broke out perfecty and swam a smooth first 25 yards to be first at the turn. With another powerful pull out, Duder was right in the mix at the 50. In fact, Curtis Ogren (who had smashed the Junior National record in the 400 IM earlier in the evening with a disgustingly fast 3:44) was out in 25.64 with the event favorite and 200 IM champion, Steven Stumph, tied with Duder at 25.69. It was a dead heat for all three boys. Duder made a huge push the third length to pull ahead going into the last 25. The fact that both boys were seeded a half second ahead of our Tsunami senior going into finals was what led to Greg Davis (CMSA coach) saying outloud in amazement "is he going to win this thing???" One last big pull out and Duder looked like he had a real shot. All three boys came barrelling down for the last 10 yards, stroke for stroke! The first moment I thought to myself "Holy crap, he's got a shot!" was as they all passed under the flags with only 5 yards to go. I could tell that Duder was going to be dead on for his finish, and he was! It was good enough to hold off Ogren by 0.04, but Stumph made one last "2008 Phelps 100 Fly"-like lunge for the wall to finish first by 0.10 over Duder.
The final times were Stumph 54.46, Duderstadt 54.56 Ogren 54.60, helping young Duder to smash yet another barrier this week! It was the most exciting race of the evening, hands down! And all three boys were just a literal blink away from the all-time fastest 100 Breast record in Junior National history of 54.38. Ahhhhh, so close! However, as a consolation prize, Duder's time was faster than the Florida High School State Record of 54.7. Unfortunately though, since this was not a high school meet, it was not an FHSAA record. But it was DARN FAST!!! And that makes him one of the fastest swimmers to ever compete in the 100 Breast at Junior Nationals! When he finished congratulating the boys around him, I got his attention for a picture before he exited the water. I could tell he had a HUGE smile on his face, but the picture came out blury. Wanna know why??? Because I was so excited that my hands were shaking too much and I couldn't hold my phone still to take a good pic, hahaha!
Immediately following the event, the boys had to report to the podium to receive their medals. Duder's legs must be tired because he had to walk pretty darn high up to get to that 2nd place position!! I felt like a proud father taking pictures of him as he received his medal. For each event, the coach of the winning swimmer gets to pass out the medals to everyone, and Duder was only 0.10 from having me hand him that medal. One day though, I have a feeling I will be the one giving him and the other finalists their medals. :) Afterwards, everywhere I went I had coaches congratulating me on the amazing swim for the rest of the night (in addition to my phone blowing up with texts messages and Twitter alerts, haha). Of course, I didn't do anything, but I was still very appreciative of their kind words and positive thoughts because I know exactly how hard Duder has worked to get to this level.
Words cannot begin to describe how proud I am of both Duder and Jonathan for their hard work, leardership and success. They have earned every last bit of these great swims. But guess what guys?? We're not done yet! Tomorrow morning we have the 200 Fly for Jonathan, and the 200 Breast for Duder. It will be the last day of the meet, and it's going to be a fun one!! JRat put it best tonight when we were driving home trying to decide where we were going to eat for dinner. We talked about Fazolis and I asked Jonathan if that's what he wanted. He said he didn't care. So I though, maybe he wants to go somewhere else but he's just not saying. Pressing a little more, I said "We can go anywhere you want.", with his mother following up with something like "Where would you like to eat that will help you swim your fastest?".............Jonathan's immediate response was "I'm going to swim fast regardless of where we eat." I love it!
Have a great evening everyone! I'm only looking at about 5 plus hours of sleep now, so I'm gonna go. I hope you enjoyed today's results. Keep checking News Channel 7 and 13 because they have been updating the results each night.
Great job Duder..........great job JRat........not done yet though!
CATCH THE WAVE!
Jonathan
More photos:
