IMX MEET WRAP UP

On Monday Coach Heather asked if this meet was one that we should do in the future.  I told her to give me a few days to think about it because there are advantages and disadvantages.   I know the parking was an issue but on Friday the university thought we were starting at four so they were prepared and on Sunday they had a basketball game so we had to park a distance.  In fact it took me over an hour to find my car Sunday night and when I did it had a ticket on it, I guess I had the wrong lot. Sunday morning it was dark and raining so I just wanted to be on time.  Oh by the way you can bet I am passing that ticket off to Coach Heather one way or another. Disadvantages that I took from this meet were that it was a long day for some coaches who spent 12 hours at the pool all three days, but then again it was not much different then any other meet if you attended all three sessions, just an extra day.  I know for the parents the events were long ones to watch and I really appreciate the support you gave your swimmers and myself. Several coaches said that we should positive check in the 500 free on Friday because we could have saved 9 heats and been finished over an hour early.  I pointed out that though that would have been great for coaches, the swimmers would suffer because they may have to be on deck longer not knowing when their heat would swim. As for the meet itself I think it offers the swimmers a chance to challenge themselves in a unique environment where all swimmers swim the entire program and not just events or strokes they like.  It gives the coaches a real chance to see how they swim the strokes and how they execute the race.  It allows more one on one time between coach and swimmer to talk over technique also.   As we worked through the meet our Mako swimmers did very well.  If my calculations are correct we improved our times in all the races except for four events and three of them were right on their best times.  We had a lot of our swimmers winning their heats.  It was also exciting to see how they could carry that energy into the third day and still drop time.  Now of course some of our 12 and under girls were only swimming their entry times in the first event Sunday (100 back). But after going over and letting them know that the boys were making them look silly they picked it up and dropped time in all of their last events which was the 200 IM. I think that in the end we get more from a meet like this during this time of the season then we get from a January Open meet.   The kids who swam this meet had to swim 6 long events over a three day period and in the end, I believed they gained an enormous amount of confidence going into championship season. Hopefully in the future more swimmers from Makos will take advantage of this unique swimming event!