As we go into the New England Regional Championships, I want to recap our 2009/2010 Short Course season with the Hamden North Haven YMCA Typhoon swim team.  So, without further ado, here is how our season played out:

We started our season with our swim clinic about 3 weeks prior to any other swim team in our Yankee Cluster, and it proved to be very successful!  The swimmers learned a plethora of drills and skills that they would be then used throughout the regular season to improve their stroke and racing technique.  Following the clinic, we had our first meet in early October.

The 2009 National YMCA Virtual Invitational had 220 swim teams (in total 11,605 athletes throughout the U.S.) swam locally to compete nationally against each other which was the first time that an event like this has been run by the YMCA.  The Typhoon swimmers did extremely well with the following as highlight swims:

• W. Munstermann placed 12th in the 50 free, and 15th in the 50 back
• G. Livsey placed 19th in the 50 free, and 11th in the 100 breast
• 10 and under boys placed 15th overall
• Typhoons finished 2nd out of all our Cluster teams (69th overall out of 220 teams – not bad for being a young swim team)

The Autumn Classic was the next stop for the Typhoon swim team, and we did excellent!  Some of the highlight swims were:

• A. Allen took off 9.23 seconds from her 100 free
• G. Desroches dropped nearly 4 seconds on her 50 freestyle
• E. Hodes dropped over 5 seconds in his 50 breaststroke, and over 3 seconds from his 50 free
• N. Kern dropped 10.98 seconds in his 200 free
• G. Livsey cut 5 seconds from his 200 free
• M. Munstermann took down her 200 IM by 8.30, and her 100 free by 3.80

Our meet against Farmington Valley YMCA, though long, was a very fast meet for the athletes.  In total, there were 18 Typhoon swimmers that dropped time for a cumulative of over 3 minutes dropped by those 18 swimmers.  That equals out to an average of 17 seconds dropped per swimmer!

And the times just kept getting faster and faster throughout the year!  Typically swimmers will usually flatten out (or plateau) with their times as the season progresses until it is time to taper.  However, the Typhoon swimmers truly didn’t experience this – at least not at looking through everyone’s times!  That not only shows that we still have room to grow, but that the swimmers have tremendous heart and dedication to get better no matter the circumstances!

So, the short course season went on and into Yankee Cluster Championships.  Last year, we (as an almost brand new team) finished 11th out of 13 teams.  This year, we were able to overtake significantly larger teams and place 9th overall out of 13 teams – as an aside, we were the second smallest team in attendance!  Not only were we able to accomplish that, but take a look at our other achievements:

• 13 and 14 year old girls placed 8th overall
• 13 and 14 year old boys placed 5th overall (and this includes 15 – 18 as well)
• 9 and 10 year old boys placed 3rd overall

The Yankee Clusters wrapped up our regular season which produced 8 individual qualifiers for New England Regionals, but our swimmers wanted more!  So, we ventured off to the Last Ditch meet where we entered 8 individual events.  Four of those events ended up as qualifying times where we added 2 more individually qualified swimmers to our total!

Our year-end stats are still in limbo depending on how the swimmers do at the Regional meet, but here is a quick look at how we stand so far:

• 43 of 66 team records broken (some broken several times)
• over 50% of swims were personal best times
• Out of 60 swimmers, 10 individually qualified for New England’s, and a 19 swimmers competing in relays which is almost 50% of our team that will attend Regionals this year – the highest number in our team’s history!
• And, most importantly, a total of 60 smiles on 60 swimmers’ faces every week throughout the year as they learned and had fun with their friends!

So, congratulations to the swimmers, the coaching staff, the parents, and the Hamden North Haven YMCA community!  I will try to update all of you on our happenings in Boston as we travel this weekend so stay tuned for more Typhoon News!

Go Typhoons!!