MCSL Long Course Invitational Preview

By: Reach for the Wall staff

Not familiar with the Coaches Long Course meet?  Here’s the history behind it.  In short, a group of MCSL coaches started it in 1964 independent of the league to give swimmers more exposure to long course (50 meter pool) competition, and MCSL adopted the meet in 1974.  The meet includes the same 46 individual events at a regular MCSL dual meet except the distances are doubled (i.e., boys 9-10 50 freestyle in a regular Saturday dual meet becomes a 100 freestyle event at Coaches).  The 8 fastest MCSL swimmers in each event (based on the results of the first 3 Saturday meets) qualify for this meet.  It also is a USA Swimming (USAS) sanctioned meet, meaning the times that kids post at the meet can be used to qualify for USAS invitational meets.  For a full list of qualifiers, check out the MCSL website: Preliminary Long Course Seeding

Congratulations to all the swimmers that qualified, we’ve compiled a few statistics for this year’s meet:

75 of the 90 teams in the league had a swimmer qualify in the top 10

27 different pools had a swimmer qualify 1st.

Top 5 pools (total # of swimmers qualified):

1. Rockville: 24

2. Tilden Woods and Stonegate: 17

4. Wildwood Manor: 16

5. Country Glen: 15

19 of the 46 events have multiple swimmers from the same pool (Top 10). The Potomac 8 & Under girls are represented by multiples in every 8 & under event but breaststroke:

Boys 11-12 50m Breaststroke

• Regency Estates (Thomas Pelletier, Alexander Wen)
• Stonegate (Harrison Quach, Federico Sanidad)

Boys 12& Under 100m Medley

• Regency Estates (Thomas Pelletier, Alexander Wen)

Girls 12& Under 100m Medley

• Bannockburn (Tess Buckley,  Darby LeFaivre)
• Woodcliffe (Jessie Feng, Abigail Yo, Anna Li)

Boys 8& Under 25m Freestyle

• Westleigh (Calvin Banaszewski, Bobby Kemp)

Girls 8& Under 25m Freestyle

• Potomac (Marlowe Bellerjeau, Julia Zettler)

Girls 9-10 50m Freestyle

• Quail Valley (Isabella Balderrama,  Maria Webb)

Girls 13-14 50m Freestyle

• Stonegate (Nina Allen, Sydney Allen)

Girls 8& Under 25m Backstroke 

• Forest Knolls (Chloe Ossi, Hope Ossi)
• Potomac (Marlowe Bellerjeau, Caitlin Groves)

Girls 11-12 50m Backstroke

• Flower Valley (Erin Haines, Madeleine Stubner)
• Woodcliffe (Jessie Feng, Abigail Yo)

Boys 13-14 50m Backstroke

• Bethesda (Nikita Bityutskiy, Kristopher Lawson)

Boys 15-18 100m Backstroke

• Rockville (Andrei Schwartz, Sanjay Wijesekera)

Girls 15-18 100m Backstroke

• Tilden Woods (Katherine Gould, Celine Nugent)

Girls 11-12 50m Breaststroke

• Glenmont (Ivy Chen, Isabella Grijalba)
• Wildwood Manor (Isla Bartholomew, Felicity Yetter)

Boys 13-14 50m Breaststroke

• Rockville (Denis Kalinin, Alvin Kimwon)

Boys 8 & Under 25m Butterfly

• Darnestown (Talon Cook, Trent Gies)

Girls 8 & Under 25m Butterfly

• Potomac (Caitlin Groves, Julia Zettler)

Boys 13-14 50m Butterfly

• Rockville (Joshua Hou, Andrew Eliason, Julio Torrejon)
• Bethesda (Nikita Bityutskiy, Kristopher Lawson)

Girls 13-14 50m Butterfly

• River Falls (Erin Dougherty, Elena  Harrison)

Boys 15-18 50m Butterfly

• Quince Orchard (Eli Fouts, Gabriel Laracuente)

In all there are 312 individual swimmers that qualified, of those, 148 qualified for two events (Top 10).

35 swimmers earned the #1 rank, meaning 11 swimmers earned the #1 rank in two events!

• Phoebe Bacon (15-18 100 back, 100 IM)
• Sarah Eliason (11-12 50 Free, 50 Fly)
• David Fitch (13-14 50 Free, 50 Fly)
• Hailey Hammond (9-10 25 Back, 25 Fly)
• Justin Lakso (9-10 50 Free, 25 Fly)
• Anna Li (11-12 100 IM, 50 Breast)
• Harrison Quach (11-12 50 Free, 50 Breast)
• Liam Rooney (11-12 100 IM, 50 Fly)
• Carly Sebring (13-14 100 IM, 50 Fly)
• Abigail Tan (8 & Under 25 Breast, 25 Fly)
• Jackson Tovornik (8 & Under 25 Free, 25 Fly)

Of these 11 swimmers 10 have competed in the meet in a prior year, only Sarah Eliason is a 1st time qualifier.  Six of these top qualifiers have previously won an event, with Phoebe Bacon & Carly Sebring currently owning Long Course records. Carly holds the 12 & Under 200 IM & 9-10 50 Fly, while Phoebe Bacon holds the 11-12 100 Back, 13-14 100 Back, 11-12 100 Fly, and 13-14 100 Fly. Last year the meet saw records in 14 of the 46 events, with 4 of them in the first 6 events.

Following up on our post from last week ‘The Heat is On‘, where we were on the lookout for swimmers to break into the top 8. The first event we highlighted was the boys 11-12 breaststroke, it turned out that Liam Rooney captured the top seed in the IM and Fly, thus dropped out of breaststroke. This  made room for Wesley Lee to get in the top 8. In the other close-call events, space opened in the 8 & under 25 back as Jackson Tavornik will swim Free and Fly, and two others opted to swim different events. Gavin Ritchotte, the 13th seed prior, will now swim the backstroke event!

Other notable movers:

• Boys 12 & Under IM, Nick Opipari, Calix McCormick, Wesley Lee 6th-8th, from 10th-12th.
• Girls 12 & Under IM, Reagan Phillips, Erin Haines, Abilgal Yo, 6-8th from 11-14th
• Boys 9-10 50 Free, Reid Weltman and Braxton Cobb in 7th & 8th from 10th & 11th.
• Girls 9-10 50 Free, Elise Wratney and Sophia Ge in 7th & 8th from 10th & 11th.
• Girls 13-14 50 Free, Cheyenne Chen & Sydney Allen  in 7th & 8th from 10th & 13th.
• Boys 11-12 50 Free, Andrejs Brooks & Lucas Quiroga in 7th & 8th from 12th & 14th
• Girls 15-18 100 Freestyle, five swimmers, Molly Benson, Audrey Tirrell, Tatum Zupnik (Sammie Grant late scratch), Lena Redisch, & Katherine Gould all got into the top 8 from prior 9th-14th.
• Boys 13-14 IM, Kai Jackson, Benjamin Nachod, & Zak Owen are now 6-8th jumping in from 9-12th.
• Girls 13-14 IM, Katherine Blake, Georgia Yang, & Ava Brooks making a similar jump as the boys, 6-8th from 9th-13th
• Girls 8 & Under Backstroke, Camille Shafer and Hope Ossi join the fun from 10th & 12th prior.
• Boys 11-12 Backstroke, Linus Ament, Michael Kaiser, & Zachary Fayed now sit 6th-8th, jumping up from 9th-11th.
• Girls 11-12 Backstroke, like the boys Natalie Webb,  Nadia Thomas & Madeleine Stubner also jumped in from 9th-11th.
• Boys 15-18 IM, Christopher Emerson, Jacob Lindner, & Joseph Nonato get to swim from the 9th-12th positions prior.
• Girls 15-18 IM, 4 girls join the field of 8: Grace Giddings, Bridget O’Hara, Jane Umhofer, Meaghan Doyle moving up from spots 9-13.
• Boys 13-14 Breaststroke, Denis Kalinin, Alvin Kimwon, Young Cho, Aidan Goettsch get to swim from their prior spots 9-12th.
• Boys 9-10 Butterfly, Dain Phillips and Kyle Lakhe jumped in from 9th & 10th.
• Girls 11-12 50 Butterfly, Ellie Noh & Lauren Connelly benefited from the multiple qualifiers and jumped up from 12th & 13th to 7th & 8th respectively.
• Boys 13-14 50 Butterfly, 3 swimmers, Nikita Bityutskiy, Robert Shively, and Julio Torrejon were on the ‘outside’ got in at 6-8.
• Girls 13-14 Butterfly, Joyce Wu and Seneca Simon cracked the top 8.
• Boys 15-18 Butterfly, only Jorge Hernandez was able to get in the top 8 with Rger Yerger withdrawing.
• Girls 15-18 Butterfly,  Abby Graminski and Sarah Culkin moved into 7th and 8th with Phoebe Bacon opting to swim the IM and backstroke.

We look forward to seeing them compete Tuesday July 10th!