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MCSL Week 3 Recap

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By Annabel Redisch and Ally Navarrete

The 2019 MCSL season is flying by as Week 3 is now complete. Saturday was filled with fast swims and exciting meet results. Here’s a recap of what went down across MCSL pools on Saturday. 

Meet Results 

This weekend, we saw the closest meet of the season so far in Division J: Rock Creek fell to Lakelands by only 4 points. Even with Rock Creek winning 3 out of 4 relays (Girls Open Medley and both Graduated relays), the Lakelands’ boys failed to place first in only 5 individual events, securing the team’s tight win. 

In Division H, the trend of close meets continued. Hallowell overtook Forest Knolls by only 5 points, and Manchester Farm beat out Seven Locks by 13 points. 

Lastly, we saw a very close meet in Division A between Stonegate and Bethesda, with Stonegate coming out on top by 8 points. Stonegate’s relays took first place in all but the Girls Graduated, even taking 1st and 2nd in the Boys Open, contributing to the win. 

Relay Carnival Results

On June 23, the two-week window for hosting divisional relay carnivals opened. In Division D, Quince Orchard won by a huge margin of 34 points (224 points total) and the team has nine relays expected to swim at All-Star Relays. In Division B, Wildwood Manor won Relay Carnival by 21 points with four first-place relays. The team was successful in consistently placing between second and fourth place, along with no disqualified relays in the meet. In Division N, Willows of Potomac managed to edge out James Creek by just two points to take the meet. This was especially impressive for James Creek because the team lost to Willows of Potomac by 110 points in the dual meet the day before!

Standout Swims

In the boys 8&Under 25 free, Olney Mill’s Mason Maready (8) dipped below the 16 second mark in a time of 15.94. Maready is now one of only two 8&Unders (girls and boys) under 16 seconds in this event. 

In the girls 13-14 50 free, Rockville’s Sarah Eliason (13) and Bethesda’s Kirabo Namutebi (14) both went under 28 seconds for the first time this year. Eliason and Namutebi are now seeded fourth and fifth in the county, respectively. 

In the boys 15-18 100 back, both Country Glen’s Ziad Bandak (17) and Northwest Branch’s Maximillano Casey-Bolanos (17) went under 1:00, the second and third 15-18s to do so this season. 

Jackson Tovornik (9) of Manor Woods currently sits at #3 in the county in the boys 9-10 25 Backstroke with a time of 17.56. Tovornik had an outstanding season last year as an 8-year-old and it’s impressive to see a swimmer at the bottom of the age group high in the rankings. 

Ainsley Taylor (12) of Kentlands and Hailey Hammond (11) of Little Falls both dipped beneath the 32 second mark in the girls 11-12 50 fly. Taylor and Hammond are just .06 seconds apart from each other time wise, so should both choose to swim fly at Coaches Long Course, this will be one of the closest races of the night. 

Looking Forward

Week 3 was the last chance for MCSL swimmers to qualify for the Coaches’ Long Course Invitational meet. With scratches due late Monday, it should be exciting to see who choses to swim which events, especially in the older age groups. Keep an eye out for the psych sheet!

The remaining MCSL Relay Carnivals are scheduled for this Sunday, July 7. Following these final meets, teams will be able to see which relays they will be competing against at the end-of-season All-Star Relay meets.

Editor’s Note: At the request of our readers, we’ve put together a feature on each MCSL team page where we track the swimmer(s) in each age group that have scored the most points. Let us know what you think and if there are any other useful features we should consider? As always, thanks for reading!

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