MCSL 2019 Coaches Longcourse 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, with the next two as alternates, so 10 swimmers in each event are recognized.  It also is a USA Swimming (USAS) sanctioned meet, meaning the times that kids post at the meet can be used to qualify for USA Swimming invitational meets (Sectionals, Jr. Nationals, sr. Nationals, Olympic Trials).  For a full list of qualifiers, check out the MCSL website: Preliminary Long Course Seeding This year, the meet will be held at the Rockville Swim and Fitness Center on Tuesday, July 9^th. One stipulation to this meet is that swimmers that qualify can swim no more than two events, allowing additional participants in age groups where there are swimmers that qualify in several events.

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

75 of the 88 teams in the league had a swimmer qualify in the top 10

Top 5 pools with top 10 qualifiers (total # of swimmers):

1. Rockville: 21
2. Country Glen: 13
3. Stonegate: 11
4. Bethesda: 10
5. Flower Valley, Stonebridge, Woodcliffe: 9

30 different pools had a swimmer qualify 1st and 11 of those pools have multiple #1 seeds (Bethesda, Country Glen, Damascus, Potomac, Quince Orchard, Regency Estates, Robin Hood, Rockville, Stonebridge, Tally Ho, Woodley Gardens)

19 of the 46 events have multiple swimmers from the same pool (in the top 8). In the girls 15-18 Breaststroke, Quince Orchard has 3 of the 8 qualifiers! (Current record holder, Catherine Belyakov, 1st seed, Andie Weitzman 5th seed, and Anastasia Belyakov 6th seed). The Girls 8 & Under Butterfly has two pools accounting for the top 4 seeds, Country Glen (Ellie Zhou 1st seed, Gracie Schur 3rd seed) and Chevy Chase Recreation ( Quinn Muller 2nd seed, Ellery Thomas 4th seed). Here’s the breakdown of the pools that have multiple qualifiers and events:

• Rockville (Boys 12 & U IM, Boys 11-12 backstroke, Boys 15-18 Butterfly, Girls 9-10 Backstroke)
• Woodcliffe (Boys 8 & U Backstroke, Boys 13-14 Breaststroke, Boys 8 & U Butterfly)
• Country Glen (Boys 15-18 Freestyle, Boys 15-18 Backstroke, Girls 13-14 Butterfly, Girls 8 & U Butterfly)
• Forest Knolls (Girls 11-12 Freestyle)
• Rockshire (Girls 12 & U IM)
• Stonebridge (Girls 13-14 Backstroke)
• Stonegate (Girls 13-14 Freestyle)
• Quince Orchard (Girls 15-18 IM, Girls 15-18 Breaststroke)
• Inverness Forest (Girls 15-18 Butterfly)
• Flower Valley (Girls 8 & U Breaststroke)
• Chevy Chase Recreation (Girls 8 & U Butterfly)

In all there are 308 individual swimmers that qualified, of those, 152 qualified for two events (Top 10).

39 swimmers earned the # 1 seed, meaning 7 swimmers have the #1 seed in 2 events (alpha order):

• Phoebe Bacon: 15-18 100 IM, 100 Butterfly
• Daniel Fry: 8 & Under 25 Freestyle, 25 Butterfly
• Kristopher Lawson: 13-14 50 Backstroke, 50 Butterfly
• Amy Qin: 13-14 50 Freestyle, 50 Backstroke
• Carly Sebring: 13-14 100 IM, 50 Butterfly
• Julia Zettler: 8 & U 25 Freestyle, 25 Backstroke
• Ellie Zhou: 8 & U 25 Breaststroke, 25 Butterfly

In 2017 we saw an outright assault on the record board, with 14 records broken! Last year, the swimmers followed up breaking 6 records. Tuesday, four of the 2018 record breaking swimmers, Catherine Belyakov (15-18 breaststroke), Erin Gemmell (13-14 freestyle), Carly Sebring (13-14 IM), and Joyce Wu (13-14 breaststroke) all have a chance to re-set records they broke at last year’s meet. We took a look at the top few seeds in the remaining events to see which swimmers may have a good shot at setting records (based on times already swum this season), here’s the list:

• Boys 12 & U 200 IM: Adriano Arioti has swum 2:25.94 this season, the current record is 2:22.16
• Boys 13-14 200 IM: Toby Barnett has swum 2:16.68 this season, the current record is 2:12.80
• Girls 13-14 200 IM: Carly Sebring has swum 2:24.07 this season, the current record is 2:22.16
• Girls 15-18 200 IM: Phoebe Bacon swam a 2:22.46 last year at this meet and swam a 2:15.96 in November, so has the potential to go under the current record 2:19.63
• Girls 8 & U 50 Freestyle: Julia Zettler has swum 36.84 this season, the current record is 34.43
• Boys 13-14 100 Freestyle: Andrew Eliason has swum 55.77 this season, the current record is 54.25
• Boys 15-18 200 Freestyle: While not the top seed, Ryan Vipavetz has swum 1:56.88 this season, the current record is 1:53.64
• Girls 8 & U Backstroke: Julia Zettler has swum 42.25 this season, the current record is 40.44
• Boys 9-10 Backstroke: Griffin Oehler has swum 35.17, the current record is 33.31
• Girls 9-10 Backstroke: Elizabeth Chen has swum 37.42, the current record is 35.09
• Boys 9-10 50 Breaststroke: It should be a good race between top seed Austin Seager and 2nd seed Griffin Oehler. Griffin has swum 40.41 this season, the current record is 38.16
• Boys 11-12 100 Breaststroke: Federico Sanidad has swum 1:15.89 this season, the current record is 1:13.56
• Boys 9-10 50 Butterfly: Kirk Morgan (8 & Under record holder, and last year’s meet champion) has swum 33.29 this season, the current record is 32.09
• Girls 13-14 100 Butterfly: Last year Carly Sebring just missed this record swimming 1:02.22, and has swum 1:03.55 this season. She will have a tough race with Erin Gemmell who has swum 1:03.87 this season. The current record is 1:02.10
• Girls 15-18 100 Butterfly: Phoebe Bacon has swum 1:01.10 this season, the current record is 1:00.87

Now you have your ‘watch list’, hopefully all the thunder and lightning will result from the swims in the pool, not Mother Nature 🙂 So far the forecast looks favorable!

Remember to hydrate, find some shade and swim fast!!