Glancing back
Noticing a few things about last weekend.
We may soon have something to announce about the normal schedule for the rest of the season. In the meantime, we anticipate a more impulse-driven publication cadence.
Why we prefer the term ‘Norovirus’
We prefer the term 'Norovirus' over its other common name, 'Winter Puking Disease.' While the latter's candor and descriptive accuracy are appreciated, it falls short of the subtlety and decorum we aim for in our posts.
And while the presence of the Norovirus was an inescapable plot-line from last weekend, one benefit of adversity is its potential to call forth heroism. As Rudyard Kipling once pointed out, if you can keep swimming while those around you are vomiting in their hotel rooms, ‘yours is the earth and everything that's in it.’
Emory’s Caden Bjornstad and Harrison Piré deserve special mention because they basically had their best swims of the season under some pretty harrowing circumstances. With the ranks of their teammates dwindling on the deck, they both clawed their way into that 100 Free A Final where literally every other swimmer in the final was from Division II Indianapolis (a team seemingly built around Men’s freestyle sprinters). They both swam great, and Caden Bjornstad’s 100 Free is now 13th in the division.
Harrison Piré1 had an absolutely outstanding 200 Free, and is now 7th in the division in that event.
Among the many disappointments was Nick Goudie’s early exit. As we pointed out, he was putting down some great swims, including a 20.27 in the 50 Free (now 10th in Division III), before his competitive schedule was involuntarily abbreviated.
Round-up
We have already gushed over several performances from that weekend in Granville, so before we go we need to also mention that:
Ryan Soh’s 100 Back on the 400 Medley Relay start was nuts - 47.39, good enough for 3rd in Division III. He’s also 8th in 200 Back.
On any other team, Liyang Sun would be feature on every team Instagram post and would be enjoying the fame and riches that accrue to all top D3 swimmers. But while he is 4th in the division in 100 Breast, two of the guys ahead of him are on his own team.
We skimmed over Fiona Arwood’s 4th place finish in the 200 Breast without mentioning it was also good enough for fifth in Division III.
Penny Celtnieks’ 100 Back is currently the fifth fastest in the division.
We really could go on like this all day.
Big Picture
There are 26 individual events for which the Division III National Championship extends invitations, 13 Men’s events and 13 Women’s events.
If you look at the top 50 swims in each event, that adds up to 1,300 top swims (26 x 50). Of the current 1,300 top swims in Division III, 717 were set last weekend (55%).
Of the current 260 top 10 individual event swims in Division III, 2 145 were swum last weekend (56%). In terms of really good swims, and great swims, it was a massive blowout of a weekend.
One Team Dominated the New First Place Swims
And in 15 different races last weekend a new top time was set in an individual event. And just under half of them were set by swimmers on MIT.
James McChesney
Look, if you keep letting him swim all these events, he’s just going to keep doing this. Division Rank for TCNJ’s James McChesney:
200 Free: 2nd
100 Free: 3rd
50 Free: 4th
100 Fly: 8th
500 Free: 15th
He basically has invites in five different events. When LaDainian Tomlinson was playing Pop Warner football, the local league put in a rule saying you could only give him the ball once every four downs.3 Just saying, you might want to consider something like that.
Mr. McChesney now also has two teammates ranked 7th in the division in their respective events: Ryan Higgins in the 200 Back and Ryan VanDeVeen in the 200 Breast.
Frank Applebaum
You have heard already that CMS Senior Frank Applebaum broke his own record in 200 Fly at a dual meet by swimming a 1:43.87. The video is fun to watch because a) in Southern California they have dual meets outside, and b) the announcer totally whiffs on his over/under. Our sympathies - predictions are both hard and pointless.
Frank Applebaum’s swim may be the most astounding thing that happens in Division III swimming this year.
One underappreciated aspect - he did it in December, in a dual meet. Since when does anyone set a division record before Nationals?4 You can see the Division III records in the footnotes. One thing they almost all have in common is that they are all set in March. Except for two.
There was David Fitch’s crazy 46.46 100 Fly record. We don’t have the video handy (it’s around here somewhere), but here’s a classic David Fitch swim. You can see the extended underwaters and the tumble-turns. So much fun.
And the other record is Arthur Conover’s mile swim from December 1st, 2016.
Check out the full color Kenyon shield tattoo.
Legend.
Just learned a reliable way to get the proper accent on the e - hold down the Alt key and type 0233 on the numeric keypad, then release the Alt key and voici…é.
We trust you are following the math at this point.
At least that’s the story.
