2014 NSCA Junior Nationals
When: Tuesday, March 18th – Saturday, March 22nd
Where: Orlando YMCA Aquatics Center, Orlando, Florida
Championship Central: Here1
Night One Results: Here
The short course season for club swimmers is beginning to wrap up, as this week as Orlando YMCA will be the host of the 2014 NSCA Junior National championships. This is an extremely LARGE meet, as there are over 1600 athletes participating from 299 club teams across the country. Some events will have nearly 300+ swimmers entered. But this meet will host some of the up and coming swimmers in the 18 & under age group — like Kylie Stewart, Janet Hu, Michael Andrew, Simone Manuel, Robert McHugh, just to name a few.
Tonight will be the timed final swims of the 1000 freestyle for women and men, plus the 200 medley and 200 freestyle relays for both genders.
Cailley Silbert of Cougar Aquatics and Isabella Rongione of UN-NCAP swam 40 laps together, to finish in a a tie in the women’s 1000 freestyle. Silbert, who is 18, decided to hang back on Rongione, waiting until the final 300 yards to pull with her, and even fractionally ahead into the final 50 yards. Rongione, who is just 14 years old, had a two second lead at one point in the race, fell a bit off, but her final 50 of 27.6 pulled her back into the race.
Silbert dropped eight seconds from her seed, and Rongione over two seconds. The two were out around the 4:47-48 range at the 500 mark.
Dynamo’s Kylie Stewart cut five seconds to finish third at 9:43.60. Her Dynamo teammate Julia Durmer was fifth, dropping 13 seconds to finish at 9:49.98. NCAP’s Megan Byrnes was fourth at 9:45.28, three second drop.
It took a 9:52-low to finish eighth in the event (Paige Madden, (9:52.28) and 9:56-mid to finish 16th (Kira Zubar, 9:56.47).
The men’s 1000 freestyle was nearly just as close. Francis Haas of NOVA Virginia won the event at 8:53.3, just .4 over second place finisher Robert McHugh of Baylor. Haas had a much more even race, splitting 4:25, 4:28 in his race, while McHugh used a bit more speed. McHugh dropped almost 30 seconds from her seed time to finish at 8:53.71 for second place.
Considering how many entries there are for this meet, McHugh was most likely not int he same heat as Haas this afternoon. While McHugh was out at 4:22, Haas had the stronger second half to earn the win overall.
Brennan Novak of Rockville Montgomery also finishing under 9:00, at 8:58.48, for third — another big drop of 12 seconds for him. Liam Egan from Crimson Aquatics completed the top four and the group of swimmers under nine minutes, which is really an impressive group of times at a junior meet, in 8:59.84
Update: Liam Egan’s time was initially in error in the official results. We have edited above.
NCAP had three in the top nine in the men’s race. Matthew Hirschberger was fifth, 9:00.05, Gavin Springer at seventh, 9:08.17, and Brian Tsau at ninth, 9:09.89.
In the first relay of the night, the women’s 200 freestyle, NCAP won the event in a time of 1:31.76. NCAP split 22.48, 23.04, 23.37 and 22.87 for the win tonight (results sheet did not run relay names unfortunately).
Aquajets were second, 1:32.23 and Dynamo in third, 1:32.60. There were two 22 lead off legs, with Dynamo’s 22.84 and Ozaukee Aquatics (4th overall) with 22.75.
NCAP continued to have a great first night of NCSA winning the men’s 200 freestyle relay in a time of 1:20.73. The team put up 20.36, 20.40, 19.94 and 20.03 splits for the win.
Baylor was second, 1:22.35 and NOVA of Virginia in third, 1:23.17. Baylor also had a 20-point lead off, with a 20.25.
The first night of NCSA’s saw another tie, this time in a much shorter event, the second relay of the night – 200 medley relay. NCAP and Aquajets tied at 1:40.39 a piece. The win tonight for the Aquajets sealed their 6th year in a row victory in the event.
Here’s the splits from the two teams –
NCAP – 25.26, 28.71, 24.47, 21.95
Aquajets – 25.02, 27.94, 24.51, 22.92
Dynamo was very close behind at third in 1:40.68. Dynamo had the fastest backstroke split of the two, at 24.49.
Baylor won the men’s 200 medley by two seconds with their 1:28.84 win over NCAP’s 1:30.91. Baylor had great swims across the race with a 21.69, 25.22, 21.37 and 20.56 team of splits. NCAP had a great 19.89 anchor leg on their relay.
The Jersey Wahoos were third at 1:31.26.
Liam Egan of Crimson Aquatics was fourth in 8:59.84; there was a touchpad error that had him at 9:16.
I’m worried about the live webcast on swimming world.
I tried to watch the races yesterday but it was filmed by a static camera with a bad angle.
Very hard to watch something.
Hopefully it’s not the same for the rest of the meet.
A good and close women’s race between Silbert and Rongione.
Miss Rongione has led almost the entire race but Miss Silbert came back to tie the win.
9.41.13 for both swimmers.
Not amazing times but these are new PRs for them so no reason to complain.
Kylie Stewart looks in shape and ready for good times this week. Sub 1.50 in the 200 back?
Also a good new PR behind for 14-year-old Emily Meilus who will be to watch on backstroke.
Another very close race on the men’s side.
Townley Haas won.
Sam McHugh second.
Too bad they didn’t swim in the same heat.
NIce time drops for both swimmers in… Read more »
Meet mobile has the relay names… and McHugh was indeed in the heat before Haas.
Some amazing relay splits today, but none that had the wow faster of Connor Hoppe’s 24.19 Breaststroke split for Clovis. SMASH.