Joey Gardner of the Munster Swim Club has verbally committed to swim for the Purdue Boilermakers.
“Going to school in-state is always an upside, I’m close home and can always come home if I really need to. The overall program itself seemed to fit with my needs the most, as well as academics. All the little details seemed to fall into place and all signs pointed in that direction when it came down to making the final decision.”
Gardner, a 100-breaststroker and IM-er, will be a much-needed addition to the Boilermaker squad, which loses top breaststroker Lyam Dias and top IMer Guillermo Blanco to graduation after this year.
Gardner’s bests are as follows:
100y breast – 56.06
200y breast – 2:09.80
200y IM – 1:51.97
400y IM – 4:05.09
100m breast – 1:05.32
200m breast – 2:25.60
200m IM – 2:09.19
400m IM – 4:35.11
While Gardner’s yards bests show lackluster times in the 200 breast and 400 IM relative to his 100 and 200 versions of the aforementioned events, his meters times, which are from this past July, tell another story.
Last year, other than Dyas, no Boilermaker broke 56 in the 100 breast. Gardner was 1:01.07 his freshman year and 58.17 his sophomore year, and if he can get under 56 before he gets to West Lafayette, he could develop into their top 100 breaststroker. Gardner’s strong meters times show that he has improved considerably over the span of a few months, so look for even more improvements from him come the Indiana High School State Championships in February 2015.
Gardner has national cuts in the 100y breast and 200y IM, as well as all four aforementioned meters times. Gardner’s junior year state performances included a 10th place finish in the 200 IM and a 6th place finish in the 100 breast. He was a member of the 16th place 400 free relay for his team, Munster High School, where he anchored a speedy 46.31 in prelims. He also had an impressive 22.95 fly split in the 200 medley relay finals, where his team finished 10th.
Purdue has a solid core of young breastrokers and Joey will be a strong asset in the future. Considering the addition of Marat and the strong potential coming from the current stroke group, there won’t be an issue in respect to building off of and filling in for the loss of Dias next year.
Purdue has already solved the loss of Dias next year. Results from intra-squad meet below
1 Amaltdinov, Marat R SO PU Black-IN NT 1:58.40 B
27.40 57.90 (30.50) 1:27.79 (29.89) 1:58.40 (30.61)
2 Amaltdinov, Marat R SO PU Black-IN NT 55.16 B
26.40 55.16 (28.76)
Just call him a “seahorse” and soon to be a boiler. Good choice Joey. Boiler up!
Boiler Up!
Hahahaha, Karl…they call us Hoosiers. Regardless of our affiliation with IU. Beautiful attempt though!
An “Indianan,” either Hoosier or Indianian is a generally accepted demonym for people from Indiana. We presumed that using Hoosier in the headline would be too confusing, but it turns out, our Indiana friends are just determined to be confused regardless of what we do.
Braden, I’ve lived in Indiana all my life. I’ve never heard the term “Indianian”. It’s OK to call a Boiler a Hoosier in this instance.
“Indianan?”