With the weather having cleared, the Potomac Valley senior championships went back to a normal preliminaries/finals format, rather than the timed finals it had yesterday, but for the second night in a row, both Andrew Seliskar and Amanda Kendall won all of the events they each contested, while Sean Fletcher also doubled.
We already reported on Seliskar’s 17-18 NAG record swim in the 200 breast. Again, his time of 1:51.57 also ranks as the 5th-fastest all-time. But don’t automatically assume that Seliskar will be swimming the 200 breast next year on day three of the NCAA championships. He also has the 17-18 NAG for the 200 fly. He is listed on the psych sheet for both the 200 fly and the 200 IM tomorrow, but those events are back-to-back, so it’ll be interesting to see if he decides to drop one to focus on the other, or if goes after both of them.
Seliskar also won the 500 free with a 4:16.17, which is his best time, and the first time he’s set a new personal record in this event since this same meet in 2013. That moves him 8th place in the historical rankings for the 17-18 age group, displacing the 4:16.25 that Dan Jorgensen swam back in 1987.
After doubling in the 200 free and 100 fly last night, Amanda Kendall took another victory this evening, this time in the 50 free. She swam a 22.32 this morning in prelims, and was a little off of that this evening with a 22.57, but that was good enough for first. Her time from this morning was also good enough to qualify her both for summer and winter nationals this year, so if one of her goals is to get back to major competition, she is setting herself up nicely for that. She is also slated to swim the 100 free tomorrow.
In the men’s 50 free, former Michigan star Sean Fletcher set a new PVS resident and open record with a time of 19.47. Fletcher earned two victories on the evening, also winning the 100 back with his 46.11. He is listed as the top seed for the 100 free tomorrow.
This is not presumably not the major spring taper meet for many of these swimmers, as the NCSA Junior National meet will be coming up in Florida in a few weeks, and most of the other top times, while solid, reflected the fact that these swimmers probably weren’t set to peak here.
Mary Tansill of Occoquan Swimming won the women’s 200 breast in 2:16.78 and Snow Swimming’s Caroline Lee took the 100 back in 55.26. In the women’s 500 free, NCAP’s Megan Byrnes, a member of the US Junior National team for the 10k open water event, beat out former WVU standout Rachel Burnett 4:47.94 to 4:48.08.
Finally, Machine Aquatics easily swept the 400 medley relay, with their women’s team winning in a time of 3:48.65, and their men’s team winning with a 3:28.48.
The meet concludes tomorrow with the 200 back, 100 free, 200 fly, 200 IM, 400 free relays, women’s 1000 free, and men’s 1650 free.
Here’s video of the Men’s 50 free final. Sorry it goes out of focus at the end! Impressive 19.4 by Sean Fletcher — plus a 20.05 from NCAP’s James Jones, who is presumably focusing much more on NCSA Juniors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6LEZSShaJI&feature=em-upload_owner
For the women’s 100 back, the article mistakenly lists the results from “Junior Champs” (also swum tonight) – hence the winning time of 1:01. The winner of Senior Champs was Caroline Lee of SNOW in 55.26. Followed by Katelyn Mack of NCAP in 56.27.
Thanks for catching that. Now fixed.
Machine’s men lost the 400 medley, but won due to a poor officiating call which dq’d another relay and the lack of any NCAP relays