Yezan Alsader of WAVES Bloomington-Normal YMCA has lowered his own 11-12 National Age Group Record in the 400 meter IM with a 4:52.24. That lops another two full seconds off of the 4:54.24 set at the Gulf Coast Swim Team Summer Invitational in June. The old record was held by Florida All-American Nick Caldwell in 2006 in 4:54.92.
Alsader is swimming at the Sectional Meet at the University of Minnesota Aquatics Center in Minneapolis this weekend, and also put up some impressive swims in time trials already this week. He was a 2:16.67 in the 200 meter fly on Wednesday, which is only behind Ryan Murphy and Justin Lynch in the age group all-time, and adding in a 2:18.75 in the 200 back on Thursday, 8th-fastest of all-time.
He is coached by Heather Fort in Bloomington.
His splits were:
Fly 30.18/35.11 = 1:05.29
Back 37.01/35.82 = 1:12.83
Breast 43.72/44.40 = 1:28.12
Free 33.18/32.82 = 1:06.00
Total: 4:52.24
Compared to his previous splits of:
Fly – 1:05.37
Back – 1:13.87
Breast – 1:28.89
Free – 1:06.11
That shows the majority of his improvements came through the middle of the race, on the backstroke and breaststroke legs, though every single split improved overall. He finished 40th overall to go with a 31st-place finish in the 800 free (9:03.41) from earlier in the meet.
Alsader has no individual, counting swims left, though consider that he’s only 12 and is swimming against predominantly high school and college swimmers.
I like reading each week the lists of age group rankings made by USA swimming, and I’m impressed by the big number of great times in the boys ranks from 11 to 14. I talk about Vinny Marciano, Destin Lasco, Carson Foster, Ethan Dang, Kevin Vargas, Yezan Alsader, Aaron Kuo, Matthew Limbacher, Max Miranda, Hunter Hitchens, Levente Bathory, Sean Lee, Maxime Rooney, Brad Gonzales, Matthew Hirschberger, Benjamin Ho, Ethan Young and of course Michael Andrew. All these young swimmers, and I could have named a few others, swim very fast times and are among the fastest in history for their age. Is it the Michael Phelps generation? I know that probably only a few of them will have a big… Read more »
At this meet we also get to see Nick Caldwell swimming under the Badger flag for the first time. He just went 1:51 in the 200 free; not too shabby assuming that they are probably focusing on the US Open later this summer.