Review by a participant: Harry DeLong

General facility Coach Tammy Yates and the Goldsboro Family YMCA hosted a new Long Course Meters Swim Meet on Saturday, June 25, 2011. The Goldsboro “Y” is a nice clean facility containing a 50 meter pool by 25 yard pool plus an additional 25 yard pool adjacent to the main pool. This latter pool can and was used for warm up and warm down. The main pool deck space is ample with bleacher seats on one side and plenty of room on the other sides. The starting end of the pool also has ample room for swimmers in relays and multiple heats. The locker rooms, appear to be clean and neat. I can claim that for the men's side and my wife agreed for the women's side. In all, an excellent location for a swim meet. Meet comments The meet was small with a total of 40 total competing (19 women and 21 men) from 9 different workout groups/teams and had a few of the startup issues that such meets can have. Specifically, the air temperature was warm, the competition pool was very warm (estimated at 87 degrees), the warm down pool was even warmer. The timing system was Hytek with pads at the starting end, and buttons (questionable working condition) plus watches at 50 meter end for those swimmers that lose lap count after 1 (sprinters). There were some excellent, and fast swims with several swimmers pushing each other to the finish. These usually were the shorter distance and displayed the skill and speed of the sprinters. They do look good when they swim, brief though it may be. Those of us that lean toward the longer events also had our opportunity with a 1500 meter swim at the beginning and a 400 meter swim at the end. Since I prefer distance swims, I will admit we, or at least me, view our lot in life as swimming with style and smoothness while providing additional break time for sprinters.

Speaking of break time, The meet did an excellent job of trying to provide ample time for people to recover between events. A potential problem found in small meets is the meet pace is such that there is little recovery time for people swimming multiple events. I believe the Goldsboro group did an excellent job on this issue.

One problem did stand out. That was with timing. There were problems for 50's where the equipment seemed to do what equipment can do, which is not work properly. Watches were used for backup. The real issue was not enough timers. There were several instances where timing was being done in multiple lanes by one person. A small meet can run into this problem but additional focus needs to be placed on encouraging volunteers if meet timers are not available. A possible source for future meet times may be the local “Y” age group swimmers. This gives them a chance to see us “seasoned” swimmers in action and may provide some fund raising for their activities.

Specific swims of interest.
Whenever there is a meet in which Jon Klein and Erika Braun are registered to compete, there will inevitably be a “virtual” competition between these two. To me this adds a new level of excitement and enjoyment. Both of these two fall into that special class of swimmers known as excellent and sprinter. When they swim, sit back, watch and enjoy. The following is a short summary of their “Virtual” competition in Goldsboro. I have quoted comments from Jon and Erika's comments are my fault. Jon's comments make for interesting insights and humor and really emphasizes why Masters swimming can be such fun.

50 FR:

• Erika went off well and did her usual, good breakout and swam high the distance. Some problems with the timing system, so a watch time was used. She went 26.65
• Jon went 27.07. “Got off the blocks well but went a smidge too deep and took my first stroke underwater. Felt pretty good, no breaths. Erika went 26.65 ( I thought I saw money change hands (:->) with her personal timer Hans Van Meeteren).” Still it is what it is.

50 BA:

• Erika went 31.73 and started well, swam well, and finished well. I'll comment that her hand entry was some of the best she has done. She has been working to correct an over reach problem with BK. See event fast swimmers can use stroke correction.
• Jon went 33.52. “I slipped on the wall and was a body length behind the field that seemed a bit off in time. Felt decent once I was actually swimming and then pulled my searching for the flags, getting off line, running into the ropes, and gliding into the wall finish routines to make it a perfectly dreadful race.”

50 FL:

• Erika went 30.26.
• Jon went 29.07. “Good start, felt strong, no breaths. ˝ way through the race I said to myself why don’t you kick faster, and I did. Would be nice if I thought of that sooner. Finish was terrible as I planted my face into the wall with a gimpy last stroke. The timer told me I went 28.28 which would have been faster than the two younger guys in my heat but I know they beat me. The scoreboard said 29:07. I’ll have to pay the timer more next go round.”

100 BA::

• Erika decided to sit this one out. Too many events to close together. The benefit of this break shows in the 100 FR.
• Jon went 1:11.28. “I am careful on the start, my eyes are focused like a laser beam on the ceiling tiles, I do not go off line, my stroke is beautiful, I am not fast.”

100 FR::

• Erika went 59.33 and looked awesome. Heat was taking a toll on the return 50, but she kept it together. A little glide at the end, but still an outstanding swim and time.
• Jon went 1:03.54. “Swam the best I could but my arms felt a little rubbery, not much zip. Erika thoroughly abused me going 59.33 with a very legitimate touchpad timing system finish, I guess she really did swim fast. Erika takes the series 3-2 and she now moves on to the USA Sectionals in Cleveland while I go back to the drawing board.”

Love it! Two outstanding swimmers with excellent upbeat attitudes in support of the sport!

Final comments
I feel this was a meet in an excellent facility and it has the potential to be one of the best meets for North Carolina and other swimmers. We should encourage the effort by the coach and the Goldsboro YMCA to schedule this meet again and move toward an annual meet. I definitely recommend this meet for the future.