This is Nate's 4th year on the Macomb Y Marlins Swim Team. He's always enjoyed swimming and being on the team but back in October something clicked for him. He figured out that these are races and its fun to win! He finally figured out what we meant when we said he needed to "finish the race." (Swim your hardest at the end to try to beat everyone else to the wall.) He started getting a lot more blue ribbons in the dual meets and started placing higher & higher in the invitationals. And all of a sudden the times required to qualify for the State Championship Meet looked obtainable.
Nate swam his guts out during the whole regular season, but that State cut was just out of reach. He was about a second away in 3 events! During the last regular season meet, he swam on a 200 Free Relay Team that got a State Cut. He was very proud to be part of the group. But only an individual cut guarantees a trip to the State Meet.
The first meet of the Championship Season was the Eastern Cluster Meet. Nate wasn't having his best day ever but he cut time off his 200 Free and the 200 Medley Relay Team he was on swam a Zone Cut! (Zone is the next level above the State Meet).
Since Nate didn't have an individual State Cut, he qualified to swim the District Meet. Its a meet only for kids who don't have a State Cut and its the last chance of the season to earn the individual time to qualify for the State Meet.
Nate was less than 1 second shy of the time to qualify in the 200 Free. He went in swam his best and cut a second and a half off. He came in 1st place and HE QUALIFIED FOR THE STATE MEET!
At the State Championship meet, he took another 4 second off his 200 Free and came in 6th in the State. It wasn't quite enough to earn an individual Zone cut, but we are so proud of all his hard work this season.
Overall he's improved tremendously since the beginning of the season.
50 Free- improved over 5 seconds
100 Free- improved over 17 seconds
100 IM- improved over 16 seconds
and most amazing, he dropped over ONE MINUTE since the beginning of the season on his 200 Free!
Way to go NATE!!!
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That's incredible! Way to go Nate...looks like he's got his daddy's competitive edge! I see great things ahead for this boy! It's nice to see he's found his niche.
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