Nick Liberty Qualifies for World Juniors!
Five RMSC swimmers travelled to Nathan Benderson Park in Sarasota, Florida from May 3-5 to compete in the USA Swimming Open Water National Championships. Swimmers qualified for this meet with their 1000 and 1650 yard pool times, but competed in 5K or 7.5K open water races based on their Age Groups.
Our two youngest swimmers at the competition had amazing results in Saturday’s 15&Under Junior National 5K competition. In his first open water race ever, Nick Liberty finished 2nd in 58:20, which qualified him to represent Team USA at the World Junior Open Water Championships this September in Alghero, Italy. Just behind him in 1:00:20 was Trevor Donley, who finished 5th, joining Nick on the medal stand. We look forward to more great results from these two 14 year-olds as they gain experience at the National level.
The following day, we had three swimmers compete in the 16-17 year-old Junior National 7.5K event. All three had competed last year as well, and each one of them improved on both their times and places. In the boys’ race, Cooper Zakorchemny finished 6th in 1:28:42, earning a medal and dropping over three minutes from last year. Alex Nguyen finished 16th in 1:29:27, almost two minutes faster than last year. In the girls’ race, Maria Webb also earned a medal with an 8th place finish in 1:36:35, which was also almost two minutes faster than she went last year. All three swimmers benefitted from their experience, not to mention the hard work in training that they have put in over the past year.
All of our swimmers exhibited tremendous toughness and stamina to compete at such long distances at such a high level, once again, the team had a great experience on the trip. In between meet sessions, the competitors were even treated to a special USA Swimming advanced screening of the soon-to-be-released Disney movie “Young Woman and the Sea,” which is the story of the first woman to swim the English Channel.
Congratulations to our Open Water National Team!