Congratulations

A big congratulations goes out to former GCIT Team member Bill Cregar. At the Southeastern Conference Championships this past weekend Bill clocked a 3:47 in the 400 IM. This time gives him a provisional bid to the Men's NCAA Championship Meet in Federal Way, Washington next month. Bill will find out the week of March 10th if he gets invited to the meet. Regardless, this is a great accomplishment for anyone, let alone a freshman. WAY TO GO BILL!!!

Also congratulations to Kacey McCaffrey. Kacey, representing NYU at the UAA Conference Championships, achieved NCAA Division III provisional cut times in the 500 free, 1000 free, and 1650 free. WAY TO GO KACEY!!! A special note on Kacey's swims: she spent three weeks away from training this winter to work with Habitat for Humanities in Peru. Great people who swim well, that's what its all about!

Big Weekend Ahead

We've got a big weekend on tap. The New Jersey State High School Meet of Champions will be held at GCIT this weekend. The preliminaries are Saturday and the Finals are Sunday. Many GCIT Swimmers will be in action representing their high schools. Last year GCIT Swimmers walked away with six individual state titles along with the South Jersey Female (Joanna Thomas) and Male Swimmer (Bill Cregar) of the year awards. Bill was also named the Male Swimmer of the Year for the entire state of New Jersey.

This year we have a number of swimmers who made the qualifying times for the meet, a great accomplishment in its own. A big "Good Luck" goes out to everyone competing in the meet this weekend. If you are interested, psych sheets for the meet can be found here. Note, some of the entry times are very, very wrong. If you say to yourself "Wow, some National Records are going down this weekend!" rest assured that those times are incorrect.

Not to be outdone, our team has a big meet this weekend: the Double Last Chance Meet hosted by DST. This is an interesting concept as the "Double Last Chance" comes from the fact that the meet has a preliminary and finals session. For most of the swimmers attending it will be their first chance to swim Trials and Finals at a USS Meet. The coaches are all excited about the meet because they feel a number of swimmers are ready to pop off some nice swims and time drops. Good luck to everyone competing in the Last Chance Meet this weekend.

Me...I'll be in Michigan this weekend as for the third year I will be attending the Men's Big Ten Championship. Last year was exciting as Minnesota edged out Michigan on the last relay of the meet to take the title by 5 points. But I have it on good authority that the Wolverines are poised to take the title this year. It was at this meet last year that I witnessed probably the most amazing swim I have ever seen in person (and I have seen a number of world records fall in person) when Matt Greevers of Northwestern clocked a 1:39 in the 200 backstroke. A 1:39 200 freestyle would have made most 800 Free Relay teams but to see someone do it in backstroke was just amazing. I haven't fully decided on it but I may do some live blogging from the meet.