University of Richmond Athletics
A-10 Championship Blog: Wednesday Evening Edition
02/23/2012 | Women's Swimming & Diving
Editor's Note: Head coach Matt Barany will continue his annual tradition and pen a blog over the duration of this week's A-10 Championship. His third championship week entry can be found below.
Feb. 22, 2012 (Evening): Day One Draws To A close
Thank goodness for this blog. Tonight, this responsibility allows me to share an apology. I apologized to the women tonight for my decision on the order of the 800 Free Relay. We have many candidates for that relay. I believed, and I still believe, Lauren, Cha, Jessie and Lexi can be very fast.
I made several errors during my leg of this relay, and I will work hard to remedy those with the women.
Our 200 Medley Relay dropped their old school and A-10 record. Thankfully, I got this order right. We thought we could go under 1:39. We still think we can go under - maybe we'll try again. Lauren's back split (24.78) mirrored last year's split, yet she hit a speed on her second 25 that we haven't seen before. We made a minor change to Mali's breaststroke in early January; apparently, she likes it (27.86). Jill has a powerful fly when she uses her "hip-driven-whole-body-fly", and the entire team (including Jill) can identify it. We all knew her leg tonight was her "try-too-hard-fly" even though it was a fast leg (24.41). Cha (22.43) had a more than two-second lead going into her leg and could have extended her reach an inch in each stroke. Cha is smiling this week, so look out!
We're excited about the result of the relay, yet there are plenty of lessons to take away from it, too.
I fall terribly short of painting the full picture in this blog. Imagine the women in black Speedo LZRs with black caps for all races. Tonight, we also went red parka on black jacket on black shirts with red Spider on black crops. The women look strong, confident and classy.
We're tied with Fordham for first. Hmmmm. Tomorrow, we race the 500 Free, 200 IM, 50 Free and Katherine rocks the 1m. We also plan to time trial Erin and Jill. I expect a lot of freshmen nerves and a lot of valuable lessons.
It snowed tonight, and I was hit with multiple snowballs thrown by a girl from Florida. A day in my life...
Thank you for your support. Also, thank you for taking the time to text or email me. I've shared them with the team!
