Blazer swimmers rock Relay Carnival

JAN. 7, MARTIN LUTHER KING SWIM CENTER -

After a three-week hiatus from swim practice due to the absence of their coach and winter break, the Blair swim team opened up 2006 with a strong second place finish in the Division II Relay Carnival. Blair lost by only one point to Wootton, who is currently leading the division.

Blair took three first place victories at the relay carnival. The team of sophomore Yang Yang, juniors David Vuong and captain Robert Feasley and senior captain Tyler Wilchek took first place in the Boys' Fly Relay, catapulting Blair to an early lead. Blair quickly fell back to the pack and began to sink lower in the standings due to a few third-and-fourth place finishes and one last place finish, in the Mixed Breast.

Blair quickly reclaimed a top slot with its first place finish in the Mixed Fly, with a team of Feasley, sophomores Sam Bullard-Sisken and Francesca Blume and senior Diana Frey. Later on, Blair took another victory in the Boys' Breast with Yang, Wilchek, sophomore Eddie Tang and junior Chris Kidwell.

Due to Blair's three first places finishes and three second place finishes, the Blazers were in the lead or tied for the lead for the majority of the meet. Towards the end, the Blair and Wootton team were neck and neck, and were tied 51-51 going into the last event, the Mixed Free, an eight person relay race. Neither team was particularly strong in this event, but after a close race, the Wootton team placed fourth (out of six) to Blair's fifth place, giving the Patriots a one point margin of victory.

According to Wilchek, the meet went extremely well. "At the end, we were able to show we're at the top of Division II," he said. Coach David Swaney agreed, "We did great. People had good splits [times for an individual's swim of a relay], a lot of people had their best splits."

Although the team hadn't swum together for weeks, neither Wilchek nor Swaney thought performance was affected. According to Wilchek, "a lot of the club swimmers kept swimming over break." Swaney added, "It's nice to have the carnival right after break because everyone swims 50's [yards, the length of one individual's relay swim]. It didn't look like people slipped too much."

Swaney was proud of the team's performance, pointing out that Wootton is one of the top teams in the division. "Wootton is much more even [between their boys' and girls' teams], so they deserve to win. I'm happy we got second."

Blair's next meet will be against Wootton at the Gaithersburg Aquatic Center on Saturday, Jan. 14 at 9:00 a.m.