Intro to Nitro
Cedar Park: Viara Doichev – Every week, V can’t contain her excitement about practice. She is always prepared and ready to rock! Her enthusiasm is contagious, and her love for the sport gets others around her excited as well. And she is an excellent swimmer who pays attention to details in her stroke. Even Coach Mike commented on how well she did in the water at our Intro meet. – Coach Claire & Coach Hannah
Bee Cave: Sophia Nguyen – Sophia always works hard to master the skills we are focusing on. This week, she led Intro with her quick flip turns and great underwaters—leaving the wall in a tight streamline with strong butterfly kicks. Sophia is a constant leader and brings a sweet spirit to the pool. Keep up the hard work, Sophia! –Coach Raven
Bronze
Cedar Park: Matthew Jiampietro – Last week, we had lots of great improvement in butterfly, but one swimmer stood out. Matthew was one of the few kids really excited about the week of butterfly. Matthew displayed great power on the body waves, he really pushed himself to have long airplane arms coming over the water, and he started to master the rhythm and timing of the stroke. In most cases, he was also the first hand I saw go up to volunteer! Matthew rounded out the week with a great dive practice on Friday, leading into an awesome Nitro at the Races on Saturday. Nice job Matthew! – Coach Adam
Bee Cave: Jake Mayer – The first week of Long Course and Jake pushed through the longer pool with a good kick and long strokes, his first ever practices going meters and the intensity is up and focus is right on the mark. The legs need to be strong for the longer pool and all of Jake’s hard work over the short course season is showing as we switch to the long pool. We had an opportunity to time the 100 free this week and the times Jake swam would have made the top ten list for Nitro Bronze, a 1:49 then right after a 1:47 for 100 yards with only a couple of minutes rest. Kept up the great work young man! – Coach Chuck
Technique & Fitness
Cedar Park: Amanda Tat & Kushal Chakraborty – Awesome job to the both of you with the just recent Nitro at the Races on Saturday. Amanda and Kushal you really rocked it on your freestyle. More importantly you have really come a long way on your butterfly this past week. Great timing and paying attention to your hand placement with your strokes. Great job you two thanks for being a part of the NITRO family and we’ll see you at the pool. – Coach Steve
Bee Cave: Isabela Rotondaro – Having been mostly absent from Nitro for a little over a month, it was a joy to be back on deck. This week, Bela reminded me why I love coaching. Upon seeing me for the first time since I left, she ran full speed towards me and ended up slipping and falling on the deck! She was fine and gave me a big hug. This isn’t why Bela is SOW of the week though (I promise!). Bela has repeatedly told me she has never been SOW before, but I could have sworn I’ve given her the award before. If she hasn’t been SOW before, this was a VERY long time coming. Bela always works hard and brings amazing energy to the TF group. I can always count on her to do a drill to the best of her ability or for a good laugh. Thank you for being you, Bela! – Coach Peter
Silver
Cedar Park: Sophia Carey, Hannah Choi, Olivia Crown, Hudson Frame, Kavya Jey, Alex Jiampietro, Niko Kundivich, Ashley Park, Natalie Rychlikova, Trinity Storms, Leon Tong & Joyce Shen – I want to say congrats and great job to the Silver 4 groupon Thursday! Everyone at this practice did a phenomenal job during our head position practice. From keeping a steady head with a paddle placed on top, to having a straight body line, everyone looked better and had an improved freestyle stroke. It’s not always who can get across the pool the fastest but who can slow down, fix a problem, improve that problem, then become better. And that’s what this Silver 4 group did! Way to go! –Coach Ben
Bee Cave: Arohi Majmudar – Congratulations Arohi! Arohi was away for a couple of weeks with a sprained ankle, but she has been making up for lost time and it shows! She has really begun to step it up to challenge herself during practice to make faster time intervals. Arohi has also been paying close attention to the details in the drills we have been working on over the past week. I’ve noticed huge improvements in her freestyle, and she enjoys and excels in breaststroke as well. On top of that, her smile and humor is a great influence for the group as a whole. I’m excited to see her continue to work hard and improve. – Coach Lianne
Advanced Silver
Cedar Park: Dillon Shadowen – Dillon is an extremely good baseball player, but he hasn’t been afraid to step up to the plate in the swimming world, either. He’s an athlete who is filled with effort, never taking short cuts or skipping yards. Every time I see Dillon getting walking through Nitro’s doors, I know that day is going to be a good day for Advanced Silver. Keep working hard and racing harder, Dillon! – Coach Alex
Bee Cave: Lindsay Chong – Lindsay started with Advanced Silver no more than two months ago and her stay in the group as been great so far. This past week, she definitely broke the ice and I am extremely impressed with what I’ve seen from her towards the daily basis at practice. Lindsay’s Breaststroke swim is her best “presentation card” and there’s no doubt that this journey will get better for you my friend. Keep up with the good work Lindsay. Stay FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS and enjoy the ride!!!! SI SI SI!!!! – Coach Felix
Gold
Cedar Park: Gracie Yocum – Gracie had a great week leading the lane daily and pushing herself during the tough sets. I was very impressed with her leadership and ability to make changes as we progressed through our IM. Gracie continues to show up to practice with a great attitude and positive teammate even when things get hard or challenging! Keep up the great work!! – Coach Jeremy & Coach Adam
Bee Cave: Michael Taylor – Long Course season has officially begun, and this young man has been doing a great job of picking our his areas of improvement and working on those, as well as taking his strengths and make those better than ever. Michael has some of the best natural feel of the water and technique I have ever seen. Most recently, the coaches and myself challenged the kiddos of Gold group to a specific set, and more importantly, pushing themselves through the set to stay consistent. Michael was one of the few that was able to push himself to swim some amazingly fast times, and was able to hold them every single time. Bravo, Michael! – Coach Allison
