Intro to Nitro
Cedar Park: Martin Kovachev – Martin has such a great attitude every practice! He is nice to his team mates and pays attention to the coaches during practice. He also has been working really hard in the water and doing so well every week. Great job, Martin!! – Coach Jessie
Bee Cave: Gustavo Hochman – Gustavo has really been working hard lately. He puts 100 percent effort into his practices and his hard work is staring to show. This week he did his best to perfect his breaststroke and freestyle. Keep it up Gustavo! – Coach Meghan
Bronze
Cedar Park: Matisse Cohen-Hadria – This weekend at the swim meet she did an amazing job in all her races. She not only was doing good turns she also managed to drop tons of time on all her races. Lots of hard work paying off. Congratulations and keep it up. – Coach Travis
Bee Cave: Patton Taylor – Patton has really been zoned in on her mechanics. The result has shown at our meet up in Round Rock this past weekend. She executed text book break outs. Nice job! – Coach Adrian
Technique & Fitness
Cedar Park: Mary Miller & Nicholas Falsone – They both really were impressive in the water this past week. We were working on our 100 IM open turns and they both had fast touches and releases. Their underwater streamlines were quite stunning. Great job you two thanks for being a part of NITRO and we’ll see you at the pool. – Coach Steve
Silver
Cedar Park: Esther Yeo – Every group is lucky to have swimmers like Esther. She comes in ready to go with whatever is asked of her on any given day, gets in and gets to work. This week as we picked up the speed to the practices she did a great job of rising to the challenge and maintaining her technique and focus to detail. Keep up the great work Esther! – Coach Dakota
Advanced Silver
Cedar Park: Garrett Gray – Garrett joined Advanced Silver this season and has been working hard learning how to use his new equipment. He attended the TXLA Kickoff meet in April, where he didn’t quite perform as well as he’d hoped, including a missed race. Instead of turning it into negativity, Garrett used it as a learning experience to understand how big meets work. He then attended the AQTX meet this past Saturday and not only did he check in before and after every race, but he had lights-out performances! We’re really proud of the speed and confidence Garrett is gaining while training in Advanced Silver. Way to go, Garrett! – Coach Alex
Bee Cave: Bella Burti & Naomi Kruger – Bella and Naomi both had great workouts this week. Sometimes it is easy for improvements to sneak up on us. As swimmers, we can get bogged down in the drills, the strokes and the challenge of pushing ourselves every night. Naomi demonstrated her improvement with a really strong kick set and a timed long-course 200 fly where she held her stroke together and put up a solid time. Keep in mind this was a 200 choice… and she chose fly. Bella, meanwhile, after a particularly challenging and dynamic set where she did very well, said to me that she wasn’t sure why she had so much energy during that set and that it must have been the Gatorade she drank before practice. I had to let her know the bad news that it wasn’t the Gatorade but her endurance growing and adapting to the rigors of the new group and that I would now be expecting more from her at practice. She responded by having a great kick set the next day making all 8 100s by less than 5 seconds. She never gave up and kept pushing herself to make them all. Well done to you both! Keep up the great work! – Coach Jeff
Gold
Cedar Park: Akanksha Mehta – This week she has been doing a great job of focusing on her workouts. She has stepped up to lead her lane and push others to work harder. Her hard work paid off this weekend with lots of great swims. Keep up the great work. – Coach Travis
Bee Cave: Paxon Porter & Avery McCrory – Swimming is tough, very few sports challenge the athlete the way swimming does, we train in the water! The body doesn’t get to breath when it wants to, the swimmer trains the body to race with limited access to the one thing it loves, air! Every night these to swimmers go through that struggle, its hard, punishing, the body breaks down, sometimes to the point where you have to stop, but just for a moment, then back to the work. Every swimmer deals with it individually, but the support of your lane keeps you going, Paxon dropped over a minute on his 500 and still finished by taking his last breath just over 10 yards from the finish! Avery has not had an easy time of working the breath control but every night it gets better and better, this weekend she dropped over 20 seconds in her 200 free as well as making time drops in all her other events! Two great swimmers who see the rewards of the struggle thanks for giving me your very best! – Coach Chuck