Nitro Swimmer of the Week for July 6th – 11th, 2015

Intro to Nitro

Cedar Park: Rithvik Hegde – Enthusiasm is a key ingredient for any athlete! Rithvik a great example of this! He attended a Nitro at the Races swim meet recently and discovered just how exciting & fun this sport really is. You can see it in practice now when he shows up with a huge smile on his face, excited to work hard. He even got a new practice suit so he can train more efficiently! That kind of joy & excitement will take you far, not just sports, but life! Great job, Rithvik! – Coach Jessie 

Bee Cave: Brooke Vestel – Brooke has come a long way since her first couple of weeks with us. She was part of our Burnet program, and made the move to Bee Cave. She and her Dad drive the 40-45 minutes each Saturday for her practice. This pastSaturday Brooke made a HUGE breakthrough – going the entire 50 meters for the first time demonstrating side breathing on her freestyle. Big day for Brooke! See you this Saturday! Coach Mike.

Bronze

Cedar Park: MinJi Kim – MinJi had a spectacular week working on the IM and working really hard on her Breaststroke to Freestyle turn. Saturday, Coach Erik informed me that she did really well with the kick set, was leading the lane, and a great teammate by encouraging others! Way to go MinJi! – Coach Jeremy

Bee Cave: Walter Armstrong – Walter has really stepped up his game during practice. It has been a lot of fun seeing his confidence grow at each and every practice. I have witnessed Walter take huge strides in his kicking lately. All of the hard work is being noticed. Nice job Walter, keep up the great work. – Coach Adrian

Technique & Fitness

Cedar Park: Natalia  Islas & Leyden Nguyen – You guys both rocked the pool this past week  with your backstroke.  Great job  on your underwater streamlines  and the fast recovery out of the water.  Head position and body alignment  were awesome  as well as a strong  kick.  Great job…you’re  why I come to the pool.  Hard work pays off.  Thanks for being a part of NITRO and we’ll see you at the pool. – Coach Steve

Bee Cave: Andrew Gunawan – Andrew turned 13 this past week, and works hard every practice. Happy birthday Andrew and great job! – Coach Peter

Silver

Cedar Park: Meredith Wolfe – This week Meredith got the nickname as MereWolfe, simply because it’s an awesome name and she had been giving it her all in every practice. She has done a spectacular job of asking as many questions as she can to work in the pool. We were able to video tape Meredith and show her some video to improve her stroke. She listened, watched, and corrected each stroke individually. There’s a saying that goes: she may be little, but she be fierce, that’s you Meredith! –Coach Allison

Bee Cave: Kendall Rieder – Kendall’s strength has truly begun to shine, working on push offs is always harder when you push as hard in practice as Kendall, but this is the time when you make your greatest strides, winded out of breath, legs are gassed out, and you can hear the coach saying, “time to step it up!” “Lets go two more!” This is when Kendall seems to find that higher gear. Many swimmers in Silver swim only 50s at meets, Kendall has jumped into the challenge of 200s! Her first event at the Jammin’ Invite, 200 freestyle, I know it will be a great swim, can’t wait. Great work young Lady. –Coach Chuck

Advanced Silver

Cedar Park: Rance Blancaflor – A big congratulations goes out to Rance Blancaflor!  Rance was one of the Advanced Silver swimmers representing Nitro in Corpus for STAGS over the weekend.  He dropped in his 50 breast in prelims, earning him his first AAA cut… but that wasn’t enough for Rance.  He came back at finals and not only took a strong second place finish, but he also swam a AAAA cut!  This means that he is in the top 2% in the nation for 10&U 50 breast!  It was certainly an amazing performance from a great up-and-coming swimmer. – Coach Alex

Bee Cave:

Gold

Cedar Park: Chad Fifield & Trinity Hoang – It is hard to single out swimmers after such a successful STAGS weekend. However these two were able to swim to their first ever TAGS cuts. Chad in the 100 Fly and Trinity in the 50 and 100 Fly as well as the 50 Bk. Congratulations on all your hard work to get to this point and I look forward to seeing you race at TAGS. – Coach Travis

Bee Cave: Liam Murphy – This past weekend a portion of the Gold group competed at STAGS in which required a national A time or faster. There were tons of drops in our races. With Sunday being the last day and the kids are exhausted mentally and physically. Nitro tends to rise to the occasion. Today was no different. Liam had some races that he missed the TAGS cut from a few seconds down to a nail biting .01 second. Liam was not going to be denied of his 200 IM cut in the last event and heat of the meet. It was his pure determination that willed himself to his new TAGS cuts this weekend. Nice job Liam, we are all very proud of you. – Coach Adrian
Thanks for being a part of Nitro! I’ll see you at the pool. Coach Mike.