Nitro Swimmer of the Week January 13th – 18th, 2014

Intro to Nitro

Cedar Park: Kevin Li & Liliana Guerra – Kevin and Liliana have each improved in many ways over the course of the short course season. Kevin looks fantastic in his breaststroke and freestyle. His technique looks great and his swims are fast. Liliana has a very positive attitude, really focuses on her strokes and listens to the coaches. Her technique has improved immensely from the first day. Both Kevin and Liliana come to practice happy and with a smile on their face, ready to swim and ready to learn! Amazing job Kevin and Liliana!! – Coach Kirsten

Bee Cave: Elise Zhou- Elise has come such a long way in such a short time. Her confidence is growing weekly. Great to see, and looking forward to seeing what the future holds for her. Coach Mike.

Bronze

Cedar Park: Carolyn Bray – Over the last week she’s been leading her lane, demonstrating awesome underwaters, and really putting forth a noticeable increase in effort. Keep up the hard work and keep building good habits! – Coach Kristyn

Bee Cave: Alex Williams – Alex really stepped up his game this entire week with our daily test sets we did. He passed the test with flying colors! Alex shows up to practice ready to go with his game face on. Great work this week Alex! – Coach Adrian

Technique & Fitness

Cedar Park: Shragvi Balaji & Troy Davis – These two athletes had an awesome week working their underwater streamlines.  Especially with their backstroke streamlines keeping a great head and body position.  Nice job on all the positive energy in the pool as well.  Excellent job you two thanks for being a part of NITRO and we’ll see you at the pool – Coach Steve

Bee Cave: Siena Remlinger – Sienna is such a joy to coach week on and week out. She welcomes all challenges that is thrown her way. Sienna did a great job handling our tough backstroke and butterfly work outs. Keep up the great work Siena!! – Coach Adrian

Silver

Cedar Park: Jacqueline McCoy – Jacqueline had a great week of practices and continues to steadily improve.  With the rapid pace day to day sometimes it can be difficult to find those moments to sit back and realize how much improvement a swimmer has had over the course of many months.  This week Jacqueline’s coaches were able to step back and realize the improvements she’s had in Silver when watching her practice with some true strength and purpose.  Keep up the great work Jacqueline we’re very proud of you! – Coach Dakota

Bee Cave: Kiara Bobb – We talk about swimmers and if the lessons of the practice pool will transfer to the competition pool, getting the swimmer to be prepared to race, we try to cover all the bases, what to do if you miss a turn, lose a cap or goggles, but until it happens all is just a question. In San Antonio Kiara had just such a moment, the whistle blows and she stepped up on the block, adjusted her goggles, and snap, her goggles broke! She saw they could not be fixed, what to do, she tossed them to the deck and took her starting position, the horn sounded, the race began, when it was over Kiara had lowered her time in the 50 free by a second and a half! Great focus, and great racing, expects big things from this girl in the future. Fantastic Kiara! – Coach Chuck

Advanced Silver

Cedar Park: Camille Zapalac – Camille is quick to listen to her coaches.  After working with Coach Steve and his video analysis, Camille put lots of effort into changing her butterfly technique throughout every warm-up last week.  We expect fantastic improvements from her next butterfly events! – Coach Alex

Bee Cave: Athena Luo – The Adv. Silver group is predominately eleven year olds and up. However, Athena (at age 8) holds her own most days and this past week really exemplified what it means to be a Nitro swimmer. She focused on what she was doing and put together some great kick sets. I was and am very proud of her and the work she has been doing for us. Keep up the great work Athena! – Coach Jeff

Gold

Cedar Park: David Shay – David had an amazing meet this weekend in Pearland achieving several new TAGS cut and improving on many others. David was so dominant in his swimming this weekend that he was the 10 & Under Boys High Point winner. Congratulations to David great showing at a big time meet, now good preparation for TAGS will begin. – Coach Flo

Bee Cave: CJ Suarez – CJ is turning a corner on his training, when a swimmer is young they tend to turn the stroke over so fast when they swim that they slip in the water, over the last week CJ has really been focusing on feel and distance per stroke. This weekend in the 100 butterfly at finals CJ showed great control on the first length and lit it up on the second moving through the field from sixth to finish third! This was a game changing moment to be sure. Great job CJ! – Coach Chuck