Barbados National Championships

Hi again from Mark Broucek.  We'll have the swimmers write entries for this blog but since the meet we attended just ended, I figured I'd write a wrap up.  In case you didn't know, if a team does a training trip there must be a meet along with it.  We were lucky enough to be invited to swim in the Barbados National Championships during our first week here.  Our swimmers did quite well with many National Champions, Silver and Bronze medalists.  One swimmer, Julie Albright, also broke two National Records for her age group, pending ratification by the Barbados Swimming Association.

We also brought NCC swim caps to give to the swimmers that we raced.  The last day of the meet, I think our swimmers concentrated more on finding little kids to give their caps to than even their races!  The Bajan swimmers treated our caps like gold and some even swam with them in their races instead of their own caps.  But the best part of the night was the end of meet Pizza Party.  They provided a DJ and the swimmers and some parents danced in the grass for hours.  Two of our swimmers, Emily Vargo and Terry Zalud, took it upon themselves to teach the little ones some dances.  Their group started out with three or four but ended with about 25 all in a ring around them.  A couple of NCC swimmers even started a conga line which snaked around the whole pool and had at least 100 swimmers in it.  A great night of fun and fast swimming.