After taking the summer off from the swim team due to an overloaded summer schedule, and then getting a rocky start back to swim practice at the beginning of the school year, Alex Rider finally made it to his first swim meet of the season! Today he swam 4 events:
- 50 Freestyle
- 100 Breaststroke
- 200 Breaststroke
- 200 Freestyle
I was concerned that he would not do as well as his last swim meet (back in May) because he hasn’t been to practice as much as he should and I thought that he hadn’t built back up to his pre-summer level yet. But he proved me wrong! 
Alex Rider made Personal Best times in ALL 4 Events! On top of that, he achieved Nevada State Finals Qualification times in 3 out of 4 events! The only one he didn’t make a state time for was the 200 Freestyle. But this was the first time he had swam that event since this time last year at his very first swim meet! Even so, he cut over 30 seconds off his time! (30.86 seconds, to be exact.)
All in all, he had a great day and a great start to this year of swimming! He really wants to try to get a Junior Olympics qualification time in at least his 100 Breaststroke and maybe even his 50 Freestyle, but he needs to be more consistent getting to swim practice each week to make that goal. It looks like he only needs to shave off 6.62 seconds on the 100 Breaststroke and 0.65 seconds on the 50 Freestyle, so it’s definitely within reach!
Here are today’s times, for those who are interested:
| 50 Freestyle | 00:29.14 |
| 100 Breaststroke | 01:24.71 |
| 200 Breaststroke | 03:14.19 |
| 200 Freestyle | 02:52.08 |
Desert Ramblings 
I cry no fair!!! Florida times are SOOOO much lower for JO cuts. My boy has to get a 25.09!
200 free is a 1.59.99….These are short course times…are your short or long course???
Yes, short course times.
50 Free JO time is 28.49 and 200 Free is 2:15.69 for the Sierra Nevada Swimming club.
I did some reading this weekend and found on the San Diego site an explaination that JO times are set by their group so that they limit the number of people going to JO to the number they want to go, so they adjust them from year to year based on that. So they are not standard from one swimming group to the next. I even found out that Pacific Swimming times are lower than Sierra Nevada, and we swim mostly Pacific Swimming meets in Carson City and MInden because the Sierra Nevada swim meets are in California on the other side of Lake Tahoe. I don’t know why they are in Pacific Swimming and we are in Sierra Nevada Swimming…
So I guess that’s why your JO times are different than ours. Plus, we are swimming at 4500 ft. elevation and some time standards (I don’t know if the JO are included) adjust the times to allow for the slower times at the higher elevations. Those swimmers in our group who attend some of the California swim meets love the times they get down there because they are within a few hundred feet of sea level and perform better than they do up here.