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The Stingrays had some stories to tell after coming home from Cincinnati.  Friday night started out sluggishly, but by Saturday afternoon the swimmers were on a role.  Amanda Berggren dropped almost 4 seconds in the 100 fly achieving an A cut in the event.  Kevin Bonanne earned a state cut in the 500 free.  Emily DiBenigno swam her way to a AA cut in the 50 and 100 free.  Jamie Gomez had a fantastic 400 IM achieving a state cut.  Patrick Lewis broke the 56 second barrier in the 100 free to finish in 55.90.  Kasey Lloyd dropped over 4 seconds in both the 200 IM and the 200 free.  A nervous Ineke Stegger swam her way to 5^th place in the 50 breast stroke earning a zone cut in the event.  Adam Twer swam his way to a state cut in the 50 fly dropping time

The Stingrays have been training better than ever over the past six months and I predict some outstanding swims over the Semi-State and State weekends.  There will be special caps and shirts for this year's Age Group State meet.  Make sure you make it to the team picture/state party night to get psyched up.  Check out the bulletin board for all of the news regarding the championships season. 
Good luck to the boys and girls high school teams at their state meet.  These are definitely the deepest teams I have seen since I've been at Carmel.  There should be some fantastic swims down at the natatorium.  It will be fun to see all of their hard work pay off!

NOTES FROM THE CHIEF...KEN STOPKOTTE

Congratulations to all of our team members on a super job at the 2002 Carmel Swim Club Winter Invitational.  It was truly a huge success!  Erin Sparks finished fifth in the Senior Girls High Point Standings and Grant Wieczorek finished 3^rd in the Senior Boys High Point Standings. The meet featured 1200 swimmers representing 36 teams from 13 states.  This year's CSC Winter Invitational was one of the largest and fastest invitational meets run in the United States as 18 meet records were broken and 66 swims qualified for the NCSA USA Junior National Championships to be held March 26-30, 2002 in Long Beach California. 
The coaching staff is currently in the process of doing the 2001 Long Course Season practice schedule and 2001 Long Course and 2001-2002 Short Course meet schedule.  We are looking at making some changes in our meet schedule that would both make our schedule more competitive for our advanced level swimmers and provide more opportunities (especially to get times in distance events) for our up-and-coming and developmental level swimmers in the program.
Congratulations to all the Carmel Swim Club team

members that qualified for the 2002 IHSAA Women's State HS Swimming & Diving Championships February 8-9, 2002 at IUPUI Natatorium.  The following CSC team members qualified for the meet: Blair Barrett, Taylor Baughman, Nicole Collins, Melissa Dere, Julia DiBenigno, Kiley Gooch, Cristina Gutierrez, Cassie Herr, Lauren Merek, Meredith Moore, Sherri Pickens, Erin Sparks and Nicole Uhrin.  Best of luck to all these swimmers at State!
Both the Carmel HS Greyhounds Women's & Men's Junior Varsity Swimming finished the season on an outstanding note at the 2002 Carmel HS JV Invitational on Saturday, January 26^th.   Carmel Swim Club team member Lizzy Wermer won and broke JV Invite records in both the 200 Free and 500 Free and Tyler Duncan won the 200 Individual Medley, Nicole Uhrin 100 Fly and Kelly Carlberg 100 Back and Rachel Bergman 50 Free also won individual events for the Lady Greyhounds.  The Greyhound men were led by Carmel Swim Club member Matt Graham as he won both the 200 Individual Medley and 100 Breast.  His 200 Individual Medley time was a new JV Invite record. Other event winners for the Greyhound men's team included Dustin Koch 50 Free, Chris Bonanne 200 Free and Eric Wiles 100 Fly.

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Barracudas Fire It Up for Championship Season

Invite, and the Cincinnati Invite yielded too many best times to count.  On top of everything, swimmers are setting themselves up for the championship meets at the end of the season.  Intelligent race strategies and a killer instinct have reaped many rewards in the form of multiple cut times for the Semi-State Championships and the State Age Group Championships.  We also have the Ribbon Thrower and the Last Chance Qualifier Time Trial to go after some personal bests and reach personal goals.  These meets are just around the corner, and I'm growing out my hair to give them another bit of incentive to step up and perform.  I have a solid month of hair on this egg-head and by the time those meets roll around I'll really have something worth chopping off!  Keep up the hard work and now is the time to focus more than any other in the season.  We're ready to enter the home stretch and things are looking good.  We have a state championship to reclaim and I want a hungry pack of Barracudas!