PAY Swim Team News 8-7-2024

PAY Swim Team News – August 7, 2024

Welcome August and the final lazy days of summer! Please scroll down to read a recap of our July Champs meets and monthly news!

COACH NOTES:

Our summer season was filled with so much fun, excitement, team building and fast swimming! It went by SO fast! I am so excited, and so proud of our ENTIRE team! It was so nice to see everyone who came out for our end of summer team picnic at Baker Park! 

Our end of summer Championship meets had SO many incredible highlights:

Our team as a whole was absolutely ELECTRIC at the Summer Champ Meet at York! We finished in SECOND place as a team!!! The only team that scored more points than us was the host team, York. That is QUITE an accomplishment. The coaches that were at the York meet were amazed by the lifetime bests so many of our swimmers swam there. We had an unprecedented amount of swimmers qualify for finals resulting in team points and medals earned. 

The coaches watched swimmers faces light up when they learned they had qualified for finals! To see such pure joy and enthusiasm for the sport of swimming is what it is all about!

We had one swimmer (Nathan Deeney) swim his first ever qualifying time for YMCA Short Course Nationals in 200 back with a time of 1:55.98

We had one 8&under swimmer (Audrey Abazi) swim a 14.75 25 free - she was just short of breaking our team record. This is a big accomplishment, as the person who holds that team record (Maddie Cooke) was an Olympic Trial qualifier! To come that close to that record is super impressive at such a young age!

We had many swimmers score over 50 points individually for our team: Audrey Abazi, Vivian Abazi, Amay Chauhan, Chase Hungarter, Campbell Knecht, Kyle Kruppa, Ellen Le, Max Miller, Violet Miller, Shreya Modi, Marshall Pucke, Lane Shearer, Mara Shearer, August Smith, Micah Smith, Evelyn Uritsky, Peter Verderame, Sam Verderame, Charlie Welsh, and Ryan Whitlock.

To name the personal lifetime bests would have me naming almost every single swimmer at the meet, because we had SO many amazing swims!!!

Congratulations to Brynn Lewis and Macey Speakman for swimming at the Futures Meet held in Virginia in late July! You represented #PAYProud!

Our YMCA Summer LC Nationals meet had many noteworthy moments as well! We took 4 swimmers down to Ocala, FL: Brynn Lewis, Lucille Obenski, Maddy Deeney, and Nathan Deeney. 

Brynn Lewis had quite an impressive meet: She qualified for finals in every single event she swam. For two of her events, she qualified for the A final! On the last day of the meet, (which is an exhausting 5 days), she swam a lifetime best in her 200 IM, and had to participate in a SWIM OFF to qualify for the A final in 50 Free (she emerged VICTORIOUS from that swim off!)

Lucille Obenski qualified for finals in her 200 back, swimming a lifetime best in that event! She also swam a lifetime best in her 100 back during her prelims swim.

Nathan Deeney qualified for finals in both of his individual events (200 back and 50 back). Swam a new lifetime best in 200 back. And qualified for 3 more Summer LC National events: 100 free, 200 IM, and 100 Back.

Maddy Deeney had lifetime best swims in 100 free, 200 IM, and 100 fly. Two of those events are now new LC National qualifying times (100 free, and 200 IM).

The host of LC Nationals (Florida Atlantic Swimming and Training (FAST) in Ocala Florida, was an impressive venue!!!! We hope to be taking more swimmers there next year!

We have some additional swimmers at Mid-Atlantic Zones this week! Stay tuned for details on their swims.

***The great news just keeps pouring in! I am so amazed by the performance of our team, that I am BEYOND excited to see what our fall and winter season will bring!***

Enjoy the rest of your August Break!

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OTHER ITEMS FOR FAMILIES:

THANK YOU to all the volunteers who helped at the July and August Champs meets and at our team picnic. We can’t attend or host meets without providing volunteers so thank you! For our 2024-2025 season we will work to get additional parent volunteers involved.  The more, the merrier!

PHONE APP- Parents, we have heard from many of you that your phone app isn’t working at times, preventing you from signing up/committing to meets or volunteer positions.  We do not have a solution for that yet but please know our website www.payswim.org, Phoenixville YMCA swim team Home (gomotionapp.com)or HERE is working for you to commit/sign up to Events.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

BIRTHDAY ROUND-UP Happiest of Days to our teammates who have or had birthdays this month!  CHECK OUT ALL OUR AUGUST BIRTHDAYS!!!

Tara Bice turned 14 on 8/4!

Margaret Wu turned 10 on 8/4!

Patrick Zinn turns 7 on 8/9!

Campbell Knecht turns 11 on 8/8!

Samira McAllister turns 15 on 8/13!

Evan Shi turns 11 on 8/14!

Victoria Leary turns 12 on 8/17!

Wesley Sadowski turns 13 on 8/18!

Max Miller turns 13 on 8/20!

Samuel Schaffer turns 11 on 8/22!

Eleanor Knecht turns 8 on 8/23!

Howard Shui turns 16 on 8/26!

Maanya Malik turns 10 on 8/29!

Victor Chao turns 8 on 8/30!

Praneet Malvankar turns 12 on 8/30!

Violet Miller turns 8 on 8/30!

Sammi Smeltzer turns 16 on 8/30!

TYR PORTAL - If you need a team swim suit apparel or equipment, please visit our TYR team portal. To register on our team store, visit TEAMS.TYR.COM , click on create account, and use the access code "16659". Once registered you will receive your PAY team's discount as well as any additional promotions etc!   The portal is also linked on our team website: https://www.gomotionapp.com/team/mapay/page/documents/apparel 

KINETIC PHYSICAL THERAPY AT OUR YMCA for swimmers or family members: Please visit their website and watch their “YMCA partnership video” at the bottom of their homepage at the following link: https://www.kineticptpa.com/  

TEAM PHOTOS  THANK YOU TO Leo Cuevas Riego de Dios’ dad for uploading so many AMAZING photos for us to enjoy!!!  Remember to download/upload PAY swim team photos as you wish-Please feel free to view their photos on our Google Share Drive   https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fkNMmnNFJqtXvDchWaRIGXXGGDqe1L3u

FACEBOOK-Come follow “PAY Swimming” on Facebook to celebrate the achievements of all of our kids.  Even better, text or email your child’s photo and “brags” from our swim meets to swim mom Donna Hungarter to share on the PAY Swimming page at (484) 686-3156 or  dmhungarter@gmail.com. And, we have a private “PAY Swim Parents” Facebook page that will be a parent-share page for quick questions, etc.  Search for PAY Swim Parents then you’ll be instructed to type in your child’s swim practice group and someone will approve your request if your swimmer is on our PAY team this year.  This private site will be monitored for content and is not meant for photos.  We will still have our public PAY Swimming FB page, noted above, for sharing photos through parent Donna Hungarter.

“I believe that success of a program is not judged by the number of individual national qualifiers or Olympic hopefuls, but by the culture and dynamic within the team….Being a swimmer on PAY means that you are part of a much larger family where the little members have bigger members to learn from and admire….You can swim forever, don’t quit if it is difficult.  It can get better.  Enjoy it.  Take time to smile during harder sets.  Feel the water as you swim.  Remember why you are doing this. And continue. Be happy with yourself in good times and not so good times.  You are the reason people like me coach.”  -Coach Dan