Swim Conference 2022: A Percentage Point of View
By Travis Lott
Hi, I’m Travis and I’ve been swimming for the last eight years, with a break in the middle for a church mission in Alaska. I joined the Southern Virginia University swim team in the Spring 2020 semester and was a part of the first team the school had. I specialize in Breaststroke and in the 200 Individual Medley, which is one lap of all four strokes.
Three years ago, Southern Virginia University began their swim program. The 2019 team was very small, but mighty, and almost didn’t finish last in the conference that year! This year was a very different story. The Knights had the largest team in their conference with both the men and women teams coming out on top as conference champions. The Knights came in first by 257 points on the men’s side and 272 points on the women’s.
It’s easy to see who is winning in swimming but it’s not as easy to know what is actually happening, or if a time is impressive or not. The biggest thing to understand is that the faster someone is, the more difficult it is for them to drop time. Also, the shorter a race is, the more difficult it is to drop time. Yet, the Knights did amazing at their conference championships, winning nearly every event. While it’s difficult to win an event, it can be more difficult to drop time off a lifetime or season best. The athletes below will be the ones highlighted today based off of percentage of time dropped.
Coming out on top is the one and only, Emily Lesue. Emily is a freshman from Springfield, Missouri who focuses on freestyle and butterfly. Emily was the only swimmer whose time drops were over three percent off of her season bests in all three of her races. To top it off, all three of her times were lifetime bests. While she didn’t win her three races, she fought for 6th in the 50 yard freestyle with a time of 27.53, 3rd in the 100 yard butterfly with a time of 1:08.49, and 5th in the 100 yard freestyle with a time of 59.92.
Jonathan Dye was also near the top of the charts with a winning time of 57.42 in the 100 yard breaststroke. As stated earlier, the faster a swimmer gets, the more difficult it is to drop time. The time drops you do get are normally just split seconds. So while Jonathan went into the meet seeded first and came out of finals first as well with a massive 3.2 percent drop, his 1.95 second drop is even more impressive than coming in first.
The third swimmer to be highlighted is Corinne Brubaker. Corinne has had massive time drops throughout the entire season.Corinne served a mission before attending Southern Virginia, in addition to spending time at another school without swimming. In swimming, being out of the water for a week makes the next practice feel like you haven’t swam for a month. Being out for two or three years is a very difficult thing to come back from, yet Corinne did it. Corinne dropped over 11 percent off of her 200 yard breaststroke time throughout the season, with 3.5 percent coming from the conference championship. She dropped over 8 percent in her 100 yard breaststroke with 2.4 coming from the conference meet. And lastly she dropped over 15 percent in her 200 yard Individual Medley with a whopping 4.4 coming from the conference championship where she placed fourth.
Overall, nearly 80 percent of the Southern Virginia swims were time drops for this season, and nearly every swimmer swam a personal best. It was the best swimming conference championship the team has had, with school records falling left and right, lifetime bests being beaten around every corner, and an amazing swim coach who belly flopped into the pool after both the men and women won.
