A Look Back at 2024
Happy New Year!
December flew by with competitions at the US Open, the King Marlin Pro-Am, a clinic with Deer Path YMCA and then family time over Christmas. I’ll give a recap of all that below.
For the final newsletter of the year, it also seems fitting to take a quick look back at 2024. Stay tuned at the end of the newsletter for some exciting news!
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What’s Happening?
US Open
The US Open was in Greensboro, NC from December 4th to 7th. I swam well, considering where I was training-wise and where my focus had been. I placed 13th in the 50 freestyle with a 20.03 (19.97 in the morning); 4th in the 200 freestyle with a 1:34.36; and finished off the meet strong with a bronze medal in the 200 backstroke in a time of 1:43.06. The final 150 of the 200 backstroke all had the same 50 splits of 26.28… showing some consistency!
King Marlin Pro-Am and YMCA Clinic
After spending about a week training in Missouri, I flew out to Dallas for the Pro-Am. With my clinic starting on Saturday December 21st and the competition running Friday through Sunday of that same weekend, I had to load up all of my events on Friday December 20th.
The Pro-Am is an exciting meet that has prize money to entice more post-grads to compete at it. I swam the 200 free, 100 fly and 50 back prelims and finals. I won all three in finals with times of 1:35.02, 48.14 and 22.39. This brought me back to the college duel meet days of swimming race after race. I would’ve been pretty happy with these performances in a duel meet!
I had an early morning flight the next day to Philadelphia to run the clinic at Deer Path YMCA with Phoebe Bacon. The kids were engaged with our talks and I enjoyed splitting up the group for me to go through butterfly technique while Phoebe did backstroke. Having two of us there allowed us to spend a little more time one-on-one with the athletes. The autograph signings and pictures are always a highlight for me as well! Thank you for having us out!
Christmas Family Celebrations
With the busy weekend behind me, I returned home to celebrate Christmas with my family and do some photo/video shoots. First, Audrey and I got our engagement photos done with Andrew, who is a photographer with Bellagala. Later that night, Violet and I had a video shoot showing off the new Victoria Veterinary Hospital! Check out the Instagram reel from Violet's perspective on Thursday.
I am fortunate enough to have the majority of my extended family living nearby. This also means I get to celebrate Christmas three times: once with my mom’s side, another with my dad’s and on Christmas Day, just our family. I’m so thankful to be able to see everyone and spend time with them.
A look back at 2024
With the calendar turning over to 2025, let’s take a peak at some of the things that made 2024 special. I didn’t achieve my dream of making the Olympics this year, but I still got loads of cool experiences swimming professionally. I met countless new swimmers, coaches and sponsors that each left an impact on me. I made my second US National team and swam in front of the largest swim crowd in history. I travelled the country and world, getting to visit new places and ones I had been to before. After saying goodbye to the best dog of all time, new life was brought into this world and I adopted a puppy. I asked Audrey to marry me… and she said yes! I would call 2024 a success, but here’s to bigger and better things in 2025.
Looking Ahead
It can be tough to train with an NCAA program during the lead up to conference and NCAA championships. To get around that this year, I will be doing an extended training trip to pro groups for the first quarter of 2025.
Audrey and I recently purchased a small camper trailer and will be road-tripping to different groups. The first stop has already kicked off and is an altitude camp at the Olympic and Paralympic Training Center with Cal-Berkeley’s group.
Check in on the next installment of my newsletter to hear where this new adventure will be taking us!
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