Nitro 2021 LCM TAGS Recap from Coach Allison
2021 LCM TAGS is the books. We are all grateful to MARS for hosting a TAGS after the past year of smaller meets, and they did it wonderfully.
We had 35 individuals qualify in TAGS events, which is 12 more swimmers than our short course TAGS, with a whopping 26 swimmers attend as Relay Only swimmers. We clinched the 2nd place spot with a total of 1801 Points!! 5 Individuals took the top spot (#1) in one or more events and were crowned the “Best in Texas!!” Congrats to Tinley Harrison (100 Breast), Ben Liang (100 Free), Lyla Lusk (200 IM, 50 Back, 200 Back, 100 Back), Aliana Marakovic (200 IM, 200 Free, 400IM, 400 Free, 200 Breast), and Oliver Rowe (100 Fly).
We had thirteen 14yr olds attend their last TAGS meet, and we want to take a moment to send an extra THANK YOU to those kids and their families for their commitment to Nitro over the years. Thank you to Gannon Flynn, Timmy Guan, Simone Koret, Steven Ma, Aliana Marakovic, Aubrey Faith McLaughlin, Amy Park, Coco Proctor, Oliver Rowe, Hannah Seal, Sienna Seaton, Samie Straface, and Victor Teeters.
Now onto a few highlights that stood out from the weekend:
10&Us at TAGS are the absolute best. The amount of fun these kids had during TAGS weekend was off the charts. We have two locations so its not often that these kids get to see one another, but the minute they step on that deck the Nitro N takes over, and they are all best of friends. We had Brynn Grothause, Tinley Harrison, Lauren Higgins, Charissa Higgs, Hanne Peeters, Daniil Prokazov, and GG Sitter all score at least 10+ points for Nitro throughout the weekend. Not to mention between individual and relay swimmers the 10&Us had a total of 35+ best times throughout the weekend. The future is bright.
The 11-12s always come into the meet with a job to do. They are there to race and put the work in. On top of Lyla Lusk and Ben Liang’s individual wins, the 11-12s had a total of 34 Finals swims from the likes of Grady Bell, Brooke Frushour, Saylor Hale, Kyle Lee, Lola Maciarz, Elise Nguyen, and Sophia Nguyen. 11-12s were the kings and queens of picture taking TAGS weekend, as the amount of snapchats and Instagram’s that were shared between one another kept our TAGS group chat filled for hours. The friendships within the 11-12s are fun to watch as they have been developing for years.
The 13-14s, the leaders of the group did a wonderful job of leading the team this time around. I can’t tell you how proud the coaching staff was of the leadership shown by the 13-14s to get their team mates behind the blocks to cheer for prelims and finals races, and making sure we all were loud enough on the NITRO ON 3! We had great captains out of Alex Wong, Gannon Flynn, Aubrey Faith McLaughlin, and Hannah Pecze. Oliver Rowe and Aliana Marakovic lead the way in points scored, not to be outdone by 13 year old point scores Allie Dunn and Kaitlyn Phan, to Gannon Flynn, Steven Ma, Aubrey Faith McLaughlin, Amy Park, Hannah Pecze, Coco Proctor, the distance queen herself Hannah Seal, and Daniel Ybarbo cranking out points in the 800/1500 combo!
We always make note of how amazing our Relay Only Swimmers are. We had families and swimmers drive 6 hours round trip for a :30second to 1:00 minute race. We can’t begin to explain how amazing you all are and how your commitment is the reason Nitro is so successful.
THANK YOU to: Izzy Boldrick, Noah Bose, Rayyan Boughaleb Hassani, Sienna Chozick, Sabrina DeFranco, Philippe Diaz, Weston Fagg, Miguel Gomez, Timmy Guan, Pepper Gunn, Norah Harkin, Sophie Jones, Elijah Kang, Simone Koret, Maya Maciarz, Niko Meinen, Kaylinn Mize, Ashleigh O’Banion, Jayden Phan, Alessia Sciaraffia, Sienna Seaton, Amber Sun, Ruby Teeters, Madison Tisdale, Campbell Walker, and Yuelei Zhao!
