Mountain Club Swimmers at the 2024 Mountain Spring Open, April 27 at the Aquatic Center. Courtesy photo
By ANNA ZHANG
Mountain Club Coach
Mountain Club on April 27, successfully hosted its first swim meet, the 2024 Mountain Spring Open at the Los Alamos County Aquatic Center with the new scoreboard. The last club swim meet was hosted more than three years ago.
First, Mountain Club wants to express its appreciation to our pool staff for their hard work!
Our Mountain Club has received tremendous support from the New Mexico Swimming community.
We not only had 240 swimmers from nine NM Swimming clubs and the University of New Mexico swim team participating in this meet but also had about 20 fantastic official crews to help our club run this meet.
Unlike most counties in New Mexico, Los Alamos County doesn’t have the swim timing system, which includes touch pads, time console, harness, pickles, starter, and speakers, etc. So it became our biggest challenge to have the equipment for the meet. With the help from New Mexico Swimming, Mountain Club was able to rent this equipment from the New Mexico Swimming for free. Huge thanks to the NMS equipment chair Jeremiah S to make this happen! We also had technical instructions and advice from the meet referee Debbie S, Beast meet director Brandi N, and administrative officials Chasity D from Farmington and Natasha D from Beast swim club. The deck referee was Jordan D from Farmington.
With the income from this meet, Mountain Club also was able to purchase the meet software, computer, printer and a wireless timing system with its accessories.
During this meet, we ran the two timing systems: the new wireless system for the first part of the meet (for all 50’s events), and the traditional timing system (with pads, time console and pickles) for the second part of the meet (for all 100’s events, 200 IM and 200 Free). These two systems were integrated smoothly.
Our wonderful Mountain parents volunteered all the positions for this meet to make sure this meet was safe, fun and enjoyable.
Special thanks to Scott Pakin, Ellaine Haroz, Sandy Hurlocker, Anna Nowell, Nan Zou and Ying Xiong for their dedication!
This was the first long course swim meet for most of our young Mountain Club swimmers and we also have six swimmers who had their first race in their life.
Avery Snapp, daughter of Steve Snappp and Kathleen McDonald, swam 48.79 for her 50 Back to become a New Mexico state qualifier for the Girl 9-10 age group.
After this meet, Mountain Club has 16 swimmers who qualified for the 2024 NM Long Course State Championship at Las Cruces this summer.
Thank you everyone for supporting our swimmers, well done!