Keeping Up With Club Swim: The Fall Debrief

As October wraps up, fall is in the air and UMCS has been busy!!

After fall tryouts in September, new members were warmly welcomed beyond the pool deck at this year’s first Fun Friday! UMCSers gathered at Puffers Pond, playing get-to-know-you games on the sand and soaking in the warm weather. The following Fridays were just as fun. Members hiked up Mt. Sugarloaf, skated (or tried to) at Interskate 91 in Hadley, and enjoyed sweet treats at Flayvors of Cook Farm. This past weekend, the team shared a picnic in Amherst Center where they devoured Antonio’s pizza and played yard games.

Exciting things have been happening for UMCS in the water too! The weekend of October 21st, 11 team members made the voyage to Long Island to compete in a meet hosted by Stony Brook University. Arriving in New York on Saturday, swimmers spent the night at a nearby hotel before racing at the Stony Brook Sports Complex on Sunday.

Facing Stony Brook and UConn, UMCS swimmers came prepared and excited to take on the competition. Recent hard work at practices paid off, and our swimmers excelled with great times and several CCS Nationals qualifications. A special congratulations to Saaketh Sodanapalli, Tatum Angerthal, Vianka Acosta McKenzie, and Boyd Pugh on qualifying. Meet results can be found here. We are so proud of everyone who attended this meet and are grateful to Stony Brook for hosting!!

This upcoming weekend, we will be hosting our fall invitational meet! There will be 300+ swimmers from 11 schools attending! The other club teams competing are: Tufts, UVM, Boston College, URI, UConn, Northeastern, Dartmouth, UMass Lowell, Fairfield, and the University of North Dakota! Boyden will be open at 11:00AM, with warmups scheduled from 11:30-12:30. The meet is currently scheduled to start at 12:30PM. Families and friends are invited to attend, and there will be a raffle and team merchandise for sale. Please be aware that there will be very limited seating and deck space for the meet due to the high volume of swimmers attending. Click here for information on parking for the home meet.

After the home meet, we still have exciting events planned to close out our semester. A handful of UMCS swimmers will be traveling for a day trip to URI on November 12th for a long and exciting day of competition. Additionally, Eboard is working diligently on the planning of our usual semester community service project, cookie brownies! More details to come on that in the coming weeks!