These girls are incredible

In my years of coaching I have never seen a group of girls that were so close to each other get even closer as the meet goes on. They went from friends, to family, to sisters throughout the meet. To actually see you all get together and fire each other up without influence from myself or anyone else shows how you truly have become a wonderful part of each others lives. To overcome such overwhelming odds is just incredible! Girls you have made the PND swimming community very happy, your coaches, your parents, but most of all you have made your swimming sisters proud of each other. Congratulations girls. You deserve it!

Congratulations to the PND Girls swimming & diving team. Maybe one of the most exciting meets in the history of our program, and the beginning and end of a streak. This was the last Mid-State 6 Conference meet with our current lineup of schools. It seems fitting that this conference meet ends with the beginning of a new era. 

MS-6 Meet

We need everyone to come to Central this weekend to cheer on our girls to their 2nd MS-6 conference championship. Thank you for all of your support this year. Let's root the Irish on to victory this weekend and bring the trophy back where it belongs!'


Derek

Courage Under Fire

A person's courage can only be measured when the stakes are high. What do you do when quick decisions must be made, and your success hangs in the balance? You never really know what you are made of until life presents you with a challenge, a test. It is rare that the test is significant enough to change the course of history, but there are a few instances where your future can be redirected.

Notre Dame swimming and diving...you are about to be faced with that challenge. You are about to be asked to test your committment to our organization and our future may hang in the balance. What will you do?

Many Great Instances of PND Swimming

I would have to say that statistics say that Nina would be the obvious choice. But great moments are not made of stats alone. Take for example the more than obvious defeat of Pekin for the MS-6 Boys conference meet in their own pool. Another example could be the girls beating Richwoods in the last event of the meet to break their 86 meet undefeated streak in the conference. That's not even mentioning some of the better moments with the younger and not so talented kids. Take for example Hutch, a kid that drops an obscene amount of time in the 500 for the boys a few years ago. Take Megan Flynn who dropped 42 seconds in the 500 free to finish in the Top 12 at sectionals. Take Richie Haefli's "Miracle" swim in the 100 breastroke. I am not discrediting Nina at all, she was a fantastic diver and is definitely up there. I just think there is more to it than just statistics alone. To be a great instance I think you have to look back at how hard people work to accomplish this. Unfortunately I did not get to know Nina or her work ethic so I cannot judge based on that. I do know that some of the instances I said earlier were done by people who really worked for them.

Defining "The Best"

Derek just posted a comment against my Nina Knell posting which claimed that Nina easily had "the best" performance of any PND swimmer or diver. His point was simple. The "best performance" cannot be easily defined as the highest placement at the State Swim Meet. There must be other criteria.

Ok, here it goes. Nina won the Conference Championship in diving four years in a row. Nina won won the Sectional Title in diving four years in a row. During her senior year, she set the Conference record for eleven dives. In fact, Nina was never beaten during a dual meet in her entire prep career. There were only 8 instances in her entire prep career in which she was not the winner of her speciality event. Those were the four State swim meets, and the Viking Diving Invitational for which invitation were only granted to state qualifiers.

I still haven't given a good definition of "the best," but I have shared a little about our growing legacy. There are many great stories of PND swimmers and divers, and Derek and I intend to share a few. Derek will be doing some guest posting shortly.