Casey Bradford set two more records in Juneau for the Haines Dolphins swim team before becoming a teenager.
“He went into this meet (Nov. 12-14) with some specific goals,” said head coach Steve Vick. “For him, it was his last meet swimming as a 12-year-old. That put him at the top of his age group (age 11-12) … He got both team records he was shooting to get. One was in the 50 fly and the other one was in the 200 fly.”
Bradford finished the 50-yard race in 30.37 seconds to beat the previous mark by more than a second. He topped one of his own records in the 200 fly – again by more than a second – with a time of 3:01.14.
“He participates a lot in practice, gives a lot of good effort and sets goals,” Vick said. “During practice, when he set the 200 fly goal, we said, ‘Well, you’re going to be doing a lot of fly for a few weeks,’ and he’s like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ He gets pretty excited to work hard toward his goals, and he just has such a positive attitude about it, too.”
Bradford picked up seven first-place finishes, one second and two thirds at the Juneau meet, Vick said.
“Had this been a championship meet, he most likely would have won the meet in his age group,” he said. “He did a good job of dominating his age group.”
Ten other Dolphins made the trip to Juneau and showed rapid improvement. The team had opened the season Oct. 22 in Whitehorse.
Vick credited Marty Fowler, 10, for his Juneau debut in the 200-yard individual medley, where athletes swim two pool lengths of each stroke.
“He’s also one that when he decides to get a goal and go somewhere, he’s like, ‘Okay, I’m coming four times a week, I’m going to practice and I’m going to swim this meet really well,’” Vick said. “That’s what he did with this meet. He started coming more to practice, and his first time ever swimming the 200 IM, he qualified for the Junior Olympics.”
Naomi Green, 9, Marissa Haddock, 9, Elena Saunders, 9, and Sheeshao White, 10, all cut more than 10 seconds off their times for 50-yard distances.
“To me, what that says is it’s technique,” Vick said. “They’ve learned to be a more efficient and a more effective swimmer. They didn’t actually gain muscle. Maybe they grew a couple inches in a year, but for the most part, they’ve learned to swim better.”
Brittney Bradford, 11, Matthew Green, 12, Rebekah Green, 15, and Jackie St. Clair, 16, also set personal bests.
Vick said the Juneau event was Rin Hamada’s first competitive swim meet. Hamada, 17, is an exchange student from Japan. “I was very impressed with her courage, to come into a new country and participate in a new sport, and then want to go travel with the team to a swim meet,” he said. “These are all first-time things for her, and that just shows a lot of strength of character.”
The Dolphins next will head to Sitka for the Southeast Champs meet, Dec. 3-5. Vick said the team also might schedule a time trial and training session for officials in December.