SPY Holds Anne Arundel County Swim Meet

Posted

On July 11 and 12, nearly 300 kids across 14 teams participated in the 2018 Anne Arundel County Invitational Swimming Championships hosted by SPY Swimming. The two-day championships comprised 72 events and were held at the Severna Park Community Center.

While many swim leagues hold a summer season for interested children to compete in, this was a special meet to all those in Anne Arundel County.

“It’s a [championship] meet in the middle of the season,” said SPY coach Crystee Ballard, noting that teams typically compete in dual meets and relish the opportunity to compete in a single meet with all area teams present. With so many different swim teams and leagues across the county, friends within the swimming community may not get to compete against each other in the regular season, making the summer championships at SPY a unique and celebratory competition.

“This was meant to bring all those teams that are all around Severna Park and Anne Arundel County together to compete against each other because they just don’t get to,” said Ballard. “So it’s kind of a fun thing because you see kids that are neighbors but don’t get to compete, so they get to do that here.”

SPY took steps to make the meet especially fun this year, with outdoor seating, vendors, and snacks for families to enjoy when the kids weren’t racing.

To the younger children, the most fun part of the meet was the prizes.

“We give a plaque to the top eight teams here, and they can say that they’re the county champion, if they want to. We [also] do a lot of cool prizes, which I think is probably the coolest thing about this meet,” said Ballard. “Each event, we give out 18 awards, so you can be a newer swimmer and you’ll be in the slower category, but you still can walk away with some bling.”

In addition, SPY made a play on their name for the awards.

“We do fun heat winners and [the swimmers] get a lot of squirty toys for heat winners and then we do a 007 prize because we’re SPY, like James Bond 007. So we play the secret agent man music and then, if that plays during the heat, we look up at the scoreboard and, whatever final last two numbers are closest to 07, we give [the swimmer with that time] a special prize,” exclaimed Ballard.

For the older swimmers, however, the most fun part was not getting prizes — it was winning.

“I won the 100IM, 50 backstroke and the 50 butterfly,” said recent high school graduate Kylie McCahon, member of the Naval Academy Aquatics Club and swimmer for the Hillsmere Hammerheads. “It feels great to have won those three events since it was my first time participating in this meet.”

Fellow high school graduate Reid Hussey said, “I won 100 IM, 100 Free, 50 Fly, 100 Medley relay, [and the] 100 Free relay. Winning all five of my events at my last-ever county meet is incredible. When I started swimming, I never thought this would be a possible achievement, but thank you to my family, coaches and teammates for helping me achieve this goal of mine.”

Even though they swept their events, McCahon and Hussey won’t end their competitive swimming with this meet.

“[Later this summer,] I plan on swimming in the Greater Annapolis Swim League’s Gold Meet as a member of the Hillsmere Hammerheads,” said McCahon. “I will be swimming [Division I] at Rider University in [the] fall.”

“I will be swimming for Loyola University Maryland next year and will hopefully be back next summer to coach the Oakleigh Forest Piranhas again,” said Hussey.

Be sure to look out for these two, along with all of Anne Arundel County’s other talented swimmers, in their future competitions.

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here