Diary

Jennifer
Kanetsky

Past Entries

February 23, 2004

Last week we competed in our own Emory Invitational, which provided each of us with different opportunities. Opportunities to taper for another championship meet, opportunities to swim faster than we did at UAAs to try to make national cuts, or opportunities to swim off events for fun.

This meet was somewhat different in comparison to past Emory Invitationals because we raced against many more schools and swimmers than usual, giving the "Evite" a more competitive flavor. Perhaps partly due to this heightened competitiveness, our girls swam incredibly fast, resulting in the best Emory Invite ever!

Highlighting the group that targeted the Evite as its championship meet, Suzanna Zifkin dropped 18 seconds in her mile to post a national qualifying time and Laura Blackwell also earned herself her first B cut at Emory in the 400 IM! The group that continued tapering for a week after UAAs also posted some fast times, most notably Dana Inserra's automatic national qualifying time in the 200-yard butterfly.

Although it was incredible to watch so many of my teammates swim so well, some of my favorite races to watch were those in which people swam events that they normally would never get the chance to swim. For example, because our team has so many butterfliers, and also because she is a breaststroker/IMer, Karyn Henderson didn't get the chance to swim the 100 fly the entire season...until last weekend. She ended up breaking a minute, swimming a lifetime-best time, and posting another B cut in that respective race!

I think the funniest race of the meet, though, was Justin Hake's 100-yard breaststroke. Testing his manhood, his goal was to swim faster in that race than his girlfriend, Ali Smith, had swum the previous week at UAAs. Well, Justin still has his manhood, at least for a couple more weeks. He beat Ali's 1:06.05 by going 1:05.98, but we all know that Ali will swim faster than that at NCAAs.

With only the national championships left this season, we are waiting for the end of the week when we find out who from our team will be invited to compete at "The Show". It looks like we'll have 18 girls again this year (the maximum number of girls you can take from a single team), and we are eager to improve on our third place finish from last year, to say the least. If you haven't been checking out our swims this year, now is a darn good time to start. We're gonna put on a one helluva show, and that's a promise!

Jennifer Kanetsky is a senior from Willoughby, Ohio. She would love to answer e-mail questions from Emory recruits and fans.