Excel Open Water Team Heads to Florida

One of the lesser known branches of our sport is Open Water Swimming. Open water races can be in  freshwater lakes and rivers, oceans or even indoor pools (usually with the lane lines removed). Like conventional swim meets, races can be different lengths but open water meets usually only occur in the summer months. While open water races are generally open to anyone who wants to swim, we have two coming up that have highly competitive selection processes.

The first is Open Water Nationals held next week, April 4-6th, in Sarasota Fl and qualifying is extremely difficult. Only those swimmers who have achieved the national cuts in distance events qualified. However, we are thrilled to have 5 Excel Swimmers qualified based on their distance races over this last short course season.
Sarah Carrico Open Girls
Zara Kocak Open Girls
Campbell Johnson 13-14 Boys
Matthew Amodio Open Boys
Zaki Ibrahim Open Boys
 

Just three weeks later, Open Water Zones will be held on April 25-27 in Fort Meyers Beach Fl, where the Southeastern Swimming LSC will send a team to compete against the other LSCs in the Southern Zone. Swimmers are selected for this race based on their distance events in the short course season. This year, 9 Excel swimmers were selected which is the highest number from any team in our LSC (TNAQ was second with 6).
Brooklyn Lewis 11-12 Girls
Sarah Carrico 15-16 Girls
Zara Kocak 15-16 Girls
Boston Boyd 11-12 Boys
Henry Schopfer 11-12 Boys
Campbell Johnson 13-14 Boys
Caleb Blair 15-16 Boys
Zaki Ibrahim 15-16 Boys
Matthew Amodio 17-18 Boys
 

Congratulations to all our distance swimmers who have achieved this very elite level!