Stroke Technique and Mario Kart

hey everyone,
yesterday Drew and coach Neil gave us some advise on our turns and starts. It was good to get some feed back from some former Olympians on how we could do to improve them. when we are not swimming the boys are normally chilling out back at coach toms house play Mario kart on his projector. Drew now thinks he is good because he got lucky in a couple of races (every other race he is being demolished). Mun still has not got his luggage yet and today is our last day in Dallas. We are leaving for Austin early in the morning and will be on a plane this time tomorrow (man we will struggle!)
from Tom

Hey guys.

Yesterday we went to Miss Loraine's house (one of the officials here in Dallas) and it was huge! It also had heaps of open space. I'm pretty sure everyone enjoyed the nice relaxation we had there and the amazing dinner +dessert which they made for us.

Not too much excitement today. First we had a pretty hefty practice in the morning and then some breakfast. After that, we went to Shenanigan's for bowling where Dave got absolutely demolished by Beth. Now we're just chilling for a bit and will get to training afterwards.

From Mun

Chlorine is my perfume...

Good Times in Texas

hey guys,

time for the big update now that the meet is over :) there have been some very exciting and awesome swims over the last couple days and congratulations to Alex, Phoebe, Lucy, Tom, Beth, Sarah , Cam and Seb who all had life time best swims. There was a total of 22 life time bests swum during the meet. However, a big congratulations goes to those swimmers who achieved new age national cuts or requalified:
Phoebe - 200 backstroke
Alex - 200 butterfly, 200 backstroke and 400 IM

Cam - 200 butterfly

Sarah - 200 breastroke

All have arrived safely into Texas, unfortunately Mun's luggage managed to stay in Australia... right now we are just training with the RACE club and the hospitality here is amazing, they have been supplying us with food throughout the meet and have been extremely generous.

Today we went to Walmart which sells everything from Pop Tarts to Shotguns (child, pink for girls, blue for boys, youth and adult sizes... no really)

we are all having a really good time making friends along the way especially Tom who has been officially voted the most popular Australian in Texas ;) (voted on by the 11 and 12 year old girl delegation of Texas)

Hey guys,

its been a while since there has been an update so i thought i would quickly inform the parents at home that we are all ok. the guys are at coach toms house and are just about to go into the pool for the 1500 and 200 free. there have been heaps of good swims, finalists, medalists and PB's swum over the last few days and ill make a post updating you all on everyones swims. here are a few photos from my camera, there are more to come tomorrow.

from max :)

Drew is in Texas too!!!

Turns out that Surrey Park's favourite Olympian and SP Record Holder, Andrew Mackay from Cayman, has made a surprise appearance at the Rockwall Meet to cheer on the team. How cool is that?!

A Special Thanks for Some Special Friends...

Our hosts in Cayman were so amazing. Here are a few pictures so you can put faces to names...

Rod McDowall from Red Sail Sports who treated the team to the amazing trip out to Stingray City...

Michael Lockwood (Gumby) and his beautiful Mum Miss Ella Kay...

Tony and Christine Cleaver who hosted Alex and Phoebe...

The Boothe's - Danielle and Stefanie who hosted Bethany and Lucy...

Mike Barrowman, former World Record Holder and Olympic Gold Medalist...

BJ Bedford, Olympic Gold medalist...

Mr. Frankie Flowers and his daughter Dara, the dynamic duo behind the world class Flowers Sea Swim...

Peter Mackay, father of Cayman's first Olympic swimmer, and Flowers Sea Swim official race starter...

And most especially, Sara Mackay, the Mum to all swimmers from near and far.

There were many other people who have made our stay in Cayman so wonderful. We are truly grateful and hope you will all venture downunder one day soon!

Everyone's in Texas and the big meet has begun!

Second Annual Bill Nixon Memorial “A” Invitational
Co-Hosted by
Academy of Texas Aquatic Champions (ATAC)
Rockwall Aquatics Center of Excellence (RACE)
June 25 – 27, 2010

GO SURREY!

Team Two is in the Air!

Everything went just swimmingly at 4am this morning at Melbourne airport. While all of the other travellers in the airport looked bleary eyed with their early start, our group were ready to go... check them out! Tash, Anna, Amy, Sarah and Tom are on their way. USA here they come!!

First Week and 3 Olympic Gold Medallists!

What a sensational week to the start of our tour. Not only have the Alex and Phoebe had personal sessions from BJ Bedford to work on backstroke starts but also Cam was fortunate enough to have a one on one session with Neil Walker to improve his dive start. I would also personally like to thank '92 olympics gold medlist and the world record holder in the 200m breastroke for the longest period for men gave me incredible adivce on my breastroke. We look foward to the upcoming days as we encounter many more great athletes.

Eugene.

cam's update

hi everyone, its cam here,
today was a pretty intense day, we had two taining sessions, morning and night, and i also had a weights session with coach tom. their weights room was pretty amazing, it had tons of different machines. in between the two sessions, seb, euge and i chilled at our host house. in the afternoon session neil walker was helping me with my starts, videoing them and showing me what i could do better. for dinner we went to a place called chipotles, which is like a mexican restaurant. we all got burritos, which are very hard to eat without spilling everywhere. looking forward to max arriving tomorrow, and another day of hard training.

thank you

OLYMPIC CHAMP BJ BEDFORD WITH ALEX/PHOEBE

Thank you BJ Bedford for helping Phoebe and Alex with our underwater sub kick and our backstroke starts. we much appreciate it. she helped us use shimmer kicks off every wall and work on our starts.
also we'd like to thank our homestays in the Cayman Islands for looking after us and taking us to training morning and night.
we r now safely in Dallas with our new homestay families.
hi to all. xoxo ALEX AND PHOEBE

23/6/10 Day 1 in Dallas.Texas

Walking into Neil Walker's pool at Rockwall aquatics was a very impresive way to start off the morning. First of all for a high school team to have an 8 lane 50m pool, a 4 lane 25 yards pool and seating to hold up to 800 spectators is amazing to see. The other facilities of the weight rooms, change rooms and meeting room specifically for swimmers where swimmers can eat, chill out and watch videos on a projector were all world class. Coach Neil and Tom have been very generous giving us full access to the pool and the meet on the weekend should be a great racing experiences for all of us.

Yes mum i did get the email about the homework......

Eugene.

Are these guys having a ball, or what?!!

Born to Shop

When it comes to shopping, every girl knows she must fuel up to be ready for the demands of the day ahead...

So, first stop, a beautiful buffet breakfast at the five-star Westin Hotel, right on the beach...

Then it was smiles all around as the dedicated shoppers headed to town...

...and the adjacent craft market!

Even when the skies opened up with some big rain, Caribbean style,

our shoppers were not deterred!

Stingray City!!! (and a blog entry from one of the boys!)

Have received some wonderful updates this morning from our hostess with the mostest, Sara Mackay. This photo was taken as the group headed off on a catamaran to Stingray City. Rod at Red Sail Sports is our hero, as is BJ Bedford, American Olympic gold medalist who joined the team for the adventure...

And a couple of blog entries from the swimmers...

On Saturday we all attended the Flowers 1 mile Sea Swim. The swim was amazing, it was a very hot day, and the water was crystal blue. Everyone did great swims.
Overall Eugene came 4th, Seb came 8th, Beth came 12th, Cam came 15th, Lucy came 18th, Phoebe came 26th and Alex came 37th.
And Drew, who got beaten by the little girls, came 43rd. Both Beth and Eugene got trophies. Eugene placed 3rd guy and Beth was 2nd girl.
After the race random prizes were given out, Cam won a Cayman Airways air ticket and Lucy won a pass to swim with dolphins. Everyone had a great day.
Seb

Sunday we all went on a catamaran to ‘stingray city’ with lots of other people to swim with the stingrays. It was a great experience for us all. The water was nice, warm and very shallow so we could all stand up to see the stingrays. At first there were lots and lots of shrieking coming from the girls as the stingrays swam around them but they soon got used to them. There were several of them, big and little. Drew caught us a couple of big stingrays which we got to hold.
After that we all got back on the boat and travelled to the MacKay’s beach house for lunch. Lunch was great we had sausages and salad, which Cam actually ate some of! And popsicles. We all returned to our home stays exhausted from the awesome day we had.
Lucy

Thank you Cayman

A very big thank you to everyone in the Cayman Islands who did so much to welcome and look after our swimmers this past week. What generous hosts you all have been. Thank you again to Mr. Frankie Flowers and his family for their inspiring dedication to swimming and for hosting such a world class event. And to the Mackays and other host families, you have been amazing once again. Please do make your way downunder some day soon so we can do the same!

PS - Drew - the Tim Tams are all yours!!

CORRECTION FROM COACH DAVE

Just saw the official FLOWERS SEASWIM results-Lucy Smithson was in fact 5th and Phoebe Dammersmith was 10th! Well done girls!

This just in from Gumby...

"Beth was 2nd female and Eugene was 3rd male. Everyone else did really well, coming top 20. There was a lot of other competition from the USA. They're headed on the boat now to do the stringray city tour and then to Cayman Kai with the MacKay's. I'll meet them there. I came an astonishing 73rd!"

CORRECTION

Seb was 7th in the men's and Lucy was 6th in the women's.

Coach Dave Update

L-R Frank Flowers, Brad Alley, Sebasitian Rousseau, Shaune Fraser, BretFraser, Marco Laughran, Anthony Nesty, BJ Bedford-Miller, Gemma Lowe, Rada Owen, EvaFabian, Kristy Kowal, Eugene Tee, Alex Meyer, Gov Duncan Taylor. In front: Stephanie Proud, Gemma Spoforth, Bethany Robertson

First I want to say great job to those who swam at Vic Opens. The swims were solid for such an early season state meet. Congrats to those who swam PBS and medalled.

We swam a small intersquad meet here which saw some PBS and near PBS but the real action was at the Flowers sea swim.

The overall winners were pure open water athletes. Harvard graduate and USA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS TEAM member Alex Meyer went out very fast to shake off an impressive men's field to break the course record (and get the $5000US check) in a convincing victory. 5ft 2inch Eva Fabian is also on the USA National team competing at next month's World Championships(I think she is 5ft2inch-Eugene seemed to be measuring her up yesterday so best to check with him ;). Eva smashed the course record to win the women's event and place second overall. Do not think that the men's race was soft; it was not. Eva is simply an incredible swimmer. Her $5000US check was donated to her swim club's effort to build a new pool.

The official results are not yet posted for non-medallists but I think Cam Crabb and Lucy Smithson were top 10 male and female overall. The pack was intense and competitive making it tough to judge from my position. I will reupdate when the results post. What I can announce without question is that Eugene Tee and Bethany Robertson had huge swims.

Beth outswam GB Olympian and Florida NCAA powerhouse Stephanie Proud by 2 seconds to come SECOND. With 4 seconds seperating 2 and 4, it was an intense run through the funnel to the finish gate. Having seen Stepahnie's 400im, 500yard free, and 1000 yard free times as well as the sessions Florida was swimming here, I can assure you Beth had some serious competition. Well done!

Eugene had an even closer race in a come from behind battle that saw him make up 100m to join and overtake a pack that included Shaune and Brett Fraser, Sebastian Rousseau, and Bradley Ally. With a final surge at the finish, Eugene beat both Frasers and just outouched the big South African Olympian Rousseau to come 3rd behind second place surprise Ally.

Both Beth and Eug outswam multiple Olympians at the top of their game and a few others who were clearly retired. Well done Surrey Park!

Off to Stingray City soon...

Stop Press... Short Course State Champ Medalists in the House!

800 m Free - Mun Hon Lee - Bronze!
1500 m Free - Alisha McNamara - Bronze!!

Poolside at the Caledonian Meet

And of course, in between beach walks, media commitments and luncheons, the SP team have been spending their time doing what they love the most...

lunch for the flower sea swim

hey surrey park families,
yester day we had lunch at the brasserie with mr. Frankie (the person that made the flower sea swim) and other competitors. There was even a world record holder from the US that came with other really fast people from Florida.
Beth received a glass trophy for winning the girls sea swim lat year.
and the club received a trophy.
all is well.
xxoo :D

Hey everyone

On the 17th we went down to 7 mile beach in the afternoon to the bikini parade. we managed to beat the world record for how many people could come down to the beach in their bikinis and walk about a mile. Us girls came in the bikinis but boys didnt and left early suprisingly

Beth also got interviewed about last years flower sea swim and this year. All of the girls also got interviewed about this years swim and it should be on TV!!!!

Ill try and upload some photos later

Lucy & Phoebe xx

6 Degrees in Melbourne this morning...

Brrrrrrrrrrr! This sure isn't 7 Mile Beach!

Fun in the sun!!!

Looks like a glorious day in paradise as the team prepare for the famous Flowers Sea Swim!

Day 1 in Cayman islands

hey Surrey Park families,

had our 1st training session at The Lion Pool. its a nice clear pool.

we saw wild chickens and green iguanas. WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dave's mail on his iphone is not working well........he's going a bit CRAZY!!! UH OH!!!

after our training session we went to South cove to have this photo. the water was WARM!!!yay

we met Mr. Frankie who owns the flower company. he is a nice man. he gave us loads of gatorade. the flavours were yum!!

We are here waiting at Mr. and Mrs. Mackay's house for their homestay mum to come and pick them up.

WOW their house is AMAZING. their house is on the 7 mile beach. we went and had a look and the sand is so white. its blinds you.

got to go now

everyone is well and we all say HI!

having a great time so far

written by alex and phoebe = )