Other area athletes included eighth-grader Brooklyne Kuntz from Bellefontaine, sophomore Brady Cordonnier of Marysville and juniors Cassidy Gifford and Mackenzie Gifford from Troy.
The YMCA National Short Course Swimming Championship was held last Monday through Friday and dates back to 1923. Swimmers qualify by meeting time standards during the year.
“It’s a super high level meet,” Springfield Family YMCA coach Mike Austin said. “It truly is one of those meets that you can’t recreate. The energy is high, you can just kind of feel the magic in the air, and our swimmers thrived off of it.”
Derr had five individual qualifying times and swam the maximum of four events: the 50-yard freestyle, 100-yard backstroke, 100-yard breaststroke and 200-yard backstroke. In the 200-yard backstroke, Derr advanced to the D-Final for 15-and-under swimmers posting a time of 2:06.90, and she was the only swimmer of the Springfield Family YMCA group to make it to a finals session, Austin said.
Lee, who made the cut for the long course championship later this summer in Florida in both the 100- and 200-yard breaststroke, had a time of 1:10.51 in the 100-yard breaststroke prelims.
Scribben was featured in five events, swimming backstroke in the 400-yard medley relay and participating in the 100- and 200-yard backstroke, 500-yard freestyle and 1650-yard freestyle.
Cassidy Gifford swam the 50-yard freestyle, and she also earned a long course national cut this summer in Ocala, Florida, from July 29-Aug. 2 after a lifetime best performance in the 200-yard backstroke. Mackenzie Gifford swam the breaststroke in the 200-yard medley relay and also had lifetime bests in the 100-yard breaststroke and 200-yard breastroke.
Kuntz swam freestyle on the 200-yard medley relay and 200-yard freestyle relay and Lee took part in the 400-yard medley relay, 200-yard freestyle relay and 100-yard breaststroke.
Cordonnier swam in four events including the 1000-yard freestyle, 100-yard butterfly, 100-yard backstroke and 200-yard IM.
“They were just together the whole time, supporting each other, and they kept that energy high, and it’s contagious,” Austin said. “Fast swimming is contagious. The energy is contagious and it just kind of snowballed from there for them, which was great.”
Three of the swimmers are familiar with the national meet atmosphere, and the expectation that comes with it.
Cassidy Gifford made it to the national meet for a fourth year in a row. Derr and Kuntz also returned to the national meet while the remaining four qualified for the first time.
“It’s up to the swimmers to get in and do it,” Austin said. “We’re fortunate enough to have great leadership at the top with juniors, seniors, and it’s kind of just been an endless cycle of those juniors, seniors, year after year after year, instilling that work ethic into the younger kids and setting the example of high energy, ‘Hey guys, we can do this. Let’s go. Let’s push each other.’ And it just leads to the team’s success overall.”
Austin, a Waynesville grad who swam at Countryside YMCA in Lebanon and later at Wilmington College, was hired in November 2023 to coach the Springfield Family YMCA swim team with a staff of six assistants.
“For me, it was rewarding just to watch the kids put in the hard work for seven months straight,” Austin said. “That’s what this swim meet is. It is truly the celebration of the sport. They swam fast all year, they earned the right to be there, and it was just rewarding to watch them kind of relax, stay loose and swim fast.”
The team will take a little time off before getting back to work in April and the beginning of May. They look forward to long course championships and competing July 11-13 at the YMCA AA Championship Meet at Miami (OH) University.
“We do a lot of visualizing at the end of practice where I’ll kind of turn off the lights and they’ll put the back of their legs over the lane line and literally just lay in the water and float and relax, make them think about their races,” Austin said. “This sport is probably more mental than it is physical at the end of the day, and it’s just getting them ready to believe, and I think we did that.”
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