Mercer Island Midlakes teams dive into new season

Published 9:11 am Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Summer has officially started, and on Mercer Island for many children that means the start of the new Midlakes swim season.

Locally, the Mercerwood Shore Club, Mercer Island Beach Club and Mercer Island Country Club participate in the league, which features almost 30 teams across the greater Seattle area.

This season, Alice Godfred, coach for the Shore Club Manta Rays swim team, said the team is smaller than last year, but still strong.

“We’re slightly smaller than last year,” she said. “We’re down by about 50 swimmers.” The loss in numbers, she said, was for a variety of reasons; families who moved off the Island, as well as older kids involved in other activities who might not have time to compete. Still, though, she said the team has around 160 kids hitting the water.

“The ones we have are very dedicated and excited,” said Godfred. “They are looking forward to meets. It’s a nice, tight family.”

Chris Picardo, the head coach for the Mercer Island Beach Club team, said their team just keeps getting stronger. With 220 swimmers on the team, he said they are very excited to see what can be accomplished.

“Things are going great,” said Picardo. “We have probably our strongest team yet, and I think we can be very successful this year.”

He said the team is spread out, age-wise, with a lot of solid younger swimmers, as well as talented older swimmers.

At the Mercer Island Country Club, coached by Chauntelle Johnson, the team is 197 kids strong, but with more younger kids this season.

“A lot of them are really young,” she said. “We’re working on building a solid foundation and learning racing techniques.” She said they haven’t won a meet yet, but have had a lot of personal bests and individual improvement in the first couple of weeks.

“They have been getting so much better and competing to their best. It’s been great,” said Johnson.

The Manta Ray team, along with the rest of the squads, has been practicing for just over a month, focusing on a lot of fundamentals and learning the right way to do things.

“Basically, our goal is to introduce them to swimming and to competitive swimming,” said Godfred. “It’s a teaching-based program to help them learn the strokes and turns, and how to do it right.”

Last Thursday, members of the Shore Club team battled it out in the pool against the Mercer Island Beach Club team during an A meet. The Manta Rays beat the Beach Club during the meet.

“We’re just always working on stroke skills and making it fun,” said Godfred. “We want them to have fun with the competition.”

Picardo said while Thursday’s meet didn’t go exactly how they hoped against the Shore Club, he felt they held it close.

“We kept it close. It wasn’t the best weather, but they did well,” said the coach. “We’re continuing what the Beach Club is all about. We focusing on learning the strokes and working with each kid individually.”