Gravy Bowl

 Bode swam in the Gravy Bowl, a swim meet over in Pensacola a couple weeks after the end of the high school season. This is a great meet to swim fast in a lot of events. In high school meets, swimmers are limited to two individual events, so they can only get best times in a small amount of events. Right after the high school season, the swimmers are in great shape, and there really is no limit to the number of events a swimmer can swim. Bode swam seven events, and in six of the seven, he swam not only best times but also qualifying times for the Southeastern Swimming Championships in February. He swam the 500 free on Friday night and swam it in 4:52.40, a PR by over five seconds. He then swam the 200 fly, 200 free, and 100 back on Saturday. His times were 2:00.66 in 200 fly, 1:48.16 in the 200 free, and 55.16 in the 100 back, all fast enough to qualify for Southeasterns. On Sunday, he swam the 50 free, 100 free, and the 100 fly. The 50 free is the only even he did not swim a best time, but he wasn't far off from it, swimming in 22.79. His 100-free time also wasn't a PR, but he had already qualified for Southeasterns in this event. The highlight had to have been his 100-fly. He has been trying to get under 53 seconds for almost a year, and he finally did it at this meet. Below is the video.

His time was 52.85, and I could tell he was pretty happy with that. I don't have any good pictures from the meet; Ashley might on her phone, but I've given up trying to get files from there :-)