BCHS Swimming Coach
Rice University hosted the Gulf LSC Southern Zone Open Water All Star Qualifying 5k Sunday (April 16) at Lake Longhorn in League City.
Top six finishers in each age group earned a spot on the Houston-area team that will travel to North Carolina for the Southern Zone Open Water Championships in early June.
Meet director was Rice head coach Seth Huston.
Age groups of 13/14, 15/16, and 17/18 swam four laps around a 1,250-meter course.
The 11/12 age group swam a 2.5k, or two laps.
Water temp was low- to mid-70’s.
Luke Cook, 16, represented SHAC-BC in his first-ever open water competition.
Competing against 30 other boys in the 15/16 age division, Cook swam most of the race within a group of three that trailed the lead pack of five boys by around 30 seconds.
As the three rounded the final buoy and sprinted the final 200 meters to the finish, Luke managed to pull away in the final few meters to secure a sixth-place finish and a spot on the all-star team. His time was 1:10:26.
Link to complete results is here.
The Southern Zone Open Water Champs will be held in West End, NC June 2-4. Event info link is here.
Coach notes:
When Luke came to us three years ago, it was obvious he was a motivated and coachable kid. There wasn’t a whole lot of sprint speed there, but he sure had a great “motor”. I joked that he was going to be a great 10k swimmer someday. It has taken us all this time to get him to enter an open water event. I guess now he’s a believer!
There was plenty of quality competition there. The coaches from Katy (KATY) and Humble (STA) brought some very experienced and tough kids to this event. It’s exciting to have Luke on the team with those guys – he’ll gain so much from this Southern Zone Champs trip.
Now it’s back to work. We’ll be taking Luke’s daily yardage back up to 7,000 or so for a while before giving him a little rest/taper toward the end of May.