The 2011 Chesapeake Pro-Am

I love the Chesapeake Elite Pro-Am.  If you are a coach and you are looking for a great meet for a December shave, I can definitely tell you it is worth the trip to Oklahoma City.  My swimmers always come back with great stories to tell and it is one of those rare sporting events where club kids get to mingle a little bit with some of the world's best swimmers.

I wrote up a post before the trip this year and for some reason never did post it, (I am retro-posting it here) but in it I list a few of the awesome things I have seen at the meet in the past.  This year I can add to that list-- I got to see Anthony Ervin's comeback first hand.  Hells yeah... but honestly, that was just one of many highlights.  Pick through the results and you will see.


I talked with the meet director, Paul Thompson, about the blog and he gave me permission to post some content.  He runs an excellent meet and has for a long time.  This was the 20th anniversary of the Pro-Am and it just keeps getting better.  I was pretty busy with the 13 athletes I had in the meet, (one picked up his first ever Junior National cut to win the B final in the 200 breast- yay!) and I didn't want to bother the pro's between their races, but I did get a few good conversations recorded that I hope all y'all swim-briefers will enjoy.

Krista Kesberz is one of the coaches for the Chesapeake Swim Club.  She swam in the meet as well, but she also was in charge of taking care of all of the Pro's.  It took her a while to agree to go on camera, but I finally got her.  Incidentally we discovered that in the Garrett McCaffrey/Darren Grose Floswimming recap in the retro-post I mentioned above, she was actually holding the camera and remembered my swimmers getting in the way.  Haha.



Gardner Howland is the Head Coach of the Kansas City Blazers:



Kelly Kremer is the Head Coach at the University of Minnesota:



Max McKnight is the Head Official in Charge of Discipline:



Oh yeah... I also recorded a couple of races as well.  Enjoy!.. and sorry it took me so long to do this write-up:







I just have to say 'thank you' to everyone involved with putting on the Pro-Am. You are doing great things for the sport of swimming and I wish you twenty more years of success. We will be back next year in force.