Olivia Harper of Long Reach Swim Club in Bath, who won the 100-yard backstroke in April at the YMCA Short Course Nationals, continued her excellence in the backstroke with impressive wins recently at the YMCA Long Course Nationals.
Harper won both the 100-meter (1 minute, 2.21 seconds) and 200-meter backstroke events (2:15.75) in the meet held at the University of Maryland.
In the 100 meters, the junior at Morse High School qualified third at 1:03.54, behind the top qualifying times of 1:03.44 and 1:03.51.
Despite Harper’s limited experience in long-course swimming (Maine does not have a 50-meter pool), Long Reach coach Jay Morissette prepared Harper to race for the gold medal in the finals.
Following the trials, Morissette and assistant coaches James Wells, a former Long Reach swimmer and Big Ten backstroke champion, and Brian Savage developed a race plan for the finals. It emphasized a faster first 50 by increasing the turnover of the arms and backing off the kick. The strategy for the second 50 required Maine’s 100 backstroke high school record holder to accelerate the kick and drive to the finish.
“We created a race strategy and she executed it perfectly,” Morissette said.
Pushing her kick, Harper raced ahead of the field recording the fastest closing 50 in the field at 31.3 seconds — the only final 50 meters under 32 seconds. The gold medalist finished in 1:02.21. The second-place time was 1:02.70 and third was 1:02.8.
“Olivia has a real knack for understanding and following race strategy,” Morissette said.
In the 200-meter back, Harper entered the finals seeded fourth with a 2:18.8 trial swim, more than two seconds off the top qualifying swim of 2:16.5. Again, she executed the race plan set for the finals to win her second gold with a 2:15.7, a second ahead of the runner-up’s 2:16.7.
“We certainly believed she was capable of really high, high heights of performance. She has worked incredibly hard. She put the races together above expectations,” Morissette said.
Harper captured the silver medal in the 50-meter back (29.39), and teammate Ella Martin also placed in the finals with a sixth-place finish at 30.6.
Mount Desert Island YMCA swimmer Liam Sullivan finished fourth in the 50-meter breaststroke at the YMCA Long Course Nationals with a state-record time of 30.06 seconds. He placed 11th in the 100 breaststroke at 1:07.85.
Ava Sealander of Downeast Family YMCA in Ellsworth logged a 28.55 in the 50-meter butterfly to place sixth, and DEFY’s Camden Holmes recorded a 24.5 in the 50-meter freestyle to take 13th.
In the breaststroke, Brian Hess of Long Reach finished eighth in the 100-meter finals with a 1:08.87. He set a state record of 1:07.56 in the trials. He finished sixth in the 50 meter (30.4).
Martin, Olivia Harper, Haily Harper and Margie McLeod competed in the 200-meter free relay, touching in 1:51.1 for 14th place.
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