Soooo tired. Can hardly see straight. The things I do for swimming. Here’s tonight’s nuggets:

1. Finals ended AHEAD of schedule. Could be the first time ever. Everything went so quickly that I almost didn’t have time to socialize. Key word: almost.

2. Saw my local TV stations while on deck. They each covered the meet tonight, which was great to see in a city that revolves around Buckeye football.

3. After Kaitlin accused me a stalking her during prelims, she decided to switch roles. She stalked me during finals. We still didn’t get to adequately catch up, but we’re going to. Funny story. The top 3 swimmers make the awards podium and get chocolate. Kaitlin gave hers away saying that if there is chocolate near her she is going to eat all of it. Funny girl.

4. Mama Romano almost had a panic attack when Hy-Tek wasn’t working during Meg’s 200 Free race. She sent me a couple of text messages. But eventually they got the results and all was good in the world.

5. PVK beat Phelps in the 200 Free. I’m so proud I can hardly stand it. But nothing topped how awkward he continues to look on the medals stand. After the meet, I texted him to make fun of him and his excuse is that he’s not a good actor. Oh, Pete.

6. I haven’t forgotten about the Nike suit. I’m going to bring a good picture back here tomorrow or Sunday. Promise!

7. My cell phone service is not all it’s cracked up to be down on deck. In the stands everything is fine. This annoys me, but there isn’t much I can do about it.

8. Peter Bick and I had fun giving the swimmers a hard time if they didn’t pose during the awards ceremonies. The Hoff, who is usually amazing with the poses, thought she was going to climb down without giving us our shot, so we called her on it. Good times, good times.

9. JOE DOYLE RULES (That’s for lala)

10. There really wasn’t enough time for juicy gossip like there was this morning. I’m sure I’ll make up for it tomorrow with another long-ass prelim session.

And not just because their facilities are the shizz. And no, there weren’t cheerleaders on deck tonight either.

I have to give it up for Ohio State.

I know, I know. This never happens. Maybe I’m turning the corner? Maybe you guys should question my Michigan fanhood?

Nah, I wouldn’t go that far. Although I am starting to turn when it comes to football. Don’t tell anyone else, though! What can I say? I miss Mike Hart, Jake Long, Chad Henne, Mario Manningham, Lloyd Carr….the list goes on and on. There isn’t anyone else on their roster that I feel connected to. As a result, my cousin is starting to turn me into a Buckeye football fan. Yes, hell has frozen over. That’s not the point of this post, though.

The point is that Ohio State finished in 15th place (yes, 15th) at the NCAA Championships hosted in their home pool. What was most impressive is that they did it solely with diving points. I can’t recall if I’ve ever seen the OSU women crack the top 25 of the CSCAA dual meet rankings and rightly so. So for them to rock it with a Top 15 finish, without any swimming points, is extremely impressive!

My hat goes off to coach Vince Panzano, and I’m not the only one who is tipping their hat. Coach Panzano was named the NCAA Diving coach of the Year during tonight’s session. Not to be outdone, OSU diver Chelsea Davis was named NCAA Diver of the Year; an honor she shares with Miami’s Brittany Viola and Hawaii’s Emma Friesen.

Another tidbit is that none of OSU’s divers are seniors (1 junior and 2 freshmen), so provided they don’t regress, OSU will be able to count on all of those points at next year’s meet. Wonder if any of the swimmers will help the divers out next time around. Only time will tell!

JOE DOYLE RULES

NOTE: I needed to add that shout-out in this post, since I saw him tonight. It was nice to see him come out and show his support.

Stanford has developed quite the pipeline to Ohio and its swimming talent. We’ve mentioned Austin Staab and David Mosko, who are freshman now. But haven’t mentioned Nate Cass, who is in his 3rd year at Stanford.

Nate is also a local boy, like Adam Ritter. He did his high school swimming at Upper Arlington. (I recently posted about the rape controversy involving the men’s head coach; Nate’s former coach.) His entire family went to Ohio State, but he decided to carve his own path and head west. What a trend-setter!

In the summer of 2006, Nate caved to his Buckeye tendencies and swam with the Ohio State Swim Club at the CP Summer Nationals in Irvine, CA. Combining with the awesome Joe Doyle worked well as the Buckeyes turned in a 7th place men’s finish; and with just a handful of athletes.

Check out the new USA Swimming feature on Nate here. It’s always nice to see area swimmers thrive as their swimmer career continues. Keep it up, Nate!

Sorry. I couldn’t help myself. You know how it is.

I spotted Mr. Doyle on the pool deck timing during Women’s Big Tens

If you don’t get the reference in the title, please go outside and play in traffic. You don’t deserve to be on the internet.

We try to spread the love around when we’re at meets. The “Swim Stars” keep us pretty busy, so we don’t have as much free time in which to snap shots of other swimmers. However, we always do manage to get some pics of athletes we don’t directly promote on SwimStars.org. And we’re going to share some of those with you now; along with some commentary.

There are 8 pictures in all in the post, so you need to check out the cut to see all of them. You also need to click the thumbnail picture to see the full size. Most of the pictures are too wide to fit with our site layout, so the thumbnails are posted. I’m not trying to break our Swim Aids shrine (like Carrie & Erika do when they post).

We usually loiter around starting blocks at meets for our pictures. That just wasn’t working out on Canham’s tiny-ass deck. With bleachers out, there are like 3 inches of deck in which to move around. That’s way too cramped for our liking. So, we spent most of the meet at the 50m turn, which makes for amazing shots of the fly and breast.

And no, these pictures are not all of Club Wolverine swimmers, you smartasses!

This is Mr. Alex Vanderkaay’s fly leg of his 400 IM prelim. First event we shot from the turn and loved the results. There’s a full set of these AVK pictures, but you’ll need to talk to Alex himself — or his mother — if you want to see them all. We kinda have a system going.

We attempted to take pictures from the blocks on the first day and they all pretty much sucked…except for this start shot of Charlie Houchin’s 400 Free prelim. Go fig!

Future Wolverine Dan Madwed during his 200 Free Final. And don’t ask me about the random blue line going through the picture. I haven’t the slightest idea where it came from! Up in A2, Dan’s coach started the campaign for him to be added to Swim Stars. I can’t hate. Paul Y. is my favorite coach. He could tell me to jump and I’d ask “how high?”. I kid.