Although TNT swimmers began a regular appearance to Junior Nationals back in 2005, TNT’s last representation at any Junior National meet was the summer of 2016 when Mallory Korenwinder competed at the Summer Junior National meet in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After missing an appearance at the 2016 Winter Juniors, and 2017 Summer Juniors, four of our athletes constituted one of the largest teams at any Junior National meet, all four qualifying for their first Junior National level of competition. In order of qualifying, Preston Niayesh, JD Koster, Visalia’s Megan Ridenour, and 14-year old Danielle Albright all join the ranks of Kohlton Norys, Megan Eppler, Samantha Goates, Mallory Korenwinder, Chris Nolan, Bradley Matsumoto, Wesley Coles, Micha Storey, Lauren Davis, Jillian Hatch and Sierra Jett as USA Swimming Junior National qualifiers for TNT.
During this year’s meet at the University of Iowa, JD Koster came away with our team’s highest place, and being the only swimmer to improve at the meet, and doing so in both his qualified 200 fly event, swimming a time of 1:50.99 (a four second improvement), and also improving his 100 fly time trial event (51.48). Visalia’s Megan Ridenour had our next highest finish at 85th in the 100 breaststroke, with a time of 1:05.01, placing just ahead of the 86th place finish of Danielle Albright who swam a time of 1:05.02. Preston Niayesh competed in both the 100 and 200 breaststroke, and finished 130th in the 200 breast event.