Summit Family YMCA Swim Team Has a Banner Year
It has been a very successful summer for the Summit Family Y swim team. For the first time in the history of YMCA of Metro Atlanta swimming, two swimmers from Summit qualified to compete at 2024 YMCA National Long Course Swimming Championships.
Bryce Ryan and Keegan Stahl represented Summit at the national championships held last week in Ocala, Florida. This was the first time Georgia has had representation at the YMCA Nationals which brings together hundreds of young swimmers.
Besides Bryce and Ryan’s momentous accomplishment, the Summit team this year won first place at the YMCA of Metro Atlanta Championships, USA Short Course State, and Open Water State. The team finished in second place at the Long Course State.
Much of the team’s success is due to the training and coaching from Vesna Shelnutt, Summit Y Head Swim Coach. Vesna, a former Olympic swimmer from North Macedonia, participated in the 2000 and 2004 Olympic Games.
“Our program has seen so much success over the past few years due to the swimmers putting in many hours of hard work and realizing that hard work shows positive results,” said Vesna.
Beyond these accomplishments, Summit has a long list of swimmers qualify for local, state, and regional level swim meets during the past few years.
Besides swim meet qualifications, the hard work and training has been rewarding beyond the Y. During the past two years, three seniors received athletic scholarships to swim in college.
“The swimmers have adapted to changes over time and put in many practice hours in and out of the water to achieve high level goals that they set for themselves,” said Vesna.