Player Diary: Jamie Grimes, Men's Swimming
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Nov. 15, 2000
Player Diary – Men’s Swimmer Jaime Grimes.
Virginia versus Pittsburgh – November 10-11.
Senior Jamie Grimes swims freestyle events for the Virginia Men’s Varsity Swimming Team. One of the Cavaliers returning All-Americans, Grimes’ hometown is Olney, Maryland. He attended Sherwood High School where he was four-time swim team MVP. Last season Jamie earned first team All-American honors in the 1500-meter freestyle. In addition, his academic achievements earned him College Swimming Coaches Association of America Academic All-American honors. He is also one of the captains of UVA’s swim team.
Friday, November 10
On the road again…
We left the Aquatic and Fitness Center at 11:30 am … late as usual. The whole team was dressed up for the six-hour bus ride to Pittsburgh. The ride was fine but the televisions on the bus were broken so we could not watch any movies. Instead most people did their homework, slept, or listened to music.
Arrival…
When we arrived at Pittsburgh we checked in to our hotel and then went out to dinner. The team went to an Italian restaurant where the food was very good. At dinner, my table spotted a mouse crawling up the wall to the ceiling … no one seemed to believe us though. Needless to say we still ate our dinner…after all, we are swimmers. After dinner we went to the pool to get in a practice session. We swam for a little more than an hour. We arrived back at the hotel and were able to go to sleep around 10:30 pm.
Saturday, November 11.
Morning time…
The coaches let us sleep in, so we were up at 7:30 am for our wake-up swim to loosen out. After that, we headed out to eat. We ate at a local restaurant. The servers were not very nice and they were rude and hurried but the food was good. We were able to rest for an hour before the meet.
The Swim Meet…
The team left the hotel at 11:20 am to go warm up and prepare for the meet. The meet started with the medley relays. Our women’s team won their race but the men barely lost. We did not let this effect us and proceeded to win the next event. In the 1000 free, we took the top three spots. I swam well and won in a time of 9:11. Dan DeMarco and Mike Fuller also had good swims. In the next two events we barely lost to their swimmers. Ian Prichard took second in the 200 free with a great season time. After that we won the next two events, sweeping both of them (Placed first, second, and third). Guy Yimsomrauy won the 200 IM and Michael Fuller won the 200 fly. At the first break we were losing by four points and the girls were winning by ten. The rest of the meet was very close.
The second half of the meet…
We only won two other events – Jon Baird in the 200 breast and Ian Prichard in the 500 free. We swept these events though so we amassed valuable points. The final event of the meet was the 400 free relay. The race was very close and there were many lead changes. The Pitt men won the relay by less than a second over our men. We ended up winning the meet by three points. Our team had to come together as a group to come from behind and win. This was a good test for our men’s team to prepare for our upcoming meet against Tennessee. The women’s team won nine out of the thirteen events to easily win 132-109. Winners from the women’s team included Carlie Dykehouse, Cara Lane, Amy Baly , Jenna Bridges, Megan Iffland, and both the relays. Overall both teams swam and dove well considering the training we put in the two weeks before.
Going home…
On the way home we had pizzas and stopped at the Dairy Queen. During the trip the bus driver fixed the TV’s so we could watch movies on the way home. We watched Hurricane and The Patriot. Both were very good movies. The bus ride back was six hours and we arrived back at the AFC at 10:30 pm. We all went home to rest and prepare for our upcoming meets.