Summer Mack's profile shot for "Love in the Wild" (Courtesy: NBC.com)
…Swimming just keeps blowing up in the mainstream – though I fear some of the swimming community will roll their eyes at this one. Former North Carolina swimmer Summer Mack has been announced as a contestant on the 2nd season of NBC’s reality show Love in the Wild. Mack is a former All-American for the Tar Heels, who was named the ACC Rookie of the Year in 1998 after breaking the Championship Record in the 100 backstroke. She went on to make the semi-finals of the 100 back at the 2000 Olympic Trials with a – get this – 1:04.66 for 15th place. Her official bio on the website embelishes a little, calling her a finalist, but hey, it is ‘reality’ TV afterall.
Mack is one of 7 female contestants on the show, that doesn’t even feign at dancing around the typical reality TV cliches. They take a bunch of young, extremely attractive singles, put them at a remote resort in the middle of a jungle, toss in some obligatory contests, remove the clothes, and wait for the magic to happen…
…Matt Biondi has landed back on a pool deck, as he’s been hired as the new head swim coach at Sierra Canyon High School in Chatsworth, California. The private school, located in the LA Suburbs, competes in Division 4 of the CIF-SS swimming, where the girls placed 19th at this year’s Championships. But they will return a few good pieces, including a good duo of senior sprint freestylers Lena Perry and Shayne Eisenman. He also has a diver – not inconsequential in this division – named Olivia Habib who was 7th at the Southern Sectional meet – and the only freshman to qualify to boot. Biondi, who will also be a math teacher, brings some impressive numbers to deck with him: 11 Olympic medals, including a dominating sprint performance at the 1988 Games where he won 5 golds…
…Ball State has announced Kristy Castillo as their new head women’s swimming coach, taking over for a Muncie legend: 33-year veteran Laura Seibold-Caudill. Castillo’s previous tenure was as an 8-year assistant for conference rivals Akron, where she had worked since graduating in 2003. Castillo has also spent four summers as a counselor at the Stanford Swim Camp. But her heart lies in the MAC, as she said after the announcement that “it has been a dream of hers to be a head coach in the Mid-American Conference”. The Akron women finished 7th at the conference meet last year, with Ball State placing 6th. Head-to-head, the Ball State girls won the dual meet by a slim 10 points last season…
…Swimming Canada is sending a group of its youngest and brightest swimmers to race on a “Junior Tour” at the Mare Nostrum triad from May 29th to June 10th (the Barcelona and Canet stops). Among them will be a lot of NCAA swimmers, including Chad Bobrosky (USC), Ashley McGregor (Texas A&M), Kierra Smith (Minnesota), and Chantal van Landeghem (Georgia). They’ll be joined by other great swimmers including Luke Peddie – a sprinter who was within a hair of the Olympic Team; Will Brothers, Karyn Jewell, and Erika Seltenreich-Hodgson…
Realty TV is for the birds. There is nothing real about it. It’s all scripted and honestly, I could not care less about those shows. They’re lame.
P.S. I’ve never heard of her.
Look when a former swimmer gets air time for good things the last thing we need is some bs notes…dark time for swimming…give me a break…she’s very pretty and was a great swimmer…she made it to the top of her field for her time and that’s that…always some coach or lame brain says something like that…
Good for her! Good for swimming! Look at the positive part of this…right on!