While they were at different meets, Minnesota’s Brooke Zeiger and Michigan’s G Ryan posted head-turning times in the state of Georgia over the weekend. Zieger was on a roll in Atlanta, winning two national titles and taking home two ‘A’ cuts. In the 1650 free, Zeiger also blew right past the Big Ten record, shaving .45 off of Lindsay Vrooman’s old mark.
Zeiger’s splits
27.29
28.66
28.81
28.62
28.55
28.65
28.82
28.72
28.74
28.68 (500: 4:45.54)
28.61
28.58
28.71
28.60
28.59
28.43
28.71
28.69
28.86
28.81 (1000: 9:32.13)
28.79
28.70
28.54
28.68
28.54
28.69
28.76
28.47
28.71
28.43 (1500: 14:18.44)
28.82
28.93
27.81 (1650: 15:44.00)
While Zeiger was only tenths faster than the conference record, she was light years ahead of her old 1650 free time. She was a bit slower than her personal best in the 500 and tenths quicker than her 400 IM personal best this weekend, but in the mile, she took over SIXTEEN seconds off of her old best. This also marks her first time under 16:00, and she went way under that barrier. She would’ve finished 3rd at last year’s NCAA’s with her time yesterday.
Meanwhile, in Athens at the UGA Invite, Michigan’s G Ryan finally broke through and notched a new personal best in the 500 free. Their lifetime best was from back in March of 2013, when they went a 4:36.99 as a 17-year-old, and they hadn’t broken 4:37 since getting to Michigan. Nevertheless, they blasted a 4:34.28 to take down Haley Lips old conference record of 4:34.86. Ryan’s teammate Rose Bi touched 2nd in 4:34.63, also under the old record.
Ryan’s splits
26.06
27.96
28.12
27.83 (200: 1:49.97)
27.87
28.04
27.80
27.79
27.31
25.50 (500: 4:34.28)
As we’ve seen from Ryan time and time again, they had a huge final 50 to charge home. While that strategy might not always work out, it got the job done, and they’ve now put down the best time the B1G conference has ever seen. Michigan, meanwhile, is looking very dangerous in distance freestyle. Ryan and Bi should challenge Zeiger’s brand-new B1G record in the mile today in Athens, while the Wolverines have high school distance star Sierra Schmidt getting to campus for her freshman year next fall.
Big ten distance swimming will be fast this year with these girls and cierra runge, Danielle valley and others
Klorn .G has preferenced that no gender be assigned to her .
The correct response is that G has preferenced that their pronoun is they/them.
That is a plural. If anybody is a group it can be they / their but the only singular pronouns are he she & it .German has a das which is neutral. Aber wir nicht Deutsch .This is when the EU could have been handy & we all could have been compelled to use it .
It seems like an easier way to handle it would just be to use Ryan’s name rather than a pronoun. “Ryan’s lifetime best” rather than “their lifetime best” works fine.
“They” is accepted as a singular pronoun:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/08/donald-trump-may-win-this-years-word-of-the-year/?client=safari
That was a terrible article that is a good example why ppl don’t read newspapers anymore. The other words on the list for 2015 have already gone nowhere.
I still think ‘it’ is the best choice .What is wrong with it ? Non judgemental , neutral ,sexless , genderless & if someone said -please call me it – ppl would say – ok .
Congratulations Brooke!!!
“G” doesn’t want to be referred as a she.
But she swims with other women. So yeah…
Out of curiosity, why is Ryan referred to as “they”?
G is non-binary
https://staging2.swimswam.com/swimming-outside-binary/
ah. thanks.
I wondered that, too. Thought it may have been referring to the two Michigan swimmers because they were referenced in a sentence after that. Perhaps a more neutral pronoun, instead if pleural, would be less confusing?
I agree; I’m all in favor of finding a neutral pronoun for those who prefer them, but “they/their” doesn’t seem to be working, and for obvious reasons. I’ve been hearing, reading, and trying to use, “they/their” on an almost daily basis through my work for the last two years, but even I still regularly get confused by it, (including when reading this article) and on several occasions it has resulted in serious misunderstandings which had economic consequences as well as personal social consequences which were less favorable than even if a traditional gender pronoun had been used. It makes way more sense to come up with new pronouns than to obscure and unnecessarily complicate longstanding, and useful, standard rules of… Read more »
All true but there is still the situation that in sport gender classifications are the base of competition . A pronoun substitution / invention won’t changethings.
“They” is not proper grammar. It should be “he or she.”