EDWARDSVILLE – Edwardsville senior swimmer Noah May had another stellar performance in the Southern Illinois Invitational meet on Thursday at the Chuck Fruit Aquatic Center, winning the 200-yard individual medley with a time of 2:08.53 and finishing third in the 100-yard backstroke in 59.46 seconds as the Tigers won the meet with 309 points, finishing ahead of second place Granite City, who had 219.
Several of the Tiger swimmers performed very well in the meet, and May made sure to give credit to his teammates for a job well done.
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“I thought we did amazing at this meet,” May said in a post-meet interview. “The guys who are year-round swimmers, and it’s their last meet of the season before sectionals, they did incredible. There’s this one kid named Nathan (Weil), and it’s his first year swimming, he liked dropped insane amounts of time from the beginning of the year.”
As far as his own performance, May did perform well, but also thought he could have done better.
“Today, I could have done better,” May said, “but we just had a really hard workout yesterday, so I was expecting it was not going to be my best times here.”
The goal, of course, is to prepare well for next week’s sectional meet, which the Tigers will be hosting. May thought his overall performances were very good.
“This regular season, I’m very happy with how I’ve gone,” May said. “I’ve gone very close to my best times, where if I made it as close, I’d be doing it at sectionals. And then as a whole, as a team, we’ve been going much better, and we went undefeated this season, too, which is a plus.”
May likes his, and his team’s, chances at the sectional, with a goal of winning the meet.
“I think we’re going to win this sectional,” May said, “in that we’re going to send a couple of guys up to state this year, which will be a first for a couple of years. Last year, we sent someone up, and then, we’ve had some times where we didn’t send anyone up. This year, I think we have a chance to send a couple of guys up.”
And May is pumped to see how good the Tigers as a team can do at this year’s sectional.
“Yeah, I’m really excited to see what we can do next week,” May said, “once we’re tapered and we’ve been rested up.”
As a senior, May has some very pleasant and precious memories of his time swimming for Edwardsville.
“I made friends here that I’ll never forget,” May said. “I was able to work on my leadership skills that I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise, and I was able to learn what real hard work does. If you will put in the effort, you will see results from it.”
May is also hoping to swim in college but doesn’t know if he’ll be able to. He hopes to swim at Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo., in the future.
