Axel Phillips held the plaque steadily.
Standing along the wall of the pool at the Frank P. Phillips Memorial YMCA on Second Ave. North, he posed next to Swim Columbus coach Stephanie Gonzalez as the two commemorated the six year old’s new state record in the short course 50-meter freestyle Tuesday afternoon.
Phillips, 6, set a new mark of 48.48 seconds in the 6-and-under division at the State Games of Mississippi in Meridian in late May. The time was nearly 45 seconds faster than his showing at the 2018 State Games of 1:30.15.
“What was so funny about it was that I didn’t even know about it until one of the coaches who was in charge of keeping up with the Mississippi State records informed me,” Gonzalez said. “And it was a mistake, originally they said it was butterfly…And so his mom and I actually went and looked at the swim meet and compared it to all the state results and that’s where we found it.”
The record is just the latest big news out of the Columbus’ local elite swim team.
A local product, Gonzalez did her high school swimming under the watchful eye of her father, Robert, at Caledonia before earning All-Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference honors for at Delta State.
She has coached at Swim Columbus for three years.
As stated in the program’s handbook, Swim Columbus’ “primary goal is to promote good citizenship and team spirit through athletics.” Gonzalez strives to foster this message through her coaching of youths aged three to 18 years old on a team her father formerly aided during the early stages of his career.
“This was actually the first club team my dad coached at in Mississippi many, many, many years ago,” she said. “When we had dinner right after I started coaching he asked ‘So what’s it like coaching my old swim team?’ and I was like ‘Oh yeah, you did coach there like 50 years ago.'”
As the summer circuit has reached its close, Gonzalez is in the midst of winding down her swimmers in preparation for the fall season as she expects to boast roughly 50 kids in the program while also expanding their swimming horizons beyond Mississippi.
“We’re kind of winding down right now,” she said. “So we’re really trying to get more swimmers in for the fall semester and getting more swimmers to go away for competition — not just in Tupelo or just Columbus — but try to show them that swimming is a national sport not just a Mississippi sport.”
Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.
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