Alumni, Current Swimmers Compete in YMCA Meet

About 50 former members of the Somerset Valley Y swim team, including many from Bridgewater, headed back for a homecoming over Thanksgiving weekend in the annual Alumni Meet.

The event, held on Nov. 26, was the seventh annual, when alumni swimmers swam against current, according to a release from the YMCA.

"It's great to get the kids back in the water," said swim coach Matt Donovan in a release from the YMCA. "They come to a place where they spent a huge amount of their time growing up, see old friends and catch up."

Anybody who ever swam for the team is welcome," he added. "We've had swimmers come back who were from the 1970s who have great memories from their years of swimming at the Y and want to reconnect with old teammates."

For years, the release said, the alumni swimmers have defeated the current swimmers, possibly due in part to the fact that the former are fresh while the latter have a four-hour practice before the meet.

"This really is more of a social event than a meet," Donovan said in the release. "We always see a great turnout among our former swimmers who enjoy getting back in the pool. Others come to socialize."

Donovan said in the release that the event also becomes a social event for parents to meet up with old friends they met during past swim meets.

Swimmers are from all over Somerset County, as well as parts of Middlesex and Hunterdon counties, and have won the New Jersey YMCA state championship for the past three years.