Bremerton’s Nathan Adrian won the male athlete of the year award at the 78th Seattle Sports Star of the Year banquet Friday at Benaroya Hall.

Adrian was nominated in the professional athlete category. He won two gold medals and a silver at the London Olympics last summer.

Adrian is training in Berkeley, Calif., and his parents, Jim and Cecilia accepted on his behalf from presenters Lawyer Milloy and Drew Bledsoe.

Also, here’s a video by video-bloggers (vloggers) and swim fans extraordinaire, @EveandCandace. They were able to interview Nathan during the Austin Grand Prix last week.

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In case you missed it, I wrote a column on Nathan Adrian when he was in town for the Kitsap Sports Hall of Fame. Adrian is in his junior year at Cal.

The school also recently honored its national champions, which included Adrian, and you can read about that here.

Also, here’s a story we ran a few days ago on Tara Kirk Sell who is starting a $25,000 endowment to keep elementary school swimming alive in the Bremerton School District. A more detailed story will run later this week.

And, Puget Sound Swim Club had an outstanding summer season. You can read about it here.

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All of Nathan Adrian’s hard work, not to mention his gold medal as part of the 4×100 free relay at the world championships in July, helped him be named to the U.S. National team for 2010.

It means, Adrian will continue to receive a monthly stipend as part of the ‘A’ team from USA Swimming, which also covers travel expenses for its swimmers. You can see the entire list here.

In other news, world and Olympic champion backstroker Aaron Piersol believes those records that were aided by the full-length swimsuits will fall. And more quickly than people think. 

Piersol said in a story on eurosport.yahoo.com, that people have a taste of going fast in the water, and want that feeling again and world records will be broken next year.

You can read the full story here.

Also, Dara Torres will have hernia surgery, Natalie Coughlin is on Dancing With The Stars, and Masters swimmers are split on the whole bodysuit debacle.

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King Aquatic Club coach Sean Hutchison, the 2009 world championship women’s team coach, is set to coach Fullerton Aquatics Sports Team (FAST) elite program in September.

Earlier this week, USA Swimming tabbed two USA Swimming clubs, North Baltimore Aquatic Club and FAST as the second and third clubs to join the Professional and Post-Grad Training Centers. The clubs will profice services for elite swimmers. SwimMAC was the first club given that distinction in 2006.

The USOC will provide financial and other support to the clubs and provide athletes acces to training, travel, educational opportunities and more. North Baltimore, of course, is headed by Bob Bowman who trains Michael Phelps. Also, five-time Olympic coach Jon Urbanchek will also join FAst staff in May.

You can read the full story here.

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Here’s a story by the Seattle Times on Cullen Jones’ visit to Seattle on Wednesday as part of a six-city tour to promote swimming safety.

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When the decision to ban high-tech swimsuits was handed down by the National Federation of State High School Associations on Tuesday, Central Kitsap swim coach Steve Lehaie couldn’t have been more pleased.

“Thank God! It’s a blessing,” Lehaie said on Wednesday. “I saw some pretty horrendous swims at state that the kids come out of absolutely nowhere (and drop) many seconds in an event. I thought it was pretty bad to allow them.”

The federation’s board of directors agreed with its swimming and diving rules committee to ban the suits for high school competition — effective immediately. Practice begins Aug. 24 for the upcoming girls swim season. Continue reading →

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Here we go with the last individual event for Nathan at the worlds. He’s swimming in the finals of the 50 free. Fred Bousquet, Cesar Cielo, or could it be Nathan! We’ll see in just a moment.

Good start, maybe a fraction slower than the rest of the field, for Nathan. It’s so hard to tell who is ahead in a race like this, but 100 free champion Cesar Cielo pulled it out in the final few meters for the win. Nathan finished in sixth with a time of 21.46. It’s the same time he swam in the semis, which is a personal best.  Cielo won in a championship record time of 21.08 followed by Fredrick Bousquet silver in 21.21 and the bronze went to countryman Amaury Leveraux in 21.49.

I don’t think he can be disappointed. He is so young, and is getting so much exposure to elite competition it will only make him better. I haven’t heard if Nathan’s been named to the 400 medley relay tomorrow, and probably won’t find out until before the start.

ALSO: I just wanted to let you know that I will be on vacation this week. The Blogstroke will continue without me, so don’t worry. I will talk to you next week!

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Olympic gold medalist Cullen Jones, who is currently competing at the world swimming championships, will be in Seattle Aug. 12 as part of the national water safety campaign. Jones will begin his day with a breakfast with Seattle community leaders where he will be the keynote speaker at the Hilton Seattle Downtown from 7:30-8:30 a.m.

Jones will be at the Garfield Community Center from 11 a.m. to noon for a youth assembly. Following the assembly, Jones will give five children their first swim lesson. He is slated to throw out the first pitch at the Mariners game later that night.

Jones and USA Swimming Foundation, along with ConocoPhillips, have joined forces to promote water safety in order to reduce the number of drowning deaths in the country in children. This week a 13-year-old Poulsbo boy drowned at Wildcat Lake. The numbers are especially high for minority children, USA Swimmng said. Six out of 10 African-American children don’t know how to swim, while 56 percent of Hispanic and Latino children are unable to swim.

Joining Jones will be USA Swimming Executive Director & CEO of USA Swimming Foundation Chuck Wielgus, and John Cruzat, National Diversity Specialist.

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