It didn\u2019t take long for Juneau swimmer Nolan Harvey to double his medal count at the Special Olympics USA Games.<\/p>\n
After winning a gold medal in the 50-meter freestyle on Wednesday, Harvey added a silver in the 50-meter backstroke the very next day, trailing only Utah\u2019s Blake Baadsgaard to the wall and finishing in 1 minute, 16 seconds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI used my flutter kicks to get to the finish,\u201d Harvey said from the King County Aquatic Center outside Tacoma, Washington, on Friday. \u201cAnd then I had an interview with (KTVA Channel) 11 news.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harvey got the best of Baadsgaard and Tennessee\u2019s Christopher Smith roughly 24 hours earlier. The three shared the pool in the 50 freestyle and Harvey came from behind to knock off both his competitors with a time of 1:07. Smith and Baadsgaard finished in 1:10 and 1:12, respectively.<\/p>\n
Harvey\u2019s mom, CJ Johnson, and longtime friends, Annie and Mattice Geselle, watched the race unfold.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe really swam harder than we\u2019ve ever seen him swim,\u201d Annie Geselle said. \u201cHe clearly wanted to get that medal \u2014 not just a medal, but the gold.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had to swim out from behind and beat people to win that race,\u201d Johnson added.<\/p>\n
A total of 25 athletes and unified partners traveled with Team Alaska to the Games, which started on Sunday and wrapped up on Friday. Harvey and Erica Pletting, of the Mat-Su Valley, were the only two swimmers on the team. The Alaska delegation also brought along unified basketball, bocce and bowling teams, among others.<\/p>\n
Johnson said all the athletes were celebrated even before they won any medals. Special Olympics volunteers greeted all the arriving teams at the airport, cheering them to, \u201cGo for gold!\u201d Team Alaska was seated in the front row for opening ceremonies at Husky Stadium on the University of Washington campus, which was aired on ESPN and headlined by pop star Charlie Puth.<\/p>\n
\u201cNolan was in the front row and family from all over the country, family and friends, were sending us screenshots from their TVs of Nolan\u2019s face on national TV,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cSo that was really exciting to see him smiling like that on the big screen and to be part of something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
When he hasn\u2019t been in the water, Harvey has been busy interacting with other athletes in the dorms and athletes village, Johnson said. All teams are given commemorative team pins and encouraged to trade with athletes from other teams.<\/p>\n
At last count, Harvey has amassed about 40 pins, a symbol of all the new friends Harvey has made this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s just no way to count everything that happened and all of the opportunities that Nolan has had while he\u2019s here,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact sports reporter Nolin Ainsworth at 523-2272 or nainsworth@juneauempire.com. Follow Empire Sports on Twitter at @akempiresports.<\/b><\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It didn\u2019t take long for Juneau swimmer Nolan Harvey to double his medal count at the Special Olympics USA Games. After winning a gold medal in the 50-meter freestyle on Wednesday, Harvey added a silver in the 50-meter backstroke the very next day, trailing only Utah\u2019s Blake Baadsgaard to the wall and finishing in 1 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":4599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4598"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}