Our summer swim season has come & gone, this year, Ezra & Tobin both joined the team-and loved it! They had practice every morning from 9-10, and never once complained-although some mornings it took awhile to actually get into the pool. Ezra, as you would expect was quite serious about it, and because he fell nicely into the 8 & under age group (and there aren’t an abundance of strong swimming 8 year old boys), he ended up swimming for “points” (not the exhibition heats) pretty quickly and even moved up to the B relay team by the end, which finished less than 2 seconds behind the A relay team in the final meet! He improved his stroke a ton over the season and really figured out the backstroke, that was important to him because the team is weak in the younger boys backstroke ;-).
Here he is ready to dive in for a relay with Coach Ethan . . .
Marian “aged up” this year and unlike the boys, there are a ton of girls in her age group and so this year, she was competing against a lot of girls older than her. She has also grown probably 6 inches since last summer and we think she is figuring out how to use those long limbs of hers! She loves it even though she’s not finishing at the top, loves cheering on her team, loves the whole team atmosphere, all with a great attitude! And, she also greatly improved her stroke (especially the breast stroke), is so comfortable in the water, and took off lots of seconds in the final meet.
And, Tobin . . . he wasn’t sure he could swim the length even though he could last year and he practiced (I use that term lightly) in the first lane by the wall. So, he would swim a few strokes, grab the wall, take a breath break, and repeat. It didn’t help that there were 25 barely swimming kids in his lane. So, on the morning before the first meet, I wanted him to swim the length after his lesson, I knew he could but I wanted him to see that he could! Ethan helped by telling him he’d race him (we give Ethan credit for getting Tobin to swim last year). He jumped right off those blocks and easily swam the distance (25m). The funny part came that night at the meet. Most of the races for kids under 10 are just 25m, Tobin was swimming the 25m freestyle and 25m breast stroke. He was VERY nervous, and told me “I forgot everything they [the coaches] told us”. After I explained everything again, he was better. There are a couple hundred kids running around, 50 races and probably over 100 heats so it is pretty intimidating! He gets on the blocks for his 25m and takes off — REALLY fast, wins the race but turns and does another 25 back! Everyone was yelling for him to stop but he couldn’t hear anything, when he pops out of the water, everyone clapped and I explained that he only needed to swim to the other side. “I didn’t know, it WAS my first race you know”. When the coaches needed another boy to swim the 50m, they knew Tobin could do it, so he got picked.
Tobin would mess around during practice, was very social, and had a lot of fun but was all business at the races! While he didn’t get points for the team like Ezra, he was one of the younger kids competing and also greatly improved his times. He will be great for the team next year!
Both sets of grandparents were able to see the kids swim — sorry Dick & Sandy, I didn’t have my camera at the meet you came to. The kids loved having them watch . . .
and, buying the Kona ice
The last meet of the season was July 27th and it was our club’s turn to host the League Meet (all 5 teams compete). The theme was Out of the world (thus the alien glasses)
During the regular dual meets, everyone gets a ribbon based on their finish in their heat with their time on it-they use them to see how they improve from meet to meet. But in the league meet only the top 12 finishers in each event get ribbons. Ezra came away with 3 ribbons for his 3 events and his B relay team got 6th place (getting points for his team).
It was an ALL day meet, and pretty exhausting but a lot of fun. Our club came in 2nd place overall.
It was a great season, it was fun seeing the boys have so much fun with it:)