Zoë at the County Meet

After a somewhat terrible night (with Phoebe and rogue fire alarms and other adventures), we got up bright and early to head to Georgia Tech for Zoë's session of the county swim meet. Their facility is phenomenal—it probably helps that it was built specifically for the Olympics in 1996. So it was just fun to be there, even though our kids didn't quite end up making it in any individual events. Zoë was 56th in breaststroke (24.96, but 50th place—the cutoff for county—was only 24.49 and these kids didn't drop to 23.84 seconds until 44th place, so Zoë was really quite close making it!). As the fastest breaststroker on our team, though, she was pulled into the medley relay. She also swam on the freestyle relay.

This wonky panoramic shows this whole pool area. From their website, "The competition pool is 50 meters by 10 lanes, with two movable bulkheads so that courses can be set up for 25 yards, 25 meters or 30 meters for water polo. It also features a movable floor which can be set from zero depth to seven feet, eight inches." Today it was set for 25 yards. That gave the kids two pools to warm up in (although Zoë reports that the water was too cold to consider it a warm up), though they only competed in the middle pool. 

Parents aren't allowed on deck, which is fine. They have so few swimmers that it isn't much work for the coaches to keep them in line (we had the head coach, the co-coach, and four (teenage) assistant coaches for ten little swimmers). The coaches sent the parents this picture of the kids all ready to swim:

I got a special bracelet that let me go on deck though! I felt like royalty (kidding—but their security was pretty strict about that kind of thing). Zoë  sang the national anthem, so I was allowed to be down there to help her calm her nerves (and to take her picture singing). There were probably 1000 or so people there, so it took some courage to get up there and sing (plus she's got a bit of a head cold...because why not?) so she was a little timid at first, but she got more confident as she went on.

Here she is saying, "There's so many people!" in a little room off to the side beforehand:

We went back there for some quiet so I could play the first few measures for her a couple of times. She typically sings the anthem a capella, so it helps her to get the notes stuck in her mind. 

Here she is singing:

So, the meet is a bit different than how they did/do meets when I was swimming (probably a result of moving through both time (it's not the 90s anymore) and space (it's a completely different country). Instead of having everyone come for the whole time they divide their meet up by age. Friday evening the 15–18 year olds swam. This morning the 9–10 year olds swam. The 13–14 year olds swam this afternoon. Tomorrow morning the 8 and unders swim (Alexander isn't swimming in county though) and Benjamin's age group (the 11–12 year olds) will swim tomorrow afternoon.

Within each age group they swim all the relays first. That way any families whose children were only swimming on relays (like our family and many, many others) can go home at that point. I would say the relays took about an hour to get through this morning. Zoë was in the water for approximately 50 seconds (aside from the warm up, which was a bit longer)...but she sure had a good time! 

Here she is swimming (in lane three, with the yellow swim cap):

She even made some gains against some of the breaststrokers on her leg of the medley relay, and although they were about in fourth place here they pulled ahead to get first...in their heat (not overall)!

And here is the crew that came to cheer her on so early in the morning:

Poor Andrew isn't feeling well at all, but he rallied to drive us all down there. Alexander wanted to come so badly that he could hardly sleep because he was afraid we wouldn't wake him up. When I went in to wake him up I found that he had switched his bed around and made a little nest for himself at the foot of his bed...so when I roused him his sat up and then scrambled headfirst into his wall in an effort to get out of bed the way he ordinarily does, you know? 

It was pretty funny—a real demonstration of what it means to get up on the wrong side of the bed.

Luckily, he was in good spirits and was a happy little cheerleader. 

Next year he wants to sing the national anthem so that he can get a t-shirt (they gave Zoë a county t-shirt for singing the anthem, which was a nice surprise). 

Benjamin was happy to get to see the pool before his meet tomorrow. 

Rachel was feeling sick and miserable and didn't want to go. Nobody wanted to wake Phoebe up at that hour (she'd only just gone to bed!), so I woke Miriam up and had her move to my bed to go back to sleep with Phoebe (who was also in my bed) so that when Phoebe woke up she would remember that her sisters were babysitting her. 

We'd talked about this before we put her to bed, but I was worried about her waking up and not finding anyone on the top two floors of the house. She doesn't typically go downstairs to wake her big sisters up so I'm not sure she would think of it in the morning and imagined her going into full blown panic mode. 

So, we left our biggest girls and our smallest girls home asleep when we left for Georgia Tech. Alexander was thrilled to get to see the sunrise. After the rough night Andrew and I had, we could probably have done without the sunrise...and we both took an afternoon nap...after Andrew got home from the doctor. 

I tell you—this sickness we've had has cost us a pretty penny! Miriam went in before she went to Europe. Then we took Alexander and Phoebe in. And then brought Phoebe in again (because she wasn't sick enough for antibiotics the first time). Then I took Zoë in and while she wasn't sick enough to need antibiotics yet the doctor sent a prescription to the pharmacy that we could fill if Zoë got worse over the weekend instead of better (we haven't filled it yet, though she wasn't thrilled about singing the national anthem with her sore throat). Then Andrew went in today. 

Zoë, Rachel, and Benjamin are still sick...so we'll see if they need antibiotics to feel better as well. 

I probably could have used a prescription myself...but I stubbornly stuck it out...

It's been...not fun...but! Swimming season is almost over and that means everyone can sleep in on Monday morning...for the first time all summer long!