YMCA Championship Meet

First thing in the morning, I registered the kids for swim team. I had to be fast so I could be sure to secure a spot for Phoebe on the "futures" team, since space is limited in the "futures" program. Benjamin is applying to be a "futures" coach again. So we're gearing up for another busy summer full of swimming. 

We left for church an hour early so we could go to choir practice before church. We are just barely starting our Easter music...like today. It's rather late to be starting Easter music, but choir has been...to put it delicately...going through some hurdles...recently. So we're starting Easter music now. It'll be fine.

Grandpa joined us for our meetings this morning and then took Benjamin home from church ahead of us so that Benjamin could get changed and pack up some dinner for himself. They were just leaving for the pool when the rest of us arrived home from church. We met them at the Georgia Tech pool at 3:00 for Benjamin's championship meet.

Here's Benjamin diving into the water for his 50 yard freestyle (lane 9, closest to the audience there):

He came in at 31.65 and was quite happy with that (he dropped from 33.59). He's getting very close to breaking a 30-second 50, and has been begging to do the last conditioning session before summer swim team starts...so we'll probably do that. 

Very unfortunately both of his relays were cut. He's on the "B team," or the second-fastest team in his age range. But someone from the "A team" got sick and wasn't able to come, so they pulled the fastest swimmer from the "B team" (not Ben, though he's getting faster every day) and put them on the "A team" and "scratched" the "B team."

I don't remember swim meets working this way when I was on swim teams, but here the teams are trying to "beat" each other, so if you get first place you score a certain amount of points for your team, fewer second place, and so on down the line until they stop handing out points. Relays typically end up winning quite a lot of points for a team (should you happen to place high enough to get points—usually only the first and second, perhaps third place get points). Whatever the case, it behooves a coach to create the fastest possible relay teams. 

Benjamin also got to 100y swim backstroke, though, and took off a fair amount of time on that event as well. I want to say around 7 seconds...but I can't be sure because I forgot to take a picture of his final time. 

His team did well, though! Toward the end when we realized his final relay had been cut we tried to signal to him from across the pool deck that we were ready to go already (we had been there for about four hours). He signaled back that he was staying put. 

And so we were at an impasse. 

Security won't let parents on deck, so it's not like we could just go down there and drag him off (that wouldn't be very dignified, anyway). By this time the crowd had really thinned out and even the deck was looking rather empty—so clearly a lot of swimmers and their families had gone home. 

Our coaches were keeping our team corralled, however. 

"I wonder if they won the championship and the coaches know it so they aren't letting them leave..." I hypothesized to Andrew.

And...that is indeed what had happened! 

The coaches wanted to be sure their swimmers were there for the trophy ceremony. Here they are (Benjamin is in the front—light green pants, white shirt):

He's loved being a part of this team and has improved so much this year! His best time for the 50 yard free from last summer was 36.78, so he took a good 5 seconds off. We'll see if he can get another 2 off this summer! He's also improved his technique on all of his strokes and has made some good friends. It's been good for him!

*****

For our part, we came to the swim meet armed with knitting supplies (Miriam), articles and textbooks (me), novels and sketch books (Alexander and Zoë), a whole bunch of other stuff (Phoebe), and dinner (peanut butter and jam sandwiches—would you expect anything else?). The security people had an absolute blast going through all our many bags before letting us into the facility, let me tell you!

Phoebe and Alexander spent an impressively long time playing with Wikki Stix (waxy string, basically...like candle wicks...I'm sure that's where the idea came from). Phoebe wanted to make a snowman, but we didn't have enough white os it ended up being rather rainbow-hued snow. You can tell it's a snowman, however, because Phoebe was careful to make an orange carrot nose and two brown stick arms:

Here's Alexander with a little rainbow scene he made:

And here's Phoebe's little rainbow:

We're quite happy to have swim meets behind us...until June...when we start back up again!