County! County! County!

 

Swimming is an interesting sport because we spent approximately 15 hours at the pool over the past two days (5 on Saturday and 10 on Sunday) to watch our three children swim a collective grand total of approximately 5 minutes.

It was certainly a marathon...for the spectators!

Fortunately, they do allow swimmers to leave after their last event and they always schedule relays first (at regular meets they are last) which meant we got to leave "early" after Zoë's relays. Still, it was a lot of hours at the pool!

I took this top picture because it shows our coach (Amy) as a child swimming for Gwinnett county and now as an adult coaching for Gwinnett county. There are 5 coaches featured on this slide for the same reason (and there seemed to be multiple slides of this nature). Such a thing is unfathomable for me (I currently live 2221.66 miles, as the crow oryx flies, from where I first joined a swim team) but is apparently the reality for many people. The Census Bureau claims that in the United States "nearly six in 10 young adults live within 10 miles of where they grew up, and eight in 10 live within 100 miles," while this Pew study claims approximately 40% of people remain in the community within which they grew up.

Anyway, Andrew and I were both surprised by how many coaches in the Gwinnett county swim league were also young swimmers in the league.

Here's Benjamin (green cap, two arms up in the air) ready to swim on his relay team:

And here he is up on the block (lane 5): 

He was so excited to break the 30 second barrier this season, but only did it once officially. His other times hovered right around the 30 second zone. So his goal was to swim a sub-30 leg of the freestyle relay and...he did! He even beat his previous record, which is awesome! 

Here's the sign showing his time as 29.76 (it looks like his teammate had left the block prior to him touching the wall in this picture, but rest assured that he had already touched the wall at this point—you can tell because his time had already registered, so he must be either springing back away from the wall or something...anyway...it was all fine and legal):

He was a little bummed that he didn't take more time off (beating his PR by mere milliseconds), but I think it's fantastic that he managed to break 30 seconds again because that shows that he's getting close to always and easily breaking 30 seconds. 

He also got a personal record for his 100 IM—dropping three seconds from his previous record. It was a good day for him!

It was also a good day for Phoebe, who discovered the vendor booths were handing out free lollipops:

Technically people were supposed to do things to get the lollipops (five pushups, answer a trivia question, spin a wheel, whatever) but, as it turns out, if you're four years old with puppy dog eyes people will just hand you candy. 

She had so many lollipops.

When Benjamin was finished swimming we headed home, packed up some lunches for the next day, and went to bed. We had to be up bright and early to make it to the pool by 7:00 for Alexander's call time.

The older kids are allowed to filter down to the pool as they arrive. The younger kids have to all meet out front and enter the pool with a coach, which makes sense. The older kids have enough life skills to not get entirely lost (or to not panic when they do). For example, while I was filling up Phoebe's water bottle at the drinking fountain, I heard a little, "Ms. Nancy! Ms. Nancy!" behind me. 

That's often the way adults are addressed in the south—Mr. or Ms. followed by their first name. 

It was strange for me at first, but I'm fairly used to it now (having lived in the south for 12 years). 

I turned around and there was Susanna. 

"Do you know where swimmers are supposed to go? I went ahead of my mom because the security line for viewers is so long and now I just...don't know what to do."

"I know that swimmers need to go through those doors at the very end of the hallway, but I do not know where they need to go after that," I told her. "But if you just go through those doors and pick a kid in a swim suit to follow you should eventually make it down to the deck."

"Okay!" she said. "I'll do that!"

And I saw that she did make her way to the deck, so whatever journey she went on to get there was successful. But I think a seven-year-old would probably have just sat down in a corner to cry...so it's best they are led around by a trusted adult.

Here's our little train of 8-and-under swimmers walking from our team area to the practice pool (they trained their way through the entire building):

I thought all those little green-capped kids huddled around coach Jeremy were so cute:

And here's Alexander getting hauled out of the pool by coach Jeremy:

The platform is at least a foot (if not more) above the water so it can be difficult for the littlest of our swimmers to get out on their own.

Here's some of our early morning crew (Josephine, in purple, swims for another team, but she's in our ward and wanted to sit with us):

Here's Phoebe playing with some play dough (in a hoodie because the air conditioning was out of this world cold—those poor swimmers hopping out of the cold competition pool and having to sit in this cold air!):

When we left the house (before the sun was even up), Andrew said, "You know we could take the easy route and grab an iPad..." but I declined. 

It's good for kids to entertain themselves other ways, I think. So it's really my fault we spent the next 10 hours entertaining Phoebe with crayons, paper, play dough, wikki stix, hidden objects pages, Wooly Willy, an LED drawing board...and a million other things. 

All of which we had to bring through security. 

I was like, "I am so sorry about all of this..."

And the security guard, glancing down at the row of tow-head kids following me like little ducklings, was like, "You have a lot of kids... You're going to need it..."

We also had a sticker-by-number book and a couple of other things for older kids. And all of our food. And Kindles. And...it was a lot. 

And it all had to be in clear plastic bags. 

But we made it through the day—without screens! Unless you count Kindles as screens...but those are just books...so they hardly count.

Warm ups are excruciating. We had to get Alexander to the pool at 7:00...but the meet didn't start until 9:15...after Zoë sang the national anthem! (And then she had to be on deck at 1:00, but her meet didn't begin until 3:30...after a set of brothers played the national anthem on their saxophone and French horn). 

This year Zoë was much more confident than last year (and, she'll tell you, it helps that she wasn't getting over a cold this year). She held the microphone close to her mouth and sang nice and loud. 

And the announcer said her name correctly (last year he introduced her as "Jenny") and she got a free t-shirt for her trouble (singing in front of 2000+ people is apparently worth a free t-shirt).

She did great! And she talked about how it's like 15 minutes of fame—everyone was telling her well done on her way back to her seat, but then she sits down and starts watching and it's like she melts back into the crowd, an ordinary citizen. 

And then at the very end of the meet, little Levi Morgan was exiting the stands and he waved up at her and yelled, "Zoë! Zoë! Zoë!" 

When he got her attention he yelled, "Good job singing!" before he followed his family out (lucky ducks—we had to stay for the afternoon). 

"Never mind!" Zoë said. "My fame is still going! That's like three hours of fame!"

Anyway, Alexander didn't make it onto our relay teams, but he did qualify to compete in breast stroke. That meant we had to sit through relays, backstroke, freestyle, and IMs before watching him swim for a whole 30 seconds. 

Here's Phoebe doing strange things with her sandwich:

And here she is eating a candy cane that I packed to limit the number of times she asked to go out and nab a lollipop from the tables because...I was a little embarrassed about the number of trips she took to get lollipops once she discovered them. We bought them for Christmas and then lost them so didn't give them to the kids and then found them when we were clearing things out of the kitchen. So it's Christmas in July for us—falalalala:

She would ask to go potty or get a drink from the drinking fountain...so someone would take her out (she had a lot of people she could ask to take her on outings and she certainly spread out her luck). 

9 out of 10 times it was all a ruse to walk past the lollipop table!

Ah, finally! Here's Alexander on the starting block (number 4):

He was so happy to have dropped a second from his previous record...I hardly have the heart to tell him that he was DQ'd for some reason. Poor guy (you'll get 'em next time).

But look how he's pushed himself up onto the pool ledge all by himself (that takes some serious strength—some of the other swimmers ended up being helped out).

We didn't want to go through security again, so we stayed in our seats between the meets (actually, we moved up to get better seats) and sent people out to the car to eat some of the food I'd left in a cooler there before coming back in empty handed (to make security easier). That meant that whoever was still sitting down was in charge of saving all our seats. 

At one point, Andrew was out at the car with Zoë and Phoebe needed to go to the bathroom (or to get a lollipop...) so I left Miriam in charge of the seats. When I came back, though, there was a whole family beside her. 

"Miriam!" I chided quietly. "What did you do?"

"I don't know!" she whispered back. "I panicked, okay?!"

Luckily, that family decided to move so we got our seats back. 

So when I decided to go to the restroom myself (Phoebe had been in a wild mood when I took her out to use the potty so I didn't feel like I could ask her to wait patiently while I used the restroom...without her getting into some sort of trouble), I warned Miriam to actually look after our seats this time.

"You got it!" she said, sprawling out over several seats.

Here's Alexander with his friend Isaac:

They are the same age. 

Isaac is, perhaps unsurprisingly, faster. Taller swimmers often have an advantage in the pool. 

Anyway, after we made all our rounds of lunch, it was Zoë's turn to swim. Benjamin wanted desperately to be down on the deck, and coach Jeremy said that if he could sneak down with some swimmers and wasn't turned away by security he'd welcome the help on setting up the relays. 

Operation "sneak onto the pool deck" was a success and Benjamin had a blast shadowing Jeremy.

One reason Benjamin is sad about our move is that he would have been a strong contender to be an assistant coach of sorts next year—a paid position. And he was so looking forward to it! 

But, alas...it's not going to happen. 

Yesterday he enjoyed pretending what it would have been like.

(I actually can't keep all the coach names straight. There are the "futures" coaches, and there are junior coaches, and assistant coaches, and coach coaches...and I'm not sure what level Benjamin is at now...I just know that next year he would have been able to be paid to help with the younger levels and he was really excited about that potential.)

Here he is helping a swimmer with their swim cap after pointing to their head and mouthing the words, "I'm helping!!" to me:

He was carrying around a heat sheet and helping line up kids and basically having the time of his life.

Here's Zoë on the block (lane 1) waiting for her teammate to come in so she can swim her leg of the 200 yard freestyle relay (what the kids like to call the "freelay"):

And here she is diving in:

And here she is getting ready for the medley relay (she's standing directly behind block 9):

I would have organized the relay a bit differently if it had been me making the decisions. Grace is an excellent swimmer and she qualified in individual breast stroke and individual fly. Zoë didn't qualify for either, but came close in breast stroke. But they put Grace in the relay for breast stroke (since she's faster than Zoë, who is the second-fastest breast stroker on the team) and put Zoë in the relay for fly (since she's the second fastest flyer, next to Grace). But, see, the thing is that Grace is much better at fly than Zoë is and only moderately better at breast stroke than Zoë...so it would have made more sense to put Grace down for fly and Zoë down for breast stroke. 

But that's okay. 

Zoë survived her fly leg (though she will tell you that she was completely drowning, that's hyperbole—she did just fine). Here she is not drowning in lane nine:

And here's Grace hauling her out of the pool:

She was so tired from pushing so hard that she just flopped onto the deck after being hauled out of the pool. This is Zoë's first year in the 11-12 age group, so it's her first year swimming two laps for races instead of one. That's a pretty big transition to make (a 100% increase)! We're proud of her for swimming hard.

Here are our three swimmers after the meet:

The car ride home was the quietest car ride we've ever been on. No one said a word the entire way. Phoebe and Zoë fell asleep. I think Miriam may have fallen asleep as well. Benjamin just read. Who knows what Alexander was getting up to...but whatever it was it was quiet!

And that's a wrap on the 2026 summer swim season!

Here are our intrepid county swimmers on a walk after dinner and a rainstorm:

They were all excited for no early morning practice this morning, though I'm sure we'll be back at the pool before too long!

Last night before we went to bed, completely exhausted, Andrew said (jokingly), "I blame you for all this!"

"Me?" I said. "How so?"

"You're the one who was a swimmer. You're the one was like, 'We should put the kids into swimming! They'll enjoy it!' And then it turns out they're good at it and we end up spending 15 hours at the pool in one weekend and...yeah...it's seeming like it's all your fault."

"Sucks to be awesome," I said. 

You should know that (1) kids these days like to say "Sucks to suck," which is not my favourite phrase, and which my children get in trouble for saying because I think taunting someone who is losing at something, for example, is poor sportsmanship. That's why I said "Sucks to be awesome," and (2) the kids are awesome and it's super cool to have made it to county at all (they pull the top 50 swimmers for each event out of thousands), but rest assured that we were never in danger of winning, like, first place—Benjamin came in 43rd for his IM and Alexander DQ'd in breast stroke; our relay teams were no where close to winning any sort of ribbon. So...we still have plenty of humility left in us.

Though we do have teammates who did win first place over all in their events, which is cool! 

It can be nice to come in first place, but it's not really that important. I'm more happy that the kids are enjoying themselves, making friends, and learning good skills (i.e. dedication, water survival, how to keep fit, sportsmanship, etc.).