This year, for the first time, I finally managed to persuade the kids to join swim team. Actually, it wasn’t me, even though I’ve been bugging them for a couple of years now. Kate has a friend at the club who swims competitively and who is on the summer swim team. She convinced Kate to join.
Then one day, while hanging out at the pool waiting for Kate to finish practice, Ben saw a friend of his from school. This friend introduced Ben to the swim coach, who asked him to join. Ben said yes, primarily because he has two very good friends from school on the team.
They had their first match this last Saturday (they missed the first one because of soccer) and both did very well. There are tons of kids in Kate’s age group so she swam as an “unofficial” swimmer, although her times are recorded.
Ben, who put up the most resistance to my proposals to join, took second in backstroke and first in the butterfly! His mixed-age relay team also took first. And he would have taken second in the free except that he’s not good at turns yet and missed the wall so was disqualified (DQ). He also DQed in the breaststroke for a stroke violation. And his age-based relay squad was DQed for early entry, or they would have taken first there too. He’s been working on his turns and stoke mechanics all week at practice though, so hopefully those errors are easy ones to correct. And now the boy who didn’t want to join swim team declined a visit to his uncle over the weekend until swim team is over because he doesn’t want to miss any more meets.
Ben and Kate certainly take to the water like dolphins, don’t they?
Never had swimming pools in our lives, but the Pacific Ocean was/is one heck of a swimming hole in our long ago days.
A bit late now for the Beijing games, but there’s always 2012!