The End of an Era

For most of the summer, Austin woke up at 7 am, ate breakfast, and left for swimming by 7:30. He trained for an hour every day, doing laps, swimming drills, and other dry land training. Although there were other kids from our neighborhood doing swim team, he didn't know anyone on his team, the 7-8 year old squad. He worked really hard and we're so proud of him. He's the one with the straight arms closest to the camera.



Austin did swimming lessons every summer until he was about 5, then we moved to Australia where swimming takes a back seat only to eating and sleeping. All the kids know how to swim, it's that simple. They start swim lessons when they're 3 (not including Mom/Tot classes) and they learn real strokes right from the beginning, not just how to dive to the bottom and pick up a toy. Obviously they learn some basic safety as well, but I really loved that they were teaching actual skills. So Austin swam once a week for about two years, minus holidays. This gave him a great foundation to be on the swim team. He was totally ready he just needed to learn the other strokes and fine tune his freestyle.



This is the scene at every meet. The kids picked up a card at the beginning, stating the times and events they were swimming in, then reported to the bull pen a few minutes before the race. There they wait on the bench until their event is called. Then they are led in a group to their lanes. There were 240 kids on the swim team this year, so sometimes it took an hour just to get through each age group for freestyle alone, (i.e. Under 6, 7-8, 9-10, 12-13, 14+) And some of those age groups had multiple heats!



240 kids was just the number on our city's team, so when competing against another city you have to factor in all those other kids! Yikes! Because we had a very large team, some events and heats were made up of only our swimmers, meaning the other team didn't have anyone in the age group swimming the event.



Austin is a good freestyle and backstroker. Breast stroke and butterfly were more challenging but he tried really hard. The most frustrating part for me, as a mother, was seeing my child do his very best only to reach the finish and be told that he'd been disqualified! They were SO picky about the strokes. For instance, on breaststroke, the child's arms HAD to come out in front and simultaneously go down to their sides, but only to their chest, not their waist. The feet on breaststroke had to kick out and come together at the same time, and feet had to be turned the right way. If the judge saw one flutter kick, the child could be DQ'd. Also, with breaststroke, the child must touch the finish with both hands, not one, which proved to be the hardest thing for the kids. Often there were races where all 8 lanes of kids were DQ'd. Now I am not a mother who thinks kids should be coddled and everyone's a winner and all that... however it seemed a little too stringent in my opinion.



Because the kids had many 'opportunities' to get disqualified, they might compete in 4 races but not receive one ribbon or a single qualifying time. In order to get a trophy at the end of the year, they had to have a qualifying time in each event- back, breast, butterfly and freestyle, as well as the IM (all four done in a single race). I don't think Austin missed one meet this year, yet by the end of the season he still didn't have a qualifying time for butterfly or breaststroke, due to the strict rules. Because he really wanted the trophy, we tried to encourage him and kept telling him to do his best. It came down to the last meet of the year and he still didn't have them. Thankfully (divine intervention) the judges at the Provo meet were really lax and they only had one at each lane instead of two- thank you Provo! So many of the kids were able to squeeze through with a little less than perfect form to get the qualifying times! Now I don't know if Austin had reason to be DQ'd or not, but we were so happy for him.



The final meet was July 30th. Austin did a great job swimming butterfly, backstroke and the freestyle relay. He really wasn't happy that he had to do butterfly again- it's so hard for the kids. Who am I? I can't do butterfly! Anyway, he did a good job and it was great to finally finish the meet at 8pm. We had arrived at 4pm and sat in the blazing sun for 4 hours. We couldn't wait to go to dinner, sit in air conditioning, and celebrate the end of his swimming career, for this year anyway. Austin chose the Pizza Factory for dinner- don't you just love those breadsticks?



Last night we got to celebrate again at the awards ceremony. This is where the kids received their trophy (if they had all the qualifying times/events) and receive their ribbons from the county meet. Austin seemed very happy to get his first real engraved trophy! Ok, he's faking the smile but I know he's happy inside.



We sat on the lawn as they read all 240 names (yawn!) and each group lined up with their coach. (See 7 & 8 year olds below) The kids couldn't sit that long so they played on the playground behind us and we only saw them when they gave out push-pops, then they disappeared again, even Ashley. She just toddles right behind the big kids and tries to do all they do. At one point she climbed on the OUTside of the tunnel slide, about half way up, which was at least 8 feet off the ground. Jared ran to rescue her before she got any higher. Crazy girl.



At 9pm they opened the gates to the outdoor pool and all the families got to swim until 11pm. We only stayed about 30 minutes because it got really cold once the sun went down. The kids all enjoyed that a lot. Austin took his first dive off of a diving board. He did the low and the high one- pretty brave for such a small kid. We left for home, had some quick hot chocolate and got to bed. Ashley was so exhausted. At the pool she was saying, "Time a go, Mom, it's 8 clock". She knows 8 is bedtime so it cracks us up that she says this. I couldn't wait to get to bed myself.