Very First Tryout

We've gone through soccer tryouts for the boys, but today was the first time Natalie has been in any type of tryouts, and it was for swimming. We didn't know what to expect. We went to the Bill Walker Pool at Blossom Athletic Center. They were having tryouts for the group in front of us. When they were done, the head coach gave us a short spiel on how things were going to work. They divided up the kids into age groups. Natalie is now in the 9-10 age group and she was the smallest one in that group. The other kids easily outweighed her by at least 30 pounds.

The coaches were supposedly just looking at the kids to make sure they could swim legal strokes. Patrick also said that they were looking for kids that were coachable, not how fast they were. They weren't even timing or anything. The tryouts were basically a regular 45 minute practice with the kids swimming different strokes back and forth.

Natalie went second in her lane, but she easily overtook the other girl. They weren't looking at how fast they were swimming, but Natalie definitely showed energy and speed. She swam faster than the other girl in every stroke except breaststroke. It looked like the coaches were looking at her at first and then they were busy looking at the other kids. Hopefully this means that they had already made a decision about her and hopefully she will be selected. Patrick assured me that they would pick her, but he is biased and I have no idea.

They have tryouts until next Thursday. Tryouts for the kids that are already in the swim club start next week. They have preference so we won't know how many new kids they will take and what times they'll practice until after they see how many of the "old" kids tryout. They'll let us know by next Friday, September 2nd.

In other news, Patrick had to threaten to throw away Eric's cars and trains before he would go to school today. When he got there he loved it, of course. It would be easy to keep him at home longer, but he needs the structure and the attention he gets at school, as well as the socialization with kids his age. I have a little mommy guilt, as usual.