Championship Meet 2012

Today was our last swim meet of the neighborhood swim season. The other meets were "dual meets" or one neighborhood team against another. Today we swam against four of the other teams in our division. One of them was Canyon Springs, who we did not swim against in a dual meet this season. We did, however, swim against them in a dual meet last season.

We woke up at 5:30am so we could be at the Josh Davis Natatorium by 6:15am for warmups at 6:30am. During the school year, Natalie would wake up a little after 6am for school every day and even earlier on the weekend. Today, Natalie was not really awake yet, even at 6:30am. Patrick and I think this is partly because she is going through a growth spurt, but that's another subject entirely.

This is the way Natalie looks when she's not really awake yet--grumpy and quiet, sort of like her mother. ;) They are marking her events on her arm so she won't forget as they do with all the kids, but she is just going through the motions. She did wake up more when they started warmups. She complained about the water being cold and how she would have rather raced in the afternoon when the cold water would have felt good. The parents and other spectators were all glad the meet was in the morning. It got a bit more stifling by noon-ish when the meet ended.

Her first race was event #3, the Girls 9-10 100 yard Freestyle Relay. Natalie was the first leg and they won pretty handily with a time of 1:10.49. Second place was Hunter's Creek with a time of 1:12.15. Notice that the distances are in yards for this meet as this was a 25 yard pool as opposed to the other meets where the pools were 25 meters. This makes it difficult to compare the times with the previous meets' times.

Natalie's next event was the Girls 9-10 25 yard Freestyle. She didn't swim this race for the first two meets, but she did in the last two. The first time she swam it this year (versus Hunter's Creek), she got third place with her teammate Riley getting second. Last week (Knight's Cross) she swam the freestyle and got second place after Riley. This time she tied with Riley for second place with a time of 15.82 seconds. First place this time and at Hunter's Creek was the same girl that beat Natalie in the IM at Hunter's Creek and again today.

Natalie's third event was #35, the Girls 9-10 100 yard IM. Natalie was third with a time of 1:37.85. The girl who came in second was from Canyon Springs, so Natalie had not been in a race with her this year. Both girls are 10 years old, so Natalie is still doing very well for her age.

This is one of the photos I took during warmups of Anna R., Natalie, Maya E., and Rylee O. (left to right). Anna refused to have her picture taken until Rylee convinced her to get in the group photo. I took a similar picture of Maya and Rylee with Natalie last year at the Championship Meet (see HERE). They have grown so much in one year!

Natalie's next event was #55, the Girls 25 yard Butterfly. We were all having flashbacks to last year when Natalie's goggles fell down off of her face when she first dove into the water, resulting in a delay from her and a third place finish. We would have been happy if that didn't happen again, but she did much better than that. She won first place by over 2 seconds with a time of 18.17 seconds.

Natalie's last event was #65, the Girls 9-10 100 yard Medley Relay. She had the first leg, which was backstroke, and she won that one pretty easily. The other girls built upon that lead (Riley for breaststroke, Maya for butterfly, and Anna for freestyle), and they won with a time of 1:23.92. The second place team finished over four seconds behind them.

This picture is a picture of the cupcake treat that one of the team moms made for the party after the meet. She had strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate-flavored cupcakes with gummi sharks on top of the blue icing. Eric loved the shark so much that he ate his AND mine. Patrick went home to pick him up while a friend gave Natalie and me a ride to the party site.

The restaurant was pretty dimly lit, so I took this photo when we got home. They awarded medals to the first three places and ribbons for the rest of the places up to sixteenth place. Natalie again told me, "Mama, I only got medals." She got three gold, one silver, and one bronze. She also got the third highest point total of everyone on our team, and she got the third highest point total of all of the 9-10 year old girls at the meet. They haven't published all of the results yet, but she thinks the other two girls were the two 10-year-olds that finished ahead of her in the 100 yard IM.

We didn't expect much this year because we knew she would be at the bottom of her age bracket, but she keeps getting better and better. Meanwhile, she wants to continue swimming four days a week at Lifetime Fitness for now. We're so proud of our little swimmer!