"A" Championships Day 1

How do you teach your child how to balance a drive to succeed with having realistic expectations? Patrick and I struggled with this today, the first day of the "A" Championships. Natalie only had one race today, the 50 yard backstroke. She hasn't competed in this event since December and she went in seeded 24th out of 32 with a time of 37.54 seconds. Most of the swimmers that were seeded in front of her had much faster times. We told her not to expect too much. They expected 744 swimmers at this meet, including many teams from out of town. That's a lot of swimmers, and many would be much faster than her.

After she swam in the third heat this morning, she didn't know what her time was. The touchpad had failed or she did not touch it in the right place, because the scoreboard didn't display a time or a placement for her. When the results came out online, we found out that her time was 37.15 seconds and that she was 16th out of 32. That meant that she qualified to swim in the consolation final held this evening. She was not happy, even though she improved her time by 0.39 seconds. In fact, she was disappointed and on the verge of tears.

I kept trying to reassure her that at least she qualified to swim this evening and that she would have another chance to improve her time. She pessimistically replied that she would also have another chance to add time. Patrick tried to tell her that she is getting so fast that she shouldn't expect to drop seconds off her time anymore. She should expect improvement only in small increments. We think she set out to prove him wrong.

Swimming in the consolation final means that no matter how fast you are, you aren't going to place in the top 8 and therefore not get a ribbon or medal. She finished first in the consolation final with a time of 35.34 seconds. She had dropped 2.2 seconds off her seeded time. You'd better bet she was happy with that. Never mind that she had the third best time in the 10 and under category. If she had qualified in the top 8 and been able to swim in the final, she would have gotten third place and a bronze medal. She didn't seem to mind. She had an "A" Standard time coming into this meet and now she has a "AA" Standard time. Now she has set her goal for the 50 yard backstroke at 34.59 seconds, which is a TAGS Standard time. That's less than one second away, after all.

So, how do you teach your child how to balance a drive to succeed with having realistic expectations? Patrick and I still don't know the answer to that question.