Do Over Get Better

We had a busy week last week, so I'm going to try to play catchup on the blog this coming week. Of course, this week has its share of activities as well. First I'm going to go over Natalie's swim meet this weekend. I was on call for 24 hours on Saturday, so this is the first swim meet I've missed, and unfortunately, I'm sure this won't be the last meet I miss. I was able to go on Sunday, though, and that made me feel a little better.

This is a picture of Natalie with her friend Ally. You can't tell very well in this photo, but Ally is about a head taller than Natalie. I think she's actually even taller than me, but I never did stand right next to her. Ally is younger than Natalie, about three months younger. Ally used to swim for a different branch of AAAA, the swim club that Natalie swims for. She transferred in a month or two ago and the two of them were on the same team (that works out together and has the same coach) until Natalie just moved up on Friday. Ally's mom was talking about how much better Ally is doing on this team and how they like this team so much better. Apparently, they didn't worry as much about technique on their old team and were pretty nasty when Ally left. She's had to really work at changing her technique for the better. Patrick and I have to agree that we love this Northside ISD AAAA. We have to pay an out of district fee to be on this team (since we're in the Northeast ISD), but it's been worth it. Our own home district team seems disorganized and the practice times are different each day. Natalie is in no hurry to switch over, although she will have to switch when she gets into high school so she'll be able to work out with her high school team.

Along the lines of doing things over, we had an unusual event occur yesterday. Natalie swam in the 50 meter Freestyle. There was a problem during the start of the race, where they didn't give the kids much time between when they got into position to start and when the starting horn sounded. Natalie's time during that race was 40.16 sec. Her seed time was 40.38 sec, so she wasn't that happy that she had knocked off so little time. The meet officials decided to run that heat again, after all the girls had gone and after all the boys had gone--to give them time to rest and recover. I don't know that much about swimming technique, but it seemed to me that she wasn't moving her arms fast enough. Apparently Natalie's coach agreed and told her that she was moving her arms one at a time when she was supposed to be moving them continuously. When we found out she had to swim again, she was still in a funk from not being happy with her time, but I told her that she had a second chance.

When they ran the heat again, they had a delay this time between when they told the girls to get into their starting position and when the horn blew for them to actually start. Natalie got first place in her heat this time, with a time of 39.32 sec. Her arms were noticeably moving faster. Wow, imagine that--moving your arms and legs faster leads to a faster time! She had to grin at that, and so did one of the head coaches. Well, there was yet one more glitch. Apparently, the reason why there seemed to be a delay in the start was that they pushed the button once and no sound came out (that the girls could hear), but the timer started. They blew the horn again and then the girls started swimming, about a second and a half after the timer started. All the girls' times were actually about 1.5 seconds faster. Because they didn't know exactly how much time had elapsed, they couldn't adjust the times. Natalie's coach said that he wanted the second faster time to be recorded. Swimming the heat a third time was not going to be good for the swimmers. Now at least we know that she can swim a faster time than 39.32 sec.

By the way, these last two photos were not from Sunday. Patrick took them on Saturday. Didn't he do a great job? I confess that I've stopped taking photos of Natalie swimming. Maybe once every few months I'll take photos. After all, how many swimming photos do I need? Besides, she looks the same in all of them, just different strokes.

I'm going to do the usual list below (for my own records). The first time will be the time she achieved during this swim meet. The second time (in parentheses) is her seed time or her best time. The last number will be her placement amongst how many total girls under the age of 10 that swam that same race. She did not swim in all the races she could have been in. Her previous coach must have wanted her to focus just on these seven events. The problem with Natalie is that she gets anxious to race and waiting does not do great things for her times. Her new coach says that he'll have her swimming five events a day in the next meet.

50m free-- 39.32 (40.38) 15 out of 51
100m free-- 1:25.66 (1:25.36) 15/51
50m back-- 40.34 (40.61) 1/49
100m back-- 1:26.51 (1:27.64) 1/45
50m breast-- 66.01 (54.33) 21/50
50m butterfly-- 39.09 (41.24) 3/38
200m IM-- 3:27.57 (3:28.36) 11/27

Natalie's friend Maddie swam in this swim meet too. Maddie hasn't been in a swim meet since probably January. In the meantime she had pneumonia and wasn't able to swim for a few weeks. This was her first long course meet and she knocked off as much as 20 seconds off her seed times. Yay, Maddie!

Natalie is also doing better in coping with her expectations. She still gets disappointed and pouts, but she doesn't cry anymore and her sullen time has decreased. She's still a work in progress. She'll have six meets (five neighborhood swim meets and one AAAA swim meet) to deal with in June to continue working on that.