Summerfield vs. Knight's Cross

We had the second neighborhood swim meet on Tuesday night, June 11th, and it was hosted by another neighborhood team, the Knight's Cross Crusaders. Wow, what a disorganized meet. Some of the problem was due to the weather. The skies opened up with rain, thunder, and lightning before our team had a chance to even warm up. We sat in their clubhouse for about half an hour, waiting the standard 20 minutes after we last heard thunder. The meet started a little late--at 6pm. They seemed to be rushing to get the meet done by 9pm. We (our team) learned our lesson that we need to be more attentive to our kids if this happens again. I'm not sure if the home team learned that lesson or not.

They rushed to get the kids all lined up and ready to swim. They didn't give out updated heat sheets with the last-minute changes, not even to the officials. We usually have "ready bench" volunteers who make sure the kids are where they need to be and ready to swim their races. The parents who volunteer for the "ready bench" have a lot of experience, but several small children were missed, even though they were in the right place to swim. Eric was one of those. The other team rushed through the first events and didn't put up their sign to tell everyone what event number they were on--until they started missing kids. Only then did they put that sign up. We still haven't received the final results, so I don't know for sure, but it certainly seemed like the kids that missed swimming in their races were all from our team. There were at least five of them that I know of, mostly the five and six year olds. When we host a meet at our home pool, the individuals who run our meet usually make sure there is a child on each starting block when the race starts. Sometimes there isn't a child assigned to that spot, but they find out and then they move on. This team didn't do that.

To say that I am upset is an understatement. They blamed our parents/volunteers. They refused to let those kids swim. All those kids wanted to do was swim. It wasn't about winning or getting the best time. The kids just wanted to swim. Eric just wanted to swim. He was crying when they told him he had missed his race and that he couldn't swim the freestyle like he thought he was going to do. I calmed him down and told them he would get another chance. Then the parent running the meet suddenly made an announcement saying the "three" kids that missed their races could swim again--but wouldn't get timed. Then they started the race almost immediately after making that announcement. That was like rubbing salt in an open wound. Eric wasn't there again, of course. He was sobbing for a while. I held him almost until his next race, the backstroke. I stood right next to him to make sure he didn't miss that race. Several other parents did the same thing.

I found it interesting that for one heat where there were only Knight's Cross kids swimming, the parent running the meet stopped to call out the three kids names that were swimming--because only two were on the blocks. I also found it interesting that they had a kid swimming that wore a flotation device. He didn't have any chance of winning, because everyone finished in half his time, and technically that is against the rules, but they took the time to let him do that. Sure, all the parents are doing this for the kids, but let's do it for ALL the kids, not just for one team. I also found it interesting that several kids from the other team had false starts (but didn't get disqualified). Were they used to having to start quickly and didn't want to miss their races? Maybe so.

One parent went home early with her five year old child. She was so upset about her child missing her race that she wrote an email to everyone on our team. She left because her child had been "left out". That was not the way to handle it. Her child didn't get another chance to swim. Eric had another chance to swim. I am so glad he got another chance to swim.

All was forgotten after a while. Eric got to swim and everything was better. This is a picture of him with his buddy Sofia. He was goofing off and having fun with her the rest of the meet. He'll swim again at the next meet (next Monday) and this will all be just a memory.

I want to end this post on an upbeat note. Natalie was slotted to swim in the Girls 9-10 25m Breaststroke. She hates doing breaststroke, mostly because she thinks she's not good at it. When Eric didn't get to swim his freestyle, she was very upset about it too. I told her to focus on her races and beat the pants off the other team. I sort of did it to get her motivated, but I was also really mad at the other team for doing that to my little boy. Natalie won that race. She won by almost four seconds. She also swam in the Girls 11-12 25m Butterfly and she was faster than #2 by almost a second and faster than #3 by three and a half seconds. She won in the Girls 9-10 100m IM by over 19 seconds. She amazes me sometimes. Her two relay teams also won pretty handily. Go Natalie!