She FINALLY Made It!!

After an entire season, 15 competitive meets, Sectional Championships and one Last minute Last Chance swimmeet, Erin has successfully gotten her free style time under the qualifiying time for Western PA Districts! She needed to beat at 34.00 seconds for a 50 yard free style and finished with a 33.87 on Saturday. A great effort! And what did she win you ask... ... ... 4 more weeks of practice and the opportunity to go to Indiana Univ. of PA (in Indiana, PA) and swim in the Western PA YMCA District Finals.

We are now all scheduled to go out St. Patrick's Day weekend to Indiana, PA to watch her swim against the fastest 9 and 10 year olds (with the few 11 year olds who made the cut off date) in Western PA. If she manages to finish in the top 9 swimmers in her event she will move onto PA State Championships the following weekend. We are so proud that she managed to get to Districts and can't wait to see the results.

Backing up to the weekend of Championships, we left here on a Friday afternoon with Erin's friend Mya (also a swimmer) adopted for the weekend. We arrived at the designated hotel where the team was staying and what a shock we got!! It was like spring break for 8-15 year olds! The entire Eastside swim team was staying at the same hotel and the inside courtyard and pool area was crawling with familiar faces. To make it even more festive (and noisy!) all the hotel rooms had indoor balconies that faced the pool. It was incredibly magical for the kids to be away from home and yet surrounded by all their friends.

The next morning, we headed to the Championship meet. The results were as follows:

Declan: 14th place - 25 Yard Freestyle, 8th place - 25 Yard Backstroke, and 2nd Place - 100 Yard Freestyle Relay

Liam: 2nd place - 100 Yard Medley Relay, 3rd place - 100 Yard Freestyle Relay, and 7th place - 25 Yard Backstroke

Elise: 9th place - 200 Yard Medley Relay, 45th place - 50 Yard Freestyle, and 24th place - 50 Yard Backstroke

Erin: 9th place - 50 Yard Freestyle, 14th place - 50 Yard Backstroke, and 4th place - 200 Yard Freestyle Relay

What makes these results even better is that most of these events had upto 60 swimmers competing in them!!

After the meet, we headed down to Pittsburgh, PA for the rest of the weekend. Taking in their excellent Carnegie Science Center and the SportsWorks Center. But more about that later - J