Swim Team Championships

February 16th was the kids Swim Team Sectional Championships in Meadville, PA. We left the house without incident at 6:30 am for the 1 hour drive. The younger 3 kids hit the warm up pool at 7:50 with Erin camping out on the bleaches to wait for her afternoon swim session. The morning session began at 9:00 am and moved right along. All of kids swam incredibly well. Here’s the wrap up:

Declan: 3rd place 100 yard medley relay team
4th place 100 yard freestyle relay team
5th place 25 yard freestyle LTBT (Lifetime Best Time) 19.13

Liam: 1st place 100 yard medley relay team
1st place 100 yard freestyle relay team
2nd place 25 yard breaststroke LTBT 24.31 (he missed 1st by .15)

Elise: 9th place 50 yard backstroke LTBT 47.13
10th place 200 yard freestyle relay team
16th place 50 yard breaststroke LTBT 52.89

So ended the morning session. All up, by lunch time, our three younger swimmers had managed to post 143 points for the team, and their team was ahead of the second place team by 400 points. We had a two hour break for lunch and to stretch our aching bottoms! Somehow sports bleachers just aren’t designed for long term comfort.

Erin’s session started at 2:30 pm and she did wonderfully as well:

5th place 200 yard medley relay team
6th place 200 yard free relay team
10th place 50 yard free style LTBT 29.96

The best part of Erin’s day came after her 50 yard free style. The time to qualify for the Western PA District meet is a 30.00 in the 50 yard free style and when she got out of the pool the score board had her at 30.02. It was only 15 minutes later when the “official” scores were posted that we realized she had made the cutoff time. We are so pleased!! She has worked really hard this year at getting her times down. So now she gets 3 more weeks of practice (the other kids are done for the season), and to go to IUP in March for the District meet.

By the way, Erin’s free style relay was one of the last events of the meet at Sectional Championships so we didn’t manage to get out of there until well after 8 pm. The other highlight of the day at Championships (other than fabulous swimming from all my kids and sitting on my butt for 12 hours) was Liam jamming his pinky finger playing basketball - AFTER all his events were over Thank Goodness. It swelled quickly and turned the most glorious shades of purple. I was pretty sure he’d broken it. Strangely enough, with 8 swim teams, hundreds of athletes and spectators in a beautiful recreational facility at Allegheny college, there was no medical “person” to attend to him. So I packed it in ice, waited for the swelling to go down a bit and buddy taped it to his other finger. I was able to take him the next day and get an x-ray and luckily it was only sprained. It’s still incredibly purple though.

There is one more “last chance” swim meet on February 23, for swimmers who are close to the District qualifying times for all events and want to try again to make it. Elise was going to swim and try to qualify in her breast stroke and back stroke, but you have to be within 3 seconds for a 50 yard event or 5 seconds for a 100 yard event. She’s 7.2 seconds off on her 50 yard back stroke and 8.4 seconds off on her 50 yard breast stroke. Not quite close enough this year. Now that she has qualified in her 50 yard free style Erin is going to take the opportunity to try to qualify in her 50 yard butterfly (she’s 3.00 seconds off) and in her 100 free style (she’s 3.38 seconds off). It would be nice to see her qualify in a 2nd or even 3rd event. She’d be thrilled and then we wouldn’t be driving to IUP (3+ hour drive) for a single event. Either way, we’ll be headed out to Indiana University in Indiana, PA on March 9th for the District Championships. Also, as a bonus, if she finishes in the top 9 at Districts we get to go to PA State Championships the following weekend and that’s a 6 hour drive!!. We’ll keep you posted! - J