When I think about updating my blog, I get really overwhelmed because I am not updating it weekly like I did at the beginning of the year. It was nice to make sure I did that on Sunday.
Swimming finished, which is EXTREMELY sad for Allison. She worked as hard as she possibly could this year and even stopped having desserts/candy/sweeets and has continued to not have any because "she is in training for the Olympics". She is on day 100 without that stuff.
She worked as hard or harder than any other kid on that team and she always had a smile on her face. She LOVES to be in the water. At the beginning of the year, her coach said she wanted her to go to the older kids practice as well so she usually went to 2 (or occasionally 3) practices a day.
She was the youngest in her group 9-10, and she now had to start swimming 50yds or 100yds on everything. Last year she usually swam 25yds. So apparently according to her coach, 9 is the absolutely hardest year to make champs because they are not used to swimming double the length, and adding the flip turn, as well as being at the bottom of the group. With that being said, and all that Allison did, she missed making it to Champs by 1 second. She was REALLY sad not to make it, but I was SOOOOOOOO SOOOOO proud of ALLLL of the work that she put into it and she did amazing!! She just THRIVES being in the water.
Matthew was at the top of his group, 11-12, so he thought that it was kind of going to be easy to make it to champs.....but he was wrong. It was still very hard even though he was on the older range. He really wanted to make Champs this year because once you are 13+ they do Champs on Sunday so this would have been his last year of actually being able to compete at champs. He wanted to make it but not bad enough to make a bunch of sacrifices and work super hard. He still did well and came out with a couple 1st and 2nd ribbons. Swimming is just not his thing. It is good exercise and I hope/think he is going to continue with it next year but if he makes Champs time from here on out, it will just be the knowledge that he made it, but not choosing to compete in it. I was proud of what Matthew was able to do and glad that he enjoyed doing it.
The kids had their Swim Banquet so they got awards.
Their team is the Atlee Gators.
One of the teenagers on their team make the "cake" for the banquet and it turned out SO cute.
This first picture is of them doing warm-ups or in practice, but some Gators are still on the starting blocks and others are already swimming.
The flags that go across say GATORS
Then here they are actually racing in a meet:)
Matthew and Allison both got participation medals.
Allison got the WORKOUT MONSTER in her age group for girls, which honestly I think we would have been surprised if she hadn't.
Then they had a category for each of their 5 coaches (there are 150+ on the team) to pick 2 of their shadows. Again, I felt like Coach Jen would be SO sick of Allison with how much she followed Jen around but she loved it, so we again weren't surprised when Coach Jen called Allison as one of her shadows. It is funny though that the other shadow is almost wearing a similar top.
So the kids actually had Coach Jen two years ago, the last year they were at our last pool. Allison got the Coach's Award that year and they had a special bond but this year it became so much stronger just because Allison is semi, a little Jen but how much she wants to swim and her thought process about swimming. They just really connected this year.
Then there was Matthew who we realized about 4/6 out of the swim meets that he doesn't like to get yelled at even from a coach. I knew he didn't like when I yelled at him but I never thought it transferred over to coaches. One coach in particular Matthew didn't really have a lot of respect for, didn't like constantly getting yelled at so while he was IN a meet swimming the backstroke this particular coach that he wasn't fond of was yelling right next to him (he was in the outside lane) to "kick, kick, kick!" at which time without missing a beat, WHILE swimming, Matthew yells back, "I AM!" All of the coaches and I were dying laughing!! None of us had EVER seen or heard of something like that. When Matthew got out of the pool, he did go and apologize to him without me telling him to.
However, another time the coaches were yelling at him to "REACH, REACH" when he was doing the butterfly and he couldn't understand what they were saying under the water with his swimming cap on and though they were telling him "FREE, FREE!", she stopped and looked at them, and we were ALL KINDS of wondering why he did that. He got DQ for doing that but after that it FINALLY dawned on me that he doesn't like getting yelled at even by coaches. So we informed the coaches not to yell at him anymore. It was SOO hard not to yell, we just smiled and put our thumbs up as we watched him.....BUT he dropped 8 seconds on the next race that we didn't yell. He can focus on just doing the things that he has been practicing instead of using up some energy trying to figure out what the coaches are saying.
So his heats are pretty silent heats, but I am pretty sure that he dropped time every time he raced one of his events.
Allison on the other hand liked getting yelled at, especially by the coaches, particularly by Jen, I think because then she knew her favorite coach was watching her. She also liked to imagine that Coach Jen was trying to catch her like she did in practices many times. Though she didn't make Champs time, Allison REALLY excelled this year and LOVED every second of it.
Here is Coach Molly. Molly was an assistant coach last year as well but she was also a Senior in High School so she got to race at the meets as well. It was REALLY fun to watch her because she was GOOD!! She made it to the Olympic trials so she is kind of a super star to these kids. She is swimming in college and was able to coach one more year, but this is unfortunately her last year coaching the team. She was a great coach and really helped these kids become better.
Here is Allison with her favorite coach, with her Workout Monster trophy and her shadow glasses. She was living the life:)
This is Chase and Allison. I am SO surprised that I don't have more pictures of these two frienemies, as Allison calls them. Chase has been in Allison class all three years she has been at Cool Spring Elementary. Allison is the youngest in her class and this year Chase was the smartest boy, and 10 and Allison was the smartest girl and youngest. They kind of competed against each other in getting better grades. They usually were called out of class or Library to help with a special project because they were both the teacher's pets. They were both great kids so it was so awesome to be in the same class all three years. Allison will be SOO sad if Chase isn't in her class this year. There were 8, fourth graders from their school that was on the swim team and 6 out of the 8 were all in their class. It was really fun that when swimming started, they would see each other in class and they race against each other in the pool, and even though Allison was the youngest, she was the fastest (on most the strokes) and Chase was the next fastest. They have a great friendship and both got special trophies. Great kids, and I hope they stay friends their middle and high school grades as well.
