Swim Meet #1

I am on a swim team, it is somewhat uncompetitive and small, but it is still fun. Today we had our first swim meet. It was my team and two other teams. We were at one of our competitors pools, but there is not much of a home team advantage in our league of swimming. Warm-ups started around 8:30 in the morning. I worked mostly on flip-turns, as I had not worked on them much during our previous week of practice. I was not paying any attention to time, but I think events started at 9:00. All events are done in order of age. Youngest, 6 years & younger first, and oldest, 15-16, last.

Our meets start with Freestyle Relay, where teams of four all swim Freestyle one length of the pool. My relay only had three people, because one of our teammates was absent. Therefore, we had to get someone from a younger age group to swim up. However, each person can only swim four events, two individual, and two relays. Turns out it is very hard to find someone not swimming four events in the older age groups. The age group below mine already had one kid in their relay that was swimming up. My teammates and I went searching around for someone to swim up for us, which took quite a while. Finally, we devised a plan, we would get a kid from two age groups younger than us to swim up into the age group below us, and take one kid from their relay to swim up for us. We ended up putting this together about 5 minutes before our relay, so we were a little tense.

After the Freestyle Relays were over with, the meet moved on to Freestyle. In swimming, it seems that the older an age group is the less kids are in it. Due to this, there are tons of kids in the youngest age groups, so they take the longest to do their events. I think 6 & under, 7-8, and 9-10 take up 80% of individual event time, if not more. So anyway, after we did freestyle relay, we had a long time to wait before any of my friends and I got to swim again. I was swimming Freestyle, and by the time I was up to swim, it was as if I had not warmed up at all. That does not matter that much though, since our races are only two lengths of the pool. When I swam, I found everything acceptable except my flip turn. I ended up flipping too much, and my feet almost hit the bottom of the pool. This caused me to have no time to streamline or twist back on to my chest. Therefore, I had to twist onto my chest as I pushed off the wall, so I pushed off towards the lane rope and almost hit it. My competitors' turns were much faster than mine were. I had to try and make up time in the last length, which did not work. I ended up losing my race, and being unpleased with it. Freestyle did not work out well for me.

Backstroke starts after the finish of Freestyle, I was also doing backstroke. I was hoping to do well in this race, as I think backstroke is my best stroke, and I did backstroke flip turns during warm ups and did very well with them. However, I had not counted my stokes from a flag marking to the wall, so I was not sure how well I would time twisting onto my chest. When it was time for me to race I was excited, I always get excited right before a race. I swam very well for me and stayed straight for the most part. I ended up twisting unto my chest a little early for my flip turn which slowed me down a little. My flip turn was fast and smooth, although I did swallow a lot of water. The rest of the race went fine, and I forgot what place I came in.

Breaststroke, Butterfly, and Individual Medley succeeded Backstroke respectively. I did not swim in any of these, since I had already swam in 2 individual events. During these events, I just sat under a generic EZ-UP and hung out with my teammates, some of whom were doing these events.

The last event in our meets is the Medley Relay. It's a relay made up of teams of four. Each person swims one stroke in the order of Backstroke, Breaststroke, Butterfly, and Freestyle. Again, my relay team did not have enough people, so we had to go on another search for a fourth swimmer. Luckily, someone from one age group younger had arrived during the meet. He was not at the meet for Freestyle relay so he did not do it. Because of that, he was only doing one relay, so he ended up being our fourth. I was starting our relay swimming Backstroke. I was neck-and-neck with my opponent, but he finished a little ahead of me. Our relay went downhill from there, and we ended up coming in second out of two.

The meet lasted a total of five hours, and I had fun. I got to swim and hang out with my friends. We have another meet next week on Wednesday, but I will not be attending it, as I will be at Summer Camp. Our team came in second, which is decent. At least we did not come in last.