New Year's Invitational Swim Meet

This last weekend our swim club hosted a three day swim meet. Of course, we went all three days.

*On a side note, I want to say that I wasn't happy when I found out USA Swimming decided to change the time requirements for the short course Age Group Finals 11-12 year olds. As a national entity, I understand that they can do whatever they want to do, but the problem I have is that they decided on this change IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SHORT COURSE SEASON.

To my knowledge their reasoning was that there were too many 11-12 year olds qualifying. Okay, so change it for next year. Don't teach these children that it's okay to change the rules in the middle of the game! What does this teach our children? That's it's okay to screw someone over? Ha-ha, fooled you!

Sorry, but I'm angry about this! Not that the rule was changed, but again, because they changed it with only six weeks left before Age Group championships. There is only one more meet in OK between now and then, where your kid can qualify for Age Groups. We weren't planning to drive to OKC for this meet.

AND the MOC (Meet of Champions) event my kid qualified in--100 Individual Medley? You know, the one that is hard to qualify for? Her time didn't even qualify her for Age Groups! Are you kidding me? Nope, she would have to shave two seconds off that time to qualify for Age Group. Grrrr. . . .

Here's an example of their changes, let me use the 100 IM as the example:
10-under:                   1:41.57
11-12:                         1:25.29 previously 1.34.19
My daughter's time: 1:27.46

That is now a 16 second difference. What used to be a huge jump from 12 to 13, now happens between 10 and 11 year olds. I think I'm frustrated because this was the first year my daughter qualified for Age Groups. We weren't planning to go to another meet, other than MOC where you can only race in events that you qualify for.

Oh, well, just had to mama bear vent.

With the new changes, my daughter DID qualify for the 50 backstroke this last weekend with a 40.24 seconds. She was also 5th place out of 51 kids. Pretty impressive considering many of these kids are older than she is.

And the 100 Fly with 1:33.34 in a previous swim meet. If she does well at the MOC, she might qualify for the 100 IM. We'll just have to wait and see.

Here are the events she swam in, her time, and how she placed out of XX number of kids. All in all, I was very proud of her and how she swam. Most of her times she improved, and she swam in the Senior division, which was open to any age, plus she was in five races on Saturday AND Sunday plus relays each day.

400 Free        6:03.97      9/26 kids  -30 seconds
200 Free        2:51.31      34/71        -1 second
100 IM          1:31.29      20/63        + 4 seconds (luckily they take the best time for MOC!)
100 Breast     1:44.16      29/62        -10 seconds
50   Fly             43.46      13/21        +4 seconds
100 Back       1:32.11      34/74        -6 seconds
100 Free        1:17.77      31/91         -3 seconds
50  Back           40.28      5/51           -2 seconds Qualified Age Group
50  Free            35.40      31/86          -2 seconds
100 Fly          1:33.34      19/43         +2 seconds
50  Breast         48.77       14/51         0 seconds

That's it for today!