Oklahoma Age Group Shoutout to

SWIM TULSA!!

 

Swim Tulsa placed second out of all the teams at the Oklahoma Age Group Short Course Swim Meet.

 

My kidlet didn't final in any of the events she qualified for, but did help her team to place 3rd in the 400 Freestyle Relay.

 

I couldn't begin to tell you who all the kids are, because this is like a throwback to when she was a toddler at daycare . . . those kids all looked alike, too! Put everyone in the cobalt blue suits and the same swim caps, *BAM* you can't tell them apart!

 

My kidlet is on the diving board, behind the two little boys with black swim trunks on, and slightly to the right and in front of the of the strawberry blond boy wearing a white shirt.

 

That's it for today, my friends. My kidlet kindly gave me her cold. On Sunday, she was going through tissues like she was eating Pez's. I have one must-do chore today, but then, I'm back home to wallow in my misery.

 

Later, Peeps!

 



Coach Dave

My kidlet has been swimming competitively on the Blue Team for about five months now. She has 1.5 hour practices four out of five days a week, and we make dry land one of the two days out of the week, which adds another 45 minutes.

So I'm there a lot. Observing.

Most people think I'm sitting and crocheting, but I'm also people watching--the swimmers, the parents and the coaches.

It's what writers do, we watch. We watch how personalities interact with each other. It helps us deepen our own stories.

There are numerous coaches: high schoolers who teach the various entry level classes --Swim America (beginners 4+), five coaches of various ages who teach Gold team (ages 13+), White team, and Blue team.

And then there's Coach Dave.

Coach Dave started Swim Tulsa and Swim America (the entry level swimming), but he also teaches the Union High School team. I think he's been a coach for 30+ years, first teaching at Jenks before moving to the Union district.

He's a tough coach. When he's with the high schoolers, he give them tough love. He doesn't take any guff or excuses. Your time is your time and if you disappoint him, you can hear it in his voice. No, he doesn't yell, he's just disappointed, plus he give them a "You know you can do better."

But it's  how Coach Dave interacts with the little kids that I find wonderful. I'm talking about the wee ones, the four- five-, and six-year olds. He talks to them. Learns their names. Asks how they're doing. He knows how to connect.

With the White and Blue teams, he knows everyone's name, but he's also watching them, evaluating them, looking at their potential.

Yesterday, Coach Dave was chatting with one of the kidlet's coaches, Coach Steffin. Coach Steffin swam for Coach Dave in High School. As they were chatting, they were observing four lanes of swimmers. As I was at the other end of the pool, I don't know what was said, but I bet they weren't talking about the Super Bowl coming up this weekend!

That's it for today, Peeps! I just wanted to give a shoutout to the hardworking swim coaches!

It might look like all they're doing is staring into space, but they're, "...watching, always watching."
*Name the movie* HINT: it just came out again in 3-D.

Turkey Splash Swim Meet

Wow! What a weekend! Talk about exciting!

The brouhaha started a little over a month ago when the EAT Turkey swim meet in OKC shut out the three big teams in NE Oklahoma . . . on purpose.

Here's the dealio--Swim Tulsa, Jenks and P66 (Bartlesville) are three huge swim clubs. At big meets, we tend to bring over 300 entrants, especially in the 12 & under age group, this makes the meets last an incredible length of time, especially if the host team only has one 25-yard pool for short course season. We're talking meets lasting from 8 AM until 8 PM, when the official ASA time limit for 12 & unders is supposed to be 4 hours or less. So the host team for the EAT Turkey meet set the cap limit of 300 entrants, which was met by the two big teams in OKC, leaving NE OK in the cold.

So Jenks scrambled.

Jenks is a small town south-west-ish of Tulsa that's been growing rapidly. Their high school now looks like a college campus with an assortment of buildings. A couple of years ago they built a state-of-the-art natatorium--the water and air circulation system was looked at by the Olympic trials people this last summer. It's a wonderful Olympic-sized pool which has bulkheads to make into 2 25-yard pools--which they used at their last HUGE meet, boys on one side, girls on the other side.

And Jenks pulled off a sanctioned tri-team meet in less than a month. GO JENKS!

Since Jenks is a 15-20 minute drive versus a 2+ hour drive, we signed her up for both days, leaving it up to Coach Tony which events to put her in. The meet was open for Seniors, which means any age swimmer could swim and the times were pre-seeded, there were a couple of 45+ year old women swimming. One of the women is in my WW group and she's ranked as the faster freestyler in her age-group, the other lady is an open swimmer who usually swims lakes/ponds, but uses the meets like this to work on her times . . . no, neither one won over the teenagers.

Saturday morning rolls around, the meet doesn't start until 10 AM, but you have to get there early for practice. They were running a 500 Free so it was over 1.5 hours later before the kidlet was in her first event . . . of course, she managed to eat all her snacks during this time.

I don't know what was going on, but something lit a fire under her butt, or it was the three bowls of Capt'n Crunch Peanut Butter cereal.

Saturday:
Event / time / age group placing / qualified for finals / difference from previous time
50 Fly / 36.85 / 7th / missed by +0.4 seconds /-6.17 seconds
100 Free / 1.12.30 / 9th / missed by +1.5 seconds /-5.06 seconds
50 Breast / 43.93 / 8th / missed by +0.6 seconds / -3.33 seconds
50 Free /33.46 / 13th / missed by +0.4 seconds / -0.66 seconds

Sunday:
100 IM / 1:18.79 / 6th / QUALIFIED / -11.84 seconds
100 Fly / 1:22.38 / 6th / QUALIFIED / -11.66 seconds
200 Free / 2:35.33 / 4th / QUALIFIED / -14.11 seconds
*50 Back / 37.5 / 7th / QUALIFIED / -3 seconds

* we left before the official results were posted, and as of this blog, they are not posted on my daughter's swim results list.

All in all, it was a very exciting meet. My only instruction was to try to win her heat. She managed that in almost all her heats, but if she didn't win it was because it was a serious horse race to the end.

I'm very proud of her. She did a wonderful job!

Later, Peeps!