First Swim Meet this Year

Our little town boasts its own outdoor swimming pool and every year on the third weekend in July we host the first county swim meet of the summer season. We can also boast of having the best weather.:-) It is always HOT and sunny for this meet and once again this year, the weather was awesome!

The race day buzz cut!

This year our family has three of our four young 'uns on swim team. If Squirt could swim the length of the pool, she would be on it too, but much to her disgust, she is unable to swim a full length yet without grabbing on to the side.

Their heat numbers are written on their arm in permanent ink.

Being Beans' first year, she had a major case of the nerves, but with some encouragement, she was brave enough to do warm ups at 7:30 am. After that, she just rolled with the punches and competed in both her races. She did breaststroke and freestyle and got fifth and third respectively.

Very relieved to have completed her first race. Grinning at Daddy who was timing the competitors.

Poor Peach competes in a very large group of girls. (For some reason the 9&10 year old girls group has about 20 swimmers). She competed in three individual races and two relays. In the relays I think they came in last every time. In her individual races, she managed an 18th in breaststroke, 12th in back crawl, and 8th in freestyle. According to her 18th was a little pathetic, but she'll work harder next time.

Bub has captured a desired position in the fact that he only competes against three or four other boys in his age group. This year, his hard work is paying off for him. He placed first in all three of his events. He did freestyle, breast and back. What a great start to the swimming season for him. He swam two relays. There are two boys in the eleven/twelve group and two in the thirteen/fourteen group on their team, so the boys combined their ages and swam in the eleven/twelve age level. Unfortunately, they came dead last both times. In fact, they were so slow that Bub who always does the freestyle -- that means he is the last to swim and expected to bring up the slack. This basically requires a miracle when your team is almost a lap behind!So,for the relays he stand on the starting block waiting for his teammate to come in, so he can dive in and take his turn. He is such a clown that he yells from the block, "Hi Mom"! and waves to me. Meanwhile the competeing team is all done and waiting for them to finish. Yep! Unfortunately for him his teammates are not the fastest swimmers out there, but they sure have fun together!

Bub does two lengths, the girls only do one. He is back at the starting blocks here awaiting the signal to exit the pool.

Note: Any blurring on the pictures is due to the fact that they were shot through the chain link fence.