Spanish Fork Swim Meet

Alyssa swam last year at our city rec center. She loved being on swim team. And even though it is a challenge for me (early morning practice and meets 5 or 6 days a week for 2 months of summer), I gave in and let her do it. She really loves it. Its GREAT for her and since I've never been one who feels extremely comfortable or confident in the water, I don't want that for her. I'll encourage it as long as she is committed!

June 13th ... warmup time: a horribly early time of 6:30am. And its 30-40 minutes away! Meet started at 7:00 am. The morning didn't start out so well. Alyssa came in my room and told me it was time to go ... at 6:58. She had misread the clock ... thought it was 5:58 ... who can blame her? It was before 7am on a Saturday morning!! As for me. Why wasn't I up? Oops. Who can blame me?? My alarm just didn't wake me up (actually I set it incorrectly, probably as some subconcsious desire to not get up and go!). Anyway, we decided to head down anyway, knowing she'd miss one of her 3 swims. I called a friend who was there with his daughter and he got Alyssa's first event (freestyle) changed to backstroke so we ended up not missing anything for her. She did backstroke, individual medley and breast stroke. Backstroke went well! She placed 7th in her age group.

Individual medley ... she just wasn't ready for butterfly! She managed to swallow water on the butterfly which is the first of the 4 strokes required and she was choking when she reached the end of the pool. She said she felt like throwing up. I knew she had already been disqualified for not swimming the butterfly correctly, so I pulled her out of the water to prevent her from throwing up in the pool and shutting down the meet (she shut down a pool at our condo once - for the same reason, swallowed water, gagged, threw it up along with her french fries ... didn't figure all the other kids would appreciate seeing her snacks and missing the rest of the meet!). Funny thing was, the timers didn't see me pull her out and walk away with her so about halfway into what should have been her 2nd lap, they started panicking because they couldn't find her ... lifeguard was even looking at the bottom for them when my friend told them I had pulled her out. Kind of funny! Glad they were concerned though. I didn't get any pics of it.

Breaststroke ... according to her this is her favorite stroke. Can't blame her. I like it too - although I'm not sure I'd be able to race it without getting disqualified! She swam it well, BUT she did a scissor kick and/or brought her arms too low on her stroke so she DQd. Proud of her for trying though!! Alyssa has on the white swim cap in the center (hands up by her face). A little nervous for breaststroke after what happened with I/M.