At the Swim Meet

On Tuesday Mr. SP swam in his last middle school swim meet of the season, the all city meet, which happened to be held at our middle school, and by some crazy stroke of luck everything worked out with my teaching schedule, and I was able to go and see him swim.  Mr. TOF and The Banana were excited to come with me.  I had never really been to a swim meet before, and neither had either of them, so it was really fun to go.  Swimming is actually one my very favorite sports to watch (there aren’t many sports I like watching).  There is something mesmerizing about watching those bodies swim back in forth in the lanes.

Our middle school was remodeled just a few years ago, and building a pool able to host swim meets was one big component of that building revamp.  The middle school and high school share the pool.  I had never any reason to actually go to the new middle school pool, and guess what, it’s a beautiful pool!  Best of all are the big windows on the east side, which have a magnificent view of Lake Superior.  When you are sitting in the balcony pool viewing area (which was crazy crowded at first, put thinned out as the meet progressed) you can look out over the pool lanes from above, and then out the windows at the gorgeous lake.

I mentioned before that we were super thrilled that Mr. SP decided to join the middle school swim team.  I’m so grateful for the teachers and coaches who encourage kids to try something out just for fun, even if they don’t want to be an expert.  It was amazing to see how much better a swimmer Mr. SP was compared to last summer at swimming lessons when he was swimming laps in the pool.  For the past six weeks swimming has been a fantastic physical activity for him, and he’s had a lot of fun too.  He likes the more obscure strokes, like breast stroke and the butterfly, which is great, because as he put it “not many people are brave and willing to race the butterfly” because it’s, well, exhausting.  He loved being on the sixth grade boys medly relay too.  His goal was always to beat just one other person, which he sometimes did, and sometimes didn’t, but he had a great attitude after every swim meet, and I consider that a success.

Have I mentioned that this kid was also really, really hungry for the past six weeks?  Crazy hungry.

Swim meets don’t mess around.  There is no waiting for someone to show up to the start line when it’s their turn.  I loved seeing how responsible all those middle schoolers were to get to their event on time.  It was super impressive.  There is no delay from one race to the next.  It was also amazing to watch the difference between the size and speed of the gigantic eighth grade swimmers and some of the tiny sixth grade swimmers.  Where else than middle school do you see such disparity?  Some of those eighth graders really churned the pool.  It was kind of like they were wearing some kind of jetpack or something.