First Swim Meet

This was taken while she was watching other teams warming up. She had not found me yet, but I was sitting just 4 rows up from her. This was her first swim meet and some of it was overwhelming, but we have some stuff figured out now and will approach things differently next times. She had a good time is excited to do another meet. She got a ribbon for "Personal Best" for each of her races (100yd Freestyle and 50yd Back).

Now she found me! She is wearing her new swim cap which is a team swim cap. They get one when they swim their first team meet.

She is in the water there somewhere. This is the 8 lane pool that the meet was at. This is warm-up time for the second half of teams. They all get in the water and do their laps and drills. She had to do a meet practice on Friday night before the meet and she looked so little out there with all the other team members swimming. When I read the program for the meet and saw all our swimmers, it is no wonder she looked so small. She was the youngest girl on our team swimming, the next youngest girls were age 9. There were a couple 7 year old boys swimming too, but they were standing in groups of boys & girls so I didn't really notice how little the boys were. Both of her events she swam were for 8 & under (& they separate by gender too.)

This is her on the starting blocks getting ready to dive in for her 100yd Freestyle. I am unsure why there are swimmers in the water holding on to the bars for backstroke. She told me that made her nervous having to jump over someone.

She really wanted to swim 2 events and really wanted to swim Back. And I only wanted her to swim one day (it was 2 days of events) for her first meet, so this was the compromise we came up with that she was happy with. I would rather have seen her swim two 50 races, but that wasn't in the cards for this race. She knows she can do faster in the back but she said she was pretty tired by that race and when I watched the video of it you can really see her slow down the last half a length. Next time she'll get the C time. :)

Here she in the Freestyle race. You can't really see her, just barely a splash of her. She is the swimmer in the lane second from the top. Her time for the 100yd Freestyle was 2:41.02. She needs it to be under 2:04:39 to have a C time for Regionals. I was impressed with good she has gotten at her flip turns. She is strong off the wall on her flip turns. She just needs to work more on swimming technique for this as she turns her body too much and that uses too much energy and takes time. So, she definitely has a time to improve from.

I watched a 9 year old girl swim before her in this same race and she took almost 3 minutes and was over a pool length behind the 2nd to last swimmer. She swam the same way Isabel does (with too much upper body movements) and I was so nervous for her. I didn't want her to be in the pool so long after everyone else, but she wasn't. She was only about 5 seconds behind the person in front of her. Next time I think she will try 50yd Freestyle. We didn't do that this time because it was day 2 and we just wanted to simplify things and do just one day.

This is Isabel in the 50yd backstroke. This is the race she was most excited to do. Her time was 1:07.03. She needed it to be under 1:04.99 to qualify for C Regionals. Only 2.04 seconds off!!! She's get it next time! Even her coach thought it was really good for a first meet time to be so close to C Regionals qualifying time. Next time we will plan out her races differently so that hopefully she isn't tired for this one.

Below you can watch her swim the 50yd Backstroke. I was interrupted by a woman who wanted to walk in front of me and then I was trying to watch her in real life and not through a little screen, so I end up taking the camera off her a couple times. She was one of 5 swimmers in this heat. She was in 4th. The person who came in after her was in a closer lane (to me) that she was not in my camera and she was further behind Isabel so she never got in the view either.