Summer Time

Summer time means hot, hot, hot temperatures and swim team!

A.  went under right as I snapped the picture. She's the bottom middle blur. ;)

S is working the kickboard in the top middle

S. and A. are swimming on a rec swim team this summer.  Last year, A. and R. were on a different team and had so much fun exercising and staying cool, we decided to keep on going this summer as well.  We switched teams for a couple of reasons, cost and location. :)  All of these meets will be held at pools close to our home, as opposed to last year where we traveled a good distance for meets, usually at rush hour, and the cost is a fraction of what we paid last year. 

We missed their first week being on vacation, but they have made up for the lost week and are doing fine. Their first meet is Saturday!  Can't wait to watch them swim.

Swimming is such a great sport. It's a fantastic physical workout as well as a mental one. Yes, you compete against other swimmers in meets. But what you really are competing against is yourself, or more precisely, time. Your place in meets can vary, depending on the heat you are in, but what doesn't vary is your ability to beat your time each and every race. 

I love that this is a sport my 11 year old can compete in and not only do well but can feel good about how she is improving through the season. She's not my most athletic daughter. She's very quiet and too reserved for most sports. It's not that she couldn't play the sport well. It was more her timid nature kept her from being given the chance to show that she could play the sport! She's played soccer in various rec leagues for 5 or so years. The longer we continued, the more she was ignored because she is not aggressive and the more she felt like she couldn't perform. As a result, she didn't play as well at the end of the season of soccer last year as she did in the beginning.  As the girls were moving up in age brackets, we decided it was time to retire her soccer cleats.  Which is where swimming comes in.  Swimming gives her the ability to just be and swim.  As a result, she is beaming as she swims lap after lap after lap.

Be looking for updates throughout the summer of my swimmers!