Swim Team 2013

This year Alex and Caroline signed up for swim team.  Carter wanted to take a break for a year and I just wasn't sure about Aaron.  Next year all four of them will be swimming!  I was also in charge of running the concession stand this year.  Running the concessions made things crazy, but the kids were lots of help and I had a fun time.  Because I was busy at all of the home meets (and because swim meet pictures all look the same) I decided to just combine all of our swim team pictures into one post.  The kids did great this year.

Alex started the year not wanting to jump in the deep end (off the blocks) and not being able to swim a full lap, to jumping off the block and swimming the full lap without holding on and cutting his times significantly each meet he went to.  His goal for the season was to learn backstroke and he did a great job learning it and swimming it in the meets.

Caroline did really well.  She missed the first 3 (of 6) meets, and the 4th was cut short by a tornado warning...so she didn't have many chances to improve her times, but she really improved her strokes and her turns.  Her asthma, we now know, is triggered by chlorine.  That makes swimming races very difficult, especially now that she is older and swimming 2 laps for her races.  There were a few times that she had asthma attacks while swimming races, but she pushed through and got to the end--a couple of times she had to take her inhaler while still in the pool.  She always has a coach hold the inhaler during her races so she has it handy when she needs it. Despite her troubles, Caroline did great. I'm really proud of how hard she worked to improve her swimming and overcome some serious obstacles.

At the swim team banquet we took pictures with some of the coaches.  Above is Coach Claire and below is Coach Brittany.  Brittany taught swim lessons to Aaron and Alex and has been head coach for 3 years.  It is Brittany's last year as a coach so we were sad to say good bye to her!