Championship Meet

Yesterday was the much-anticipated Regional Championships for the Summer Suburban Swim League.  Julia could not have been more excited.  She had trouble falling asleep because she was so looking forward to the morning, and she wound up waking up for the day at 4:30 am.  She then proceeded to follow Ethan and I around when we awoke at 6, chattering manically at us about every thought that crossed her mind.  Madeleine, meanwhile, was still asleep shortly before we needed to leave for the meet, and when I went into her room to wake her up, she groaned, "I don't WANNA get uuuuuuup!"

Happily, we made it out the door on time and to the meet with Madeleine much more energized than she'd felt at her wake-up call.  Julia fought me on staying still for two seconds to allow me a photo of her and her sister, but I finally pinned her down after warm-ups:

The preliminary meet is always held in the morning, then the top six swimmers in each event advance to finals, which is held in the afternoon.  Madeleine made finals in her two events, the 25 yard butterfly and the 25 yard freestyle, and her freestyle relay advanced to finals as well.  Julia made finals in her 50 yard butterfly, was in 7th place, and therefore an alternate, in her 50 yard breast stroke, and her freestyle relay also advanced to finals.  Great, right?  Except for the fact that the overcast sky and light drizzle turned into a downright torrential downpour during the final two events of the preliminaries.  I was on deck as a timer and got utterly soaked, even through my (supposedly) water-proof raincoat.  When I returned to the team's tents, this is what I saw:

And this is what I heard: two verge-of-tears panic-induced kids, both of them mine, wailing about how scared they were and how much they wanted to go home. 

Luckily, they didn't have a chance to wail for long; in an effort to expedite the start of finals, the officials decided to call the mid-day round of warm-ups immediately after the last heat of prelims ended.  Usually there is an hour-long break, in which families and swimmers can get lunch and rest a bit, but instead, the finals were slated to begin within the next 15-20 minutes.  I took my girls to the locker room to warm up their bodies in a hot shower, and then watched them in the pool with their team as rain pelted the water so hard it looked like someone was throwing pebbles into the pool. 

The conditions had calmed a bit by the time Madeleine was up to swim her 25 yard fly.  She had finished 3rd in the prelims, but somehow managed to out-touch the other five swimmers and became the first place finisher and winner of the event!  Julia's buttefly finals followed soon after, and she finished in 4th place, the only 11 year old against five 12-year-olds.  Madeleine then came in 2nd place overall in freestyle, and her relay finished 3rd, while Julia's relay finished 4th.  It was a successful day overall, despite the mid-meet freakout and the soaking misery that the spectators and swimmers endured.  Julia forgot all about her prior panic and announced cheerily throughout the rest of the day, "I had SO MUCH FUN at the meet!"  Clearly, all it takes is winning a few medals to push thoughts of the weather apocalypse to the back of her mind.

Madeleine was given the team mascot, a balloon shark, to take home.  She named him Henry:

He didn't last very long though.  Here he is this morning:

RIP, Henry.  We'll always have that car ride home from the meet in our memories.

BTW, if you look closely, you can see that Madeleine attempted to patch the hole in Henry with postage stamps, because she "didn't feel like going downstairs to get the tape."  She has since payed her very annoyed mother back for the cost of wasting three of our stamps on a shark balloon.

Congrats, girls, on bravely going forth and swimming your best, despite the most unideal of conditions!