Final swimming recap

I just realized that I never updated about Alex and Emma's final swim meets. Swimming finished up the weekend we got back from vacation, so now our weekends will be much more open. Sean is looking forward to that. We're also looking forward to not getting up at 5:30 on Saturdays.

Alex and Emma both swam on Saturday at the season ending meet. Alex got 3 2nds, 1 third and 1 fourth. I thought he did really well especially considering he hadn't practiced in almost 2 weeks other one practice on Friday. He improved his time in backstroke and was very close to his best times in his other races.

Emma was very nervous before her freestyle race, but she got in the pool and did it. Halfway through, she popped her head up and smiled. As soon as she got out of the pool, she was skipping, so she enjoyed herself. Before her backstroke race, she got really nervous again, but got in to race. I'm so pleased she did this one as she is an awesome backstroker. She ended up winning her heat (best out of the 8 girls swimming) and got 10th place out of over 30 girls. Pretty exciting.

Alex attended the special invitational meet on Sunday at the UT swim center. It was pretty neat to swim in the same pool as Olympians such as Michael Phelps, Janet Evans and Matt Biondi. It was interesting to watch the automatic timers, etc. Very different from our local meets.

Following are a few pictures from the special meet...

Picture #1 - He's in the middle of the first bench with a blue swim cap and his leg up.

Picture #2 - He's crouched down in Lane #5.

Picture #3 - This is the board from his backstroke race.

Also, here is Alex's butterfly swim. That boy loves the fly!

Finally, here are the kids with all their awards for the year. You can see why the kids enjoy it. Emma received 10 ribbons, a medal for being on the team and the Coaches' Award trophy. Her coaches awarded her a special trophy out of her age group for being a great kid to coach. Alex received over 60 ribbons, 4 medals from the season end meet, a medal for being on the team, and the High Points Award for his age group. Quite a haul for one season. We're very excited for our swimmers!