The May Meet: Year Two

We are now almost done with another year of school and of course another year of swimming. Tori’s swim team concludes its season with its May Meet, a large international meet that our team hosts every year. We just finished the May Meet and it went smoothly with high participant numbers. With these regional meets, one never knows what events will impact the swim meet. Last year, we had an outbreak of swine flu that kept many swimmers away. This year our team declined to travel to the March Bangkok meet due to political unrest in that country. But our meet escaped medical and political events this year and only coincided with American Mother’s Day which had some mothers grousing but some (okay, one) secretly pleased to spend the entire day watching her kids swim.

Tori had a great meet this year, bettering all of her times. She begged me to let her do an early morning warm up with the team at a different pool and then bus back to our regular pool. Last year this all seemed too confusing. This year not only could Tori handle the logistics but she wanted to swim a warm up! I was working most of the meet and not able to get her to her events. She handled all that fine. In her final stroke of grown up swim meet behavior, she picked out a new suit (hot pink and glittery) and wore that for her final races instead of her team suit. This is something older kids do; wear a faster more personal suit instead of the team suit.

For added fun, the twins were entered in the meet this year. While they are not official team members, they spend a lot of time at the pool. They often swim in Tori’s team practice meets. Most parents think the twins are much older than they actually are and that they are on the team. (Tori’s team is for slightly older kids). Adam and Royce do little to dissuade people of this notion. Adam wears his team swim shirt at all times. They did great on all their races. The twins also got into swimming fashion, wearing caps and goggles by the end of the meet. Adam even put on a pair of jammers with flames on the side.

Adam and Royce, the youngest at the meet, were assigned “buddies,” who happened to be the oldest kids on the team. Both were thrilled by all the attention. Adam’s buddy had a goatee beard. Royce’s buddy was a lovely girl, close to six feet tall and the fastest girl on the team. I overheard Adam and Royce discussing who was faster; Royce’s buddy or Michael Phelps. While it was just the May Meet to most, to our three kids this swim meet was practically the Olympics.