Colin's first swim meet

Last week, we hesitantly signed Colin up for his first swim meet. Thinking he could only manage two strokes, as he still needs to refine his butterfly and breaststroke without fear of being disqualified, we entered him into the two easiest events: 25 yard backstroke and 25 yard freestyle. Of course, the day before the event, Colin developed a sore throat and a deep cough leaving us unsure about making the race. However, the morning of, he woke up looking rather refreshed and ready to swim. Before we realized, we were in the car headed for the meet.
The Thanksgiving Invitational Swim Meet organized by the Boise YMCA is a very renowned competition. Many swim clubs from Idaho and all six neighboring states were present at the West Boise YMCA. Hundreds of swimmers and spectators were shoulder to shoulder during the three day event. As you can imagine, the temperature in the pool area was unbearably hot with all these people cheering, yelling, and screaming...
His first event (25 y back) was finally posted on the board and it was time for Colin to enter the water. He gripped the wall with both hands with serious concentration payed towards the official signaling the race. Laura and I were anxiously waiting as we had prepped Colin all morning on what to expect at the race. Of course, we anticipated the worst: missing his swim start, losing his goggles on the dive, colliding with the lane, getting disqualified, etc...
"Take your marks... Tweet!"...
As we watched with our own fists clenched, Colin was advancing across the pool like he had swam this race several times before. He kept his form and arm turnover consistent, did not get distracted by the other swimmers, and attacked the wall strongly... so strongly, he hit his head on the wall! Luckily, the timing board is pretty soft. Colin won his heat. He was pretty unemotional at the end, but one could easily detect an inner sense of pride and satisfaction.
There were four heats in the 6-8 year old Boys 25 yard backstroke. Out of a total of 24 swimmers, Colin placed 7th with a time of 23.73.
We then waited another hour, in what felt like a sauna, for Colin's second race: 25 yard Freestyle. You can watch Colin's freestyle race in the video posted below. Despite botching his dive, he still won his heat and finished 6th overall out of 30 kids with a time of 20.17.



Colin's finish time in both races qualified him for the YMCA Northwest Regionals which will be held in Boise in March 2010...

Race results are on the following site, look for races #78 and #90 on the left.