Tuesday, June 28, 2011

One Lap

I wake my daughter every morning for 8am swim team practice. They do laps continually using kickboards to practice their kicking and practice doing breast stroke, backstroke and freestyle. They do dolphin kicks back and forth. By the end of it she is tired and ready to chill out. She is not a fast swimmer...yet. This is her first year on the swim team, and frankly she does not have a big competitive instinct. That is ok with me, as long as it is ok with her. But I feel eventually she will notice that others are swimming faster. It would be good for her to realize that this is a race and that she is supposed to be trying to go quickly. I gently explain this. She is not offended. So we go to a swim meet this week and she is scheduled to swim one lap. Literally one lap. Daddy is meeting at the pool after work, I have snacks packed, and we have navigated the super crowded parking lot. She sets up her spot on the concrete near her friends. They visit, have snacks and drinks, and wait. Eventually the moms who are in charge of making sure the girls get in the right races begin to line them up. They stand in line for over half an hour. Daddy and I have been standing on the sidelines of the pool for over an hour. Finally her race is announced. We head to the finishing end of the pool to cheer her on. The horn sounds and our daughter is the last to take off. She begins her freestyle swim, but for some reason is stroking each arm, then floating on her belly and kicking a little, then stroking each arm, then floating on her belly and kicking a little. She finally makes it across the pool. She hops out beaming. "Ok, mom what are we doing now? Wanna go to the mall?"

I have decided to look at swim team as much less of a competitive sport for my daughter and much more as good daily exercise. (And yes, we did use our extra time because of just having one race, to head to the mall.)

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