Kaleb's Swim Meet

Kaleb had his first swim meet on Saturday. It was at a local college. Thing is, they don't have start blocks set up where he practices, so the kids from that pool had no idea how to use them. Some went ahead and tried, but others attempted to dive off the side. That also had not been practiced. Not sure why. But other than the starts, most of the newbies did pretty well. 

Kaleb only swam front crawl and back crawl because that's as far as he'd gotten with me teaching him. He would have learned breast stroke and butterfly this summer with me except that the pool was closed so often for thunder/lightning (real and imaginary!) that I only got as far as teaching them the kick and introducing breast stroke arms. 

This was a small 10 and under meet. I think it's kind of an introductory meet for the new swimmers. A lot of them, Kaleb included, don't have their team suits yet. There were about 103 swimmers (that's how many swam freestyle at least) from three different teams.

There were also limited events. The 7 and unders and 8s swam 25 yards of the 4 strokes and a 100 yard relay. The 9s and 10s swam 50 yards of the 4 strokes and a 200 yard relay. There were a lot less kids in breast and fly. On the 7 year old final time list all but three seven year olds had DQ'd in breast stroke. I wonder if the coach forgot to tell them that they had to touch the sensor pad with both hands at the end? 

You can see his very interesting start at the beginning of this :)

He did okay considering he had no clue how to do the start from the bottom of the block.

His next meet is a full meet with all the age groups (he is novice) and there will be around 600 kids at it. it's at a 50 meter pool in a large park where Adam often ran cross country about 45 minutes away (60+ in traffic).

The night before his next meet, Jasmine has an away football game and won't be home until midnight. She has band photos the next morning. That should be interesting. The meet goes over three days, so I don't know if he'll swim Saturday morning. But if he does, one of us will go with him and one with Jasmine.

Jasmine is playing cymbals because they don't have mallets or pit this year. We found out that percussion practices an extra hour on Tuesday so that takes out her only dance class this year. At least she can still do Monday night choir. It starts the 14th, but that is her new high school's open house, so she'll start choir a week late.

She is feeling much less stress in her new school and she actually understands what they are doing in algebra. It's the intensive (remedial) class, but supposedly, so was the one at the other school. The difference in the level of work  is unreal. I wish she'd been in this class for the first three weeks. She'd probably be doing pretty well. I'm sure it will get harder but it looks like they are still reviewing pre algebra--which she never had because she wasn't that far yet. The math is doable though at this point.

 First day of math at the first school. It is supposedly review, but like I said, she never had pre algebra.

Fourth week of math at the new school. She can do this.

She's only gone to the new high school two days, but we are feeling hopeful. And we are looking forward to Kaleb's next meet.