Swimming

The day of Sofia's first swim meet finally arrived!  She has been swimming on a swim team since she was four years old.  Her little body worked hard to swim laps in a 25 meter pool but she loved it and her coach, while wrapped around her little finger, knew she could swim with the older kids and no matter how many times he was asked if she should be moved he wanted to keep her in his lane.  She kept at it when we moved back to the states but has never been with a team for the competitive season.  She worked her way onto the team in RI and then we moved her to MA where she had to earn her way onto the team again.  So here we are four years after she started swimming laps and she is finally competing.  She was very nervous about her first meet.  She was nervous she was mess up a stroke and be disqualified or that she would come in last and be embarrassed.  We talked her through these feelings and we went off to her first meet.  The kids have to write the races they are swimming in sharpie marker on their hands so I decided to help her out and wrote on her palms to remind her that she is strong and that this is about having fun.

She stepped up to the block for her first race, the 25yard freestyle, and you could tell she was nervous.  She made her dive into the pool which is the worst part for her and she swam great, placing 5th with a time of 19:31.  She has since had 4 meets and has raced breaststroke, butterfly, freestyle, backstroke and been a part of the freestyle relay team.

She has been amazing.  She has placed 1st and 3rd in Backstroke and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd for relay.  Her freestyle is great but until she gets her dive better she will be hard pressed to break the 5th place position** (although her second meet she swam faster but still came in 5th).  She knows it and is trying to work on it. For a girl who can do a flip into the pit, jumps for low to high bar and balance beam work in gymnastics I don't understand her fear of the dive but I have to assume she will at some point get over it, the dive mechanics will click and see the big improvement in her freestyle races.  For now she is happy with swimming and competing and overall she is doing great!

 **By the time I was ready to post this to the blog Sofia has had another swim meet and after working on her dive this week she broke the 5th place barrier in freestyle and placed third!  I worked with her this week in our basement having her dive off the workout bench into pillow and roll as soon as she hit.  She had to feel the "C" motion of her body into the pillows in order to make the roll and it seemed to finally make sense to her how she was meant to dive.  It will still take more practice but she is getting better.