Swim Championships

Sofia spent the last two weeks of February preparing for her swimming championships.  The league gets split into two championships.  The "A" and the "B" championships.  If you had a swim time that met the A time cutoffs in any race during the season you went to the A championships.  If you did not get an A time then you went for the B championships.  Sofia tried to get an A time all season.  Her last meet of the year was her last chance to do it and she ended up having a fever and was unable to attend the meet so she went to the B championships.  While it would have been great for her to get her A time during the season, Jason and I were fine with her going to the B championships as it was very good for her confidence.  Her back stroke time was only a 1/2 second off of A time so we knew she would have a good chance of medaling at the B championships.  Her freestyle is also not that far off an A time so she was in good shape for the championships.  She focused in her training for the last two weeks and would come home feeling like her pace had picked up some.  We of course told her that as long as she did her best we would be proud of her.  She needed to count her strokes to the wall on back stroke and stick with it in the race.  She was nervous for the championships but for Sofia that is good.  It gives her a little more energy to fight for every tenth of a second.

Her first race was race #13, the 25 yard freestyle.  There were 69 kids in this race.  During the seasons the heats always went the fastest in the first heat to the slowest in the last heat.  For the championships this was reversed so Sofia was in the last heat as she was 6th seed in the race.  She did awesome and came in 4th place with a personal best time of 19:12 seconds.  This is where good coaching would make the difference for her because she floated into the finish and could have pulled another stroke and because she didn't she got beat out by .19 of a second for third place and .24 seconds for 2nd place.  She will learn these things as she continues to compete.  She was very excited with her 4th place finish and her friend came in first so they celebrated with each other.

The second event for Sofia was race #41, the 25 yard backstroke. (video below - Sofia is second lane from the top of the screen) This was her time to shine.  She was fourth seed for this race and I was a nervous wreck for her.  Would she get a good start off the wall? Would she stroke to the finish?  She ROCKED it out.  Her start was still not great and when she came above the water she was a full body length behind but she has an awesome backstroke with strong legs and she powered past everyone.  She came in 1st place a full second ahead of the 2nd place finisher and had a personal best time of 21:28 seconds.  She got her A time!!

Sofia's last event was the 100 yard relay.  I was a little nervous about this race too.  Sofia has been doing the relay all season but the other three girls she had been doing it with went to the A championships so she had three new people.  She was the starter for the race and she got off the block well.  She gave her team a nice head start and they lost it slightly in the middle of the race but the anchor managed to hold on for a first place finish.

It was a great first competitive season and great first Championship for Sofia. We are very proud of her and all the hard work she has put in this season.