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Friday, June 15, 2018

The longest meet ever....

Yesterday was the first swim meet of the season.

It was a very long day.  The swim meet started at 4:00 but the gates opened at 3:00.  There were going to be three swim teams there competing.  (One of the teams in the league backed out at the last minute and in order to make the schedule work  two of our meets went from dual meets to triple meets.  UGH!) I wanted to get there at 2:30 to make sure we got a spot for our tent and the pool is 40 minutes from our house.  So - we left at 1:45 to pick up Jennifer's kids. 

Our league is using a new timing system this year.  Instead of stopwatches the system uses an app on your phone.  All the timers are started at the same time and when the swimmer in each lane touches the wall at the end of the race, the timer for that lane stops the app. There is less chance for error and the times are sent directly to the main app (no data entry) and the scores are calculated more quickly.

Because this is a new system there is a learning curve and for some reason there was a lot of dead time between events.  Because there were three teams instead of two, there were more swimmers than normal.  A typical swim meet that starts at 4:00 is over by 7:45 or so - sometimes earlier or later depending on the size of the teams.  We weren't even at the halfway mark by 7:00.  

The meet finally ended at almost 9:00 and due to darkness they didn't even do the final events - medley relay.  (But I'm not complaining about skipping that last event. I was actually hoping they would stop it at 8:00.  And yes, that probably makes me a bad swim mom but sometimes you just want to get home.)

And don't forget - we had a 40 minute drive home. 

The best part of the swim meet is that we always go to dinner with Jennifer's family afterwards.  So guess where we were at 9:45?  Taco Bell eating tacos while the workers glared at us because the dining room closed at 10:00.  Definitely not our first choice of restaurant but it was what was open...

I'm just glad there were no evening storms causing a delay to the meet.  You have to get at least half way through a meet before it is counted as complete so any type of delay yesterday would have meant heading back to this pool at some point next week to finish it. (This will definitely be on the next Thankful Thursday.)

Our next meet is Tuesday at our pool.  It is another three-team meet.  The coach said that if every swimmer from each team is there there will be almost 300 swimmers.  I am definitely trying to psyche myself up for another very long, very hot day.  Luckily though, its only a few minutes to this pool and not forty! (This is my attempt to look for the blessings instead of focusing on the curses.)

Have a great weekend!


3 comments:

Maria (also Bia) said...

You are a very brave mom. This is precisely why we never did the whole swim team thing. But it would be fun to go to Taco Bell at 9:45 at night. Can I just do that instead and skip all the swimming stuff? ;-)

Seriously, though. You are a mom champion!

Madeline said...

That is a long meet though. Kudos to your patience. It's so interesting that in the south all the pools are outdoor. All the swim meets here are inside! I still hope my kids will join a swim team when they're old enough!

And while I understand the frustration of the workers on some level, it's not as though the drive-thru wouldn't still be open at Taco Bell so who cares?

Pam said...

You are a braver mom than I. I would have found a way to bail on it after a while. That is just nuts. lol