Finish Strong

Julia entered swim season this year fully aware that this year would be tough. She landed on top of the podium in her freestyle last year, but moving up to 12U comes with 50 meter swims instead of 25 meters.  On top of that she would be a younger swimmer in this age group.  

In spite of that, Julia drives herself hard.  She did not realize that this would also be the year that year-round swimmers would really start pulling ahead of the pack. In addition she's in an age group that has many swimmers- many of whom are quite competitive.

Julia wants to win.  She accepts nothing less than the best in herself whether it's in swimming, her grades, or cheering.  

Going into quals brought an additional struggle.  Months ago we realized that there was a conflict with the date of quals.  Cheer camp also started that day.  Both her cheer and swim coaches were cool about the situation and recognized her need to be in both places.  When Julia looked at the schedule for cheer camp, she was disappointed to learn that she would miss the tumbling contest because that's where she really shines.  

By the time quals rolled around, Julia realized that making it to champs would be a long shot.  The point of swimming quals is to be able to swim in champs.  Julia swam the butterfly, free, and the backstroke and finished just outside of the champs range on all three.  She admitted before quals that while she loved our vacation, it bothered her that it messed up her trajectory on swim team.   We are looking into a developmental team so that she can practice twice a week and get some good coaching during the school year.  She needs to work on her starts and turns, and her summer coaches are amazing, but there are many, many (292 to be exact) swimmers on her team, and not much time.  She missed the practice where they worked specifically on turns and was disappointed by that.  I think she probably needs a private lesson or two, and a friend has recommended a college student for the job.

Despite not making it into champs, I am so proud of Julia.  She fought hard in her races and brought in PRs in all three.  Two coaches gave her some pointers on her butterfly, and she tried to follow all of the advice she received.  She came out of the pool exhausted and shaking after putting her all into that race.  Even though she is not a year round swimmer, she should be fine to make it into champs next year.

Even better, she deepened some summer friendships and made new friends, and next year (God willing) we will try and keep the disruptions to swim season to a minimum.  

Of course I got to have some fun with the camera ;)