Fireball!

A certain girl was quite pleased with herself today. Her coach told her that right after spring break, she is going to be moved up to the next skill grouping. Good-bye Nova and hello Fireballs. I asked her why she's so happy about it and she said it means she has really improved her swimming. 

The new coach runs a tougher practice. Hopefully Penguin Girl will be able to pay close enough attention to catch the drills she's supposed to do. Last year she had the same coach for her Saturday practices and quite a few times I noticed Penguin Girl would be doing her own thing while all the other kids swam the drill as described by the coach. It was not surprising to me at the time. Hopefully her attention has improved along with her technique.

And the winner is . . .

At the last swim meet of the short course season, Penguin Girl swam 4 races. The first was the 100m freestyle. She started out strong but seemed to lose a lot of steam. She was very upset afterwards because she misjudged a flipturn and ended up too far from the wall to touch. She knew that would mean a DQ and no official time and getting an official time for each of her races was her goal. We had a talk about how she can't let something like that get her down, that she should still focus and swim the best she can.

Next she swam the 50m butterfly and WON HER HEAT!!!!!! Good comeback! Then she swam a 100m backstroke and got really tired out.

Her last race was the 50m breast, the stroke she likes the best. Soon after the start, her goggles filled with water. I couldn't see that. All I saw was that by the time she was about two-thirds of the way down her lane, she started veering to her right and almost went into the next lane. Then she stopped, pulled the goggles off her eyes, almost got all the way turned around while orienting herself, and then continued the race with her eyes closed. Since she did that bit of turning around, she got DQ'd but even with all that drama, she was the second swimmer to finish. Way to maintain focus!