Unfortunately, Jason had to miss the swim meet because he already had plans for 6 months to meet up with some of his college buddies at the lake for the weekend. We had to be at the Equestrian Center at 12:00 on Saturday for the swim meet to start at 1:00. When I drove up it was CRAZY crowded. The first session was finishing up and there were tents and people everywhere. The Equestrian Center is an indoor olympic size pool so it was huge!! We found our coach and Brody went off to warm up while we went to find a seat in the bleachers. Well come to find out (after we were already sitting in the bleachers for about 3 hours) that the bleachers are for people to come and watch their child race and then they get up and leave. Since we had already sat there for so long we decided to go ahead and stay - we weren't in the front row or anything.
Of course the first session ran behind so we didn't actually start our session until around 1:45. It was so chaotic. These swim parents are crazy too!! They first did a parade to showcase all of the teams and the kids and coaches were all dressed up as superheros.
First were the relays and Brody's heat started around 3:47 (yeah almost 3 hours after the meet started). It was going to be a long day - thank goodness my parents were there to help out.
Looking like an official swimmer with the writing on the arm and all.
There were some issues with the 6 and under group dealing with the start buzzer. In the past 4 meets the kids have always started with the sound of a whistle, but for some reason they were using a very low buzzer sound (I guess more professional sounding) which the young kids (who it is mostly their first time doing this) weren't used to this sound and could barely hear it. Stephanie and I were trying to prepare our 2 for it and had them listen to it while they watched other races. The man in charge (who wasn't very nice) would blow a whistle for the kids to get out of the pool from the prior race and then blow again for the next swimmers to get in. Well, these young kids were very confused so we watched swimmers in the 2 races before Ava take off and start swimming and then lifeguards had to jump in and grab them to get them to stop. Total confusion!!!
After all of this, needless to say the man in charge was NOT very happy. He had parents telling him he wasn't doing his job right and he offered to give his whistle to them for them to do a better job. I wish he would have understood what we had been used to and this was a huge change.
It finally came time for Brody's heat.
While preparing all of our stuff for the meet the night before we thought we had left Brody's goggles at the condo in Destin and he freaked out, but we said he could wear Jason's and they would make him go faster. Well, before we left for the swim meet on Saturday, I threw another load of clothes in the washer and found the missing goggles but decided to go ahead and leave Jason's in the swim bag. That was definitely a great choice. As Brody stood in his lane and was about to get in the pool for the heat, he tightened his goggles one last time and they broke!!! Panic broke in as he turned around to me with big tears in his eyes. Thank the Lord I left Jason's goggles in the bag because I had never taken an extra pair of goggles with us. As I got up to give him the goggles, the not so nice man said "Swimmers take your mark" and I had to let out a loud "WAIT". He then turns around and not so nicely yells at me "WHAT?" Yeah, the mom instinct came out in me and I said "Excuse Me?" Well, we went back and forth for a second or 2 as I explained my son's goggles broke. I knew I had the stands behind me to back me up since we were already not too happy with this guy. Thankfully Brody jumped in and the race started. He swam the best race he had ever swam for the season. He knocked almost 2 seconds off his best time. He came in 4th in his heat, but we were so proud of his time and how he overcame what could have been a catastrophe.
We knew we had a long wait ahead of us since they had to go through the breast stroke and the back stroke before Brody's butterfly. After 2 weather delays, around 6:00 they decided to go ahead and cancel the swim meet. We still had about another hour or so until Brody would have swam. It really stunk that he didn't get to swim the butterfly but then again we were all ready to go home.
I was so proud of Brody for this swim season and he really had a great time doing something that he really enjoys.
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