Nicco's First Swim Meet

Nicco has been on on Team Monsoon for two months. The official season started yesterday, and today is their first meet. Today is also the first time the coaches had the kids on the starting blocks. Yikes. I watched Nicco do his starts and knew what we would be doing when we got home. After lunch he and I got in the pool and did start after start after start. Today was also the first time any of the kids were timed, but not all of them were timed. Based on a couple of the other kids' times, my hope for Nicco today is that he will finish all the way to the wall without stopping in 47 seconds or less. Mostly I just hope he has fun.

The company that runs this little swim team really lacks organization. That is my biggest complaint. There are many small things I would do differently if I were in charge, but I'm not, so I try to keep my complaints to myself. And my husband. And one other couple of swim parents. That's it.

So it was no big surprise that the kids didn't start their warm-ups until 5:15, when they were told it would begin at 5:00. It was also no surprise that the meet didn't start until 6:20, when it was scheduled to begin at 6:00. That's okay though, I suppose. Nothing I can do about it anyway. I just sat across the way watching my itty bitty 5 year old being part of a team.

They started the event with all the little kids saying the pledge of allegiance. That was kind of adorable, and I wish I would have taken a video. Ten minutes later, things were underway. Kind of.

This is the team all together, doing a team cheer. Nicco is in there somewhere.

This is Nicco (at the top of the picture, nearest the wall) during warm-ups.

Here he is getting ready for his relay. He was the anchor leg. Not because he's the fastest. He was anchor because that's the freestyle leg, the only stroke he's really proficient at. He's getting better at backstroke, but if you told him to do butterfly or breaststroke, he would probably look at you like you were speaking a foreign language.

Here he is at the start of his relay leg. He's kind of the team mascot...he's the littlest, everyone kind of watches out for him. There were a bunch of people I don't know cheering for him. It was cute.

Here's my proud little racer with his proud papa.

This is his freestyle race. We need to do some more work on starts. :)

His first meet turned out just as I hoped it would. He finished every one of his races, he finished in less than 47 seconds (I'll find out his official time later, probably some time next week) and he had fun after all. When I tucked him in, he said "I'm proud of myself," just before passing out.

I'm proud of him too!