Background: Read THIS ARTICLE to get a sense for how crazy awesome the All-City swim meet is-- what a fascinating little pool subculture our town has!
Before I spend the rest of this post raving about Little Leader (Did I ever tell you the Little Leader story? One year, I took Jack to the Little League fields to meet his coach and get his jersey before the season started. The coach was a big, gruff guy who was smoking a cigarette in my memory, but that can't be right, so probably he just talked like he was smoking. He had his own player with him, a handsome colt of a kid, and the coach was so proud of his son. He spent a second with each family talking about what a good ball player the kid was, clapped him on the shoulder, and said by way of introduction, "This here is our little leader." Ben and I were amused and delighted, and we decided if we ever had an extremely sporty kid or a racing dog, that's exactly what we'd name them, so clearly that's what we call Coop in athletic contexts), I need to tell you how awesome Dorothy is!
She has not had a great swim season. Before this meet, her only ribbons has come in a relay-- a third place finish at a dual meet. That's it-- ALL YEAR. 8U swimmers swim 25 yards, and 9-10 is the first year that swimmers learn flip turns and swim 50s. It's a huge change, and Dorothy is a pretty young 9. In retrospect, I wish we would have joined swim a couple years earlier, so she would have had more 8U practice and success before swimming up. She was not feeling pumped about the huge All-City meet because she was pretty sure she wasn't headed for top-18 finals in her events, and she thought even a heat winner was a lofty goal. When she found out she didn't make a relay team, he was even more let down.
Then! Yesterday! She cut a second off her free time and finished respectably in the upper bottom of 200 girls, alongside 2 teammates who've been besting her all year.
In backstroke, she cut 11 seconds (ELEVEN) off her time and WON HER HEAT!!
Then, out of the blue, a relay spot opened for her-- basically, it was the meet of her dreams. She swam SO HARD in her relay. She made up time and built a small lead for her team. I had the best time watching her on TV (I airplayed the livestream aaaaaalll day long).
It has got to be hard to be the sibling of someone who has an above average amount of success—IN YOUR SAME AGE GROUP.
Not only did Cooper get a spot on both “A” relays, he also finaled both of his individual events (back and breast). He walked out of the meet with 3rd place in the medley relay, 7th place in the free relay, 8th place in backstroke, and 17th place in breaststroke. So awesome!
Ben brought the spirit, for sure:
And so did they
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