Swim Team

The girls have participated in a broad list of sports, but until this year, swim team was not included.  Hannah wasn't sure about trying this one, but after the information meeting, she was fired up and ready for a new adventure.

Practices started two weeks before school was out and were held four evenings during the week.  Once school was out, we had practice 5 days a week.  The season consisted of 5 meets, 2 of them being at other pools and three at our pool.  Each of the girls competed in the back, breast, butterfly and freestyle strokes.  They both also competed in the team medley races.

Travis and I enjoyed keeping tracks of times and events and watching the improvements from meet to meet.  The amount of improvement was amazing.

Thankfully, shortly after this picture was taken, Haley learned how to dive.

Her tummy was thankful as were the spectators that had to grimace every time she smacked the water.

Swim team is a very short, but very intense season.  We loved every minute of it and I think that I might have found my new favorite sport.  As an extra bonus, we were very surprised when both girls qualified to go to the championships.  They each qualified for the maximum of three individual events as well as Haley qualifying to compete in two medleys.

At championships, Haley broke one of her previous bests and Hannah blew all three of her fastest times out of the water!

All of this was fun and rewarding, but the highlight for Travis and I came at the end of the season party.  Each swimmer (over 100) was given a special award.  To come up with 100 individual awards, obviously creativity had to be involved.  We were so, so happy when Hannah received the "Hardest Worker" award and Haley received the "Most Polite" award.  We'll take that over any swimming achievements any day of the week! 
So proud of you, Haley and Hannah!