Wetwork

Kyle's swim meet Tuesday was very cool... he swam for the JV's this time (there was no novice or freshman category).

His first event was the 200 Medley Relay. Kyle started off again in fourth place (swimming the breasstroke second leg, after the backstroke [just like last week's Spartan Relays]), and finished the leg in first (barely) again (just like last week... according to both Varsity coaches [who tracked Lisa and me down when we arrived to pick up Kyle], he had "the swim of the day")!... and set up the team to take second.

His second event was a leg in the 200 Freestyle Medley... he swam a good race, but we were going up against a monster team and got smoked.

His final event (and the one he'd been waiting for) was the 100 Breasstroke. In most meets, it'll be the 50 Breast, but we were going up against a team from a higher CIF division (we're in Div III and we were up against a Div II team), so the JV needed to swim the same race as the Varsity. Kyle got off the block well, but when he broke the surface, his goggles (well, not his, but a teammate's because our knucklehead forgot his at home) were around his neck. But he stayed focused, and by the first turn, he had caught up...by the second turn, a slight lead... which grew with each length... and by the end, he was three full body lengths ahead. And his time was 1:09.0! Last week, he had a practice time of 1:15... and he had said that was the fastest he had ever gone in a 100 (last week's relay time of 30.3 was for a 50)... but that was last week.

Needless to say, the JV coach was pretty thrilled... basically, the gist of his post-race debrief was: your goggles came off, your chin was up too high, your turns were marginal, and your underwater work sucked. Imagine what your time'll be when we fix those problems... Even the varsity coach patted Kyle on the back and said that he might need to make some adjustments to the varsity roster later in the season. Pretty nice.

But the coach may be on to something (not that I'm pushing... just proud is all). In the varsity race, our first place swimmer had a 1:05.5, our second place swimmer had a 106.7, and the third place swimmer from the other school had a 1:08.7. Kyle would have finished a close fourth in the varsity race.

What's really interesting is how CIF qualifying works. Each division has two time standards for each race. One is the Automatic time; any racer who beats that time gets an automatic bid to the CIF Championships. The other is the Consideration time; racers who beat that time are under consideration to be invited... CIF invites 32 swimmers in each race... and the top considered racers fill out the pool (so to speak) of 32 with the automatic qualifiers.

Why do I bring this up?

Kyle's 1:09 time is only one second from the consideration time of 1:08.

Pretty damn cool.

Over the last couple of days the paper has run varsity swim results for a couple of meets: the first place times in both were between 1:08 and 1:09. Needless to say, our team is loaded with breaststrokers...

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UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE!!!

just got the following text message from Kyle:

Wil b swiming varsety 2day and wil go 2 beverley hills. Was jus talking 2 timons and mcnet calked him

despite the misspellings and texting abbreviations... that's pretty freaking exciting.

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More updates:

They have him in 4 events: 200 medley relay (same as last week and on Tuesday), 200 free relay (same as this Tuesday), 100 breast, and 400 free relay... and he's never done the 400 free relay before today... and all in Varsity.

somebody must have gotten sick... that's the only rationale I can come up with...I could understand it if they just brought him up for the medley and the breast... but jeez, the free relays?