Our little fish!

Carson had his first swim meet this weekend. There are several different teams...the teams are pretty basic..

1- The beginners. They focus primarily on the 4 different strokes and doing them correctly. To move up to the next team you must be able to do all 4 strokes and swim 10-50's (10 laps, down and back) on the 1 minute. Sounds not so hard.... it is not so easy.

2- The white team. They focus on endurance and skill. Not even sure how you move up to blue team... we aren't there yet!

3- Blue team

4- Red team

This was his beginner coach Mary Jo. She is fantastic! She kept Carson on her team 2 extra weeks just beacuse she wasn't ready to get 'rid' of him. Says he kept up the moral of the whole group and was always willing to do anything she asked!

Carson has been on the beginner's team since starting to swim in September. He took his 'test' to move up to the White team on Thursday! So he had one practice with the more advanced team before his meet. It didn't affect his meet in any way... all events are done by age.

On Saturday Carson had 4 events and a relay. Unfortunately he was disqualified for 2 events and one relay.... because of improper form on the butterfly and he only touched the wall with one hand, instead of 2 on the breast stroke. Getting disqualified isn't a big deal. It happens to everyone (so we learned). On Sunday he did much better and was only disqualified on one event. He also had 4 events and a relay. He ended up with 3-2nd place finishes and 2-3rd place finishes! That is fantastic for his first meet!
This is his buddy Roshin, he has really taken Carson under his wing and shown him the ropes. They are so cute together!

On Carson's first day of swim practice he ended up crying because he didn't like the back stroke. Said it was too hard! Ironically it's one of his best strokes now! The strokes that he did the best were free-style and back stroke. The swim team has national incentive swim times. They are based on gender, age, and stroke. You get patches to put on your swim bags (a big deal). These are called 'b' times, 'bb' times, 'a' times and 'aa' times. Carson was less than a second from getting 'b' time on his freestyle!

His 'b' time for this event would have been 49.19 or better!