Seal Meet #1 - Leamington

On Sunday, Connor attended his first Seal meet in Leamington.  As I mentioned before, he's at the Platinum level, which is still a Stroke Development level, as opposed to the Performance Program levels (Seal, Beaver, Otter & Barracuda).  But at the encouragement of his coach, he swam in the Seal meet.

Well, the day started on an off-note.  Aili had an allergic type reaction the night before - she developed welts under her right eye and they were all red and itchy.  I think it may have been dog-related but I wanted to gauge her reaction the next morning before we took any medicine.  Gary and Connor took off early for the swim meet, anticipating to be there a bit early (around 7:45 am) rather than the scheduled time for warm-ups at 8:00am.

Apparently, someone changed the schedule - they were supposed to be there at 7:30am!  So Connor only got about 10 minutes of warm up time.  Because of this, he didn't have time to check his stroke number for his backstroke, which added precious seconds to his time.

Interesting Fact:  Ever wonder about the flags that stretch across lap pools?  Their purpose is for backstroke swimmers - they use them to count the number of strokes required from flag line to pool edge, so they don't turn too early or late (which can result in a disqualification (DQ))

Despite the wrench in his plan, Connor did quite well - we're very proud of him!

25m Butterfly: 22.29S - 2nd place

50m Backstroke: 53.65S - 4th place

100m Individual Medley: 2:00.29S (DQ) - he did a wrong turn and was disqualified :(

50m Freestyle: 41.29S - 2nd place

He also competed in the 100m Mixed Relay with three other 9 year olds and they placed 1st in their heat AND 1st overall!

I'll be posting the videos of each race sometime this weekend.  I didn't take very many photos because

A) it was super packed - there were over 300 children competing!  And most of them had one, if not more spectators - Connor, at one point, had FIVE! :)

B) it was sweltering - even thought I had mentally prepared myself after the last meet, it was nothing compared to the sauna that we sat in for 8 hours!

C) Aili was super bored - she didn't want anything to do with the activities we brought, despite a knapsack, full of colouring books, toys and snacks!  We finally sent her home with my dad when he dropped by to watch Connor swim his relay race.

Of the photos I did take, I'm not really happy with any - In my rush to get there to see his 3rd race, I forgot my tripod so I had to bump my ISO up to 1600, resulting in alot of noise and grain. 

I laughed when I saw this one - Connor, mentally and physically preparing for a race, surrounded by a bunch of women!  Hopefully not a glimpse of things to come!

At least I will get alot more practice at these swim meets - we have another 2 meets coming up in December, and then 2 (or 3?) in January!

Just a reminder of my November RAK giveaway - there's still time! - and I'm still waiting for the last winner to contact me... Sarah M - email me!! :)

And lastly, in searching for a seal photograph for this post, I was inundated with photos and articles of the seal hunting that is prevalent in Canada, which is inhumane and barbaric.  You can read more about it here and help stop it with ideas found here.  I was sad to read that Versace, Gucci and Prada were among the designers who have used seal fur in their collections... :(

Thanks for reading!