Friday, August 14, 2009

Swimming Update

It's official...Ryan is on the Tsunami swim team!!!On Wednesday, we met with the coach and Ryan's level 6 teacher. The coach asked a few questions about Ryan's swimming abilities, and his teacher confirmed that he not only has the technical abilities, but also the motivation needed to be a team member. The coach invited Ryan to swim with the team the next day so he could evaluate him.

Thursday, after swimming almost 30 minutes straight for his level 6 test, Ryan swam with the team. He did great! Ok, I admit that I'm a biased mom, but he really was better than several of the kids on the team. The coach kept turning around and giving me the "thumbs up." Ryan has been excited to learn "flip turns" in level 6. He, of course, did flip turns at the end of every lap. The coach really liked that! (I tried to catch his flip turn. Here's what I got.)The coach offered Ryan a spot on the team. We considered waiting until next summer. During the summer, all ages practice together from noon to 1. During the school year, they divide into a younger group and an older group. One group practices every day from 4 to 5, the other 5 to 6. The coach asked Ryan how old he is. Apparently about 10 years old is the division between the two groups. He said he'd have Ryan start with the younger group, but thought he might not be challenged enough, so he'd likely move him up to the older group. It was all so exciting that we decided not to wait. We'll go ahead and have him start now. He officially starts on Monday!
Today was the last day of level 6. Interestingly, HALF of the kids in the class dropped out. They started with 12 in the class, and only 6 finished today. The classes always do their evaluations on Thursday, and then do a lot of fun things on the last day. They've been learning water polo, so after their "12 minute warm up," they played a game of water polo. Ryan scored twice!It is so much fun watching him develop into such a great little athlete. It will be fun to see how he does with the swim team this year.

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