The majority of the meets we attend are age-based (10 & under, 11-12, 13-14, and 15 & older), so Ryan swims against guys his same age. This meet was a time-based meet, so all of the events were mixed age & gender. But awards were still given for the age groups.
There were definitely pros and cons. We love regular meets where the events start with the slowest swimmers in the first heats and moves to the faster swimmers in the later heats. We know as soon as the event ends where Ryan placed. With the mixed events, it was fun and challenging for him to swim with so many older kids in his heat, but I don’t think he pushed as much, since he didn’t know where he was compared to the guys his age. He gained time in every event.
We arrived at the pool Friday afternoon just before warm-ups started. There was one section about mid-pool that had swim bags on the first three rows, but then some of our team moms (and kids’ swim bags) scattered through the rest of the section. We sat on the fourth row, directly behind the three rows of swim bags. As warm-ups ended, the entire University of Utah swim team came over and sat the three rows in front of us! All of our faithful readers know that my Bachelor’s degree is from BYU, and that we are fiercely LOYAL Cougar fans! We kept joking that we were sitting in “enemy territory”! :)
Friday, Ryan swam the 50 free…
And the 400 IM (with some 14-17 year olds), taking 5th place. In the distance events, swimmers have to have their own timers. So I was Ryan’s timer and Rara stood at the other end of the pool taking pictures. As she was taking pictures, a woman we don’t know was kneeling down at the end of Ryan’s lane taking pictures of him, too! She wasn’t one of our team moms, so we don’t know where his picture might end up!
Saturday Ryan swam the 200 IM (with two 14-year-old girls and one 14-year-old guy)…
50 fly (all of the kids in his heat were 11-13 years old)…
And 50 back (with two 14-year-olds and a 17-year-old), in the lane next to his good friend, Will…
It’s always fun to watch the kids cheer for each other during their events, and have fun together between their events.
The most exciting event was the 200 IM of one of our friends, and Ryan’s idol. Thomas just turned 16, and lives in our neighborhood. His parents are good friends of mine. We enjoy sitting together at meets and talking about our swimming obsession. And cute Thomas is the one who stood at the end of the pool during all of Ryan’s events cheering for him at the meet I talked about in this post and is the one in the purple-ish towel cheering for Ryan in the 400 IM in the pictures above.
Thomas is an amazing swimmer! Just as Ryan’s 200 IM heat included older swimmers, so did Thomas’ heat. Thomas swam against his good friend, Dylan (age 16; also the brother of Ryan’s “special friend”), one 17-year-old from the team where we swam last weekend, one 18-year-old University of Utah swimmer, and two 20-year-old University of Utah swimmers. Thomas’ mom, Paula, wrote about Thomas’ event on her blog. I loved her first-hand account so much that I asked her if I could share it on my blog, as well as her pictures of Thomas and the University of Utah swimmers. Here is her account:
Everyone knows we are University of Utah fans. We always cheer for the U and always want them to win... until today.
We have been at swim meets for the past 3 weekends in a row. So when I drove Thomas to the pool last night I wasn't expecting much as he had done really well in the last 2 meets and he has been training to hard and is sore and tired. So I really thought this wasn't going to be a really great meet for him. Then we get there and the U of U swim team happens to be entered in this meet. Yikes!
Thomas swims in the last heat with the fast guys so every race he had one of these guys, or girls ( it was his first mixed meet , girls and guys swimming together) in his heat. It was pretty cool to see the U swim team there and the kids were all staring at them. They had all the cool gear, their speedos said Utah Man on the back, they had a U tattoo on most of their backs, they were big and intimidating.
Thomas swam last night against 2 different ones and they were amazing, Thomas finishing behind them both times.
So this morning I decide to sleep in and let Kevin take him so I don't have to drag Jake to the pool at 6:30 this morning and I missed one of his best races ever.
Once again he had to race against one of them in the 200 I.M. He was also racing against 2 of their women's team. The U swimmer was right next to him and in the lead by a little bit and then they hit the wall for the last length of the pool and Thomas caught up to him and out touched him by 3, one hundreths of a second and swam his best time by 2 seconds. The entire U swim team was watching at the end of the pool with their jaws dropped. Thomas finished first in the 200 I.M not only beating 2 Pac 12 women swimmers, which is pretty cool but out touching a men's University of Utah Pac 12 swimmer. Pretty dang amazing.
Kevin told me the entire place was going crazy and everyone was talking about the Tsunami swimmer that beat a U of U swimmer and pointing at him as he walked by. One of our moms said she didn't have a voice because she was screaming so loud.
I told Thomas he should have hopped out of the pool and found the U coach and given him a hand shake and said "Thomas Sheridan, see you in 3 years"
I know I blog about swimming a lot and sometimes he does great things and sometimes he doesn't have the best meet. He really works so hard and is so dedicated that it is fun to see him do big things like this. His Coach Steve tells me lately that he is just really starting to get fast and is working so hard. It will be so fun to see what is ahead for him in the next few years.
I ended up going out and watching his last 2 races today and I did get to see the kid he beat. He got out of the pool and dried off with his cool U of U towel, Thomas got out and dried off with his super hero towel. It was too funny. He cracks me up.
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By the way, I was the mom with no voice! We were all screaming and whistling and cheering for Thomas as we realized that he might win! As they touched at the end of the pool, we all went silent for that split second waiting for the times to post to the board. When they posted, and Thomas was on the board in first place, our whole section exploded with noise! After everything died down, I went to talk with Thomas’ dad, Kevin, and I truly didn’t have a voice! I told him that event might be just as exciting as what we’ll see at Trials (especially since Thomas beat the University of Utah swimmers)! :)
i love how good your camera is! ryan has really good form too.
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