Tonight's guest blogger is Suzanna, our seventh-grader who this fall started on the high school swim team. (P.S. Faithful Reader, you should know that Dickinson co-ops with Williston for high school swimming.)
"I had my first high school swim meet today. I got out of school at 10:30 A.M., and my friend Leah's mom had brought Subway sandwiches for us for dinner, and she gave us a ride to the West River Community Center. Then we got into the van that took us to Williston. It held our Dickinson coach, the eight girls on our swim team, and the driver, who was one of the swimmer's dad. We left at 10:45 and got to Williston at 3:30 P.M. their time (we took a bathroom break along the way).
When we got there, we went to the locker room, and I met a couple girls from the Williston part of our swim team. We got into our swim suits and put on our warm-up suits and then went out and stretched. Then we went back into the locker room, and our Williston coach gave us a pep talk. We got our Williston swim caps and then went out to stand for the singing of the national anthem. Then the meet started.
I swam a 50-yard freestyle and a 100-yard freestyle. My 50-yard was the fourth event, so I was pretty close to the beginning for that. Then we had about an hour of diving events before we got back to the swimming events. My 100-yard freestyle was the seventh event, so it was pretty close to the end. When the whole swim meet was over, we went out for supper at Rice and Spice, a Chinese restaurant not far from the pool. It has a Mongolian stir fry, so we all had some of that and some of the Chinese buffet. Then we loaded back into the van and headed home.
On the way home, the skies were gray, and it looked really stormy. When we were in the middle of nowhere, lightning started flashing non-stop--there was no break between bolts--and then it started down-pouring. The wind started picking up and rocking our van back and forth, and it started hailing. None of the girls had cell phone reception, so no one could call parents to let them know what was going on. We pulled over to the side of the road for a little while because we couldn't see anything, but then our driver kept driving and eventually out-drove the storm. In the van, the air conditioning unit was funky because, when the air conditioning came out the top, it just spit out a little bit of cold air and then stopped, but it sent heat out of the bottom of the van non-stop--so it was really, really warm in that van. We got home at about 9:50 P.M. our time, and our team captain gave me a ride home.
Then I came in, talked to Mom and Dad, and told them how I did: I swam the 50-yard in 36 seconds and the 100-yard in one minute 26 seconds, I think. I wasn't very proud of my times, but I have a goal for my next swim meet: to drop seconds off both of my event times. I met a lot of new girls and made a lot of new friends with my Williston teammates, and I'm excited for them to come to Dickinson for our next swim meet."
No comments:
Post a Comment