I got home from my big swim meet in Ft. Lauderdale yesterday, and it was such much more than I expected. When I arrived at the pool on Monday, the day before the meet began, I was in shock. This pool was huge! The actual competition pool had sixteen lanes, but I'm pretty sure it could have fit at least two more if the partition in the middle wasn't there. There was also a warm-up pool with more than sixteen lanes and a diving pool that was open for warm-ups with another eight lanes. It was crazy. But what amazed me even more than the sheer size of the facility was the amount of people they packed into it. There were 1700 swimmers total, which in and of itself was crazy, but even weirder was that only seven of them were from Iowa. I was under the impression that my relay was going to be the only people there, but there were also a few people from the Walnut Creek YMCA that ended up participating as well. In fact, I've swam with one of them multiple times before and was even next to her during the 100 Fly at the High School State Swim Meet.
The few people from Iowa made me realize that swimming really isn't very big in Iowa compared to other states. My teams has never even had a national team before, and other teams have been going to this meet with a large group for years. One team in New Jersey had 29 people who qualified. I don't even think my team has 29 people old enough to qualify, let alone make the difficult cuts. They must be breeding them differently over there, or their training technique is just A LOT better than ours, and they're more motivated to work. (See how I just used all there versions of there, their, and they're in that sentence. Cool.)
But perhaps the biggest let down of the trip was how obviously unprepared we were for this meet. My relay teams didn't even have the same caps. Other more experienced teams had coordinating caps, t-shirts, and jackets that they all wore, and it gave them a sense of unity. We just kind of walked in in our various t-shirts and sweatpants. We had no team area, no banner, and NO JACKETS. I think the jackets upsets me most, we are still ordering some even though the meet is done and over with.
The whole set-up of the meet was confusing. Odd heats were swam in one pool, with the evens on the other side. Prelims in the morning, time trials around noon, and finals at night. Everyone there basically seemed to know what was going on, except us. To make the whole thing even more confusing, for most of the time my coach was nowhere to be found. Before our relay he didn't sit with us, he was downstairs doing something else. Before the time trials on the first day he wasn't even there, and we didn't find him until the races were postponed due to the approaching storm.
One other girl from my relay and I were scheduled to swim at prelims on the first day. She was going to swim the 50 free, and I was supposed to do the 50 Fly. About 20 minutes into the afternoon meet it started to get really windy. People were in the pool swimming the 500, so we still had quite a bit of time before our race and we were just sitting around waiting for our turn. All of a sudden the announcer says over the loud speaker that everyone needs to go inside and wait the storm out, but there are still people in the water. They're allowed to finish their race, but the people already ready to go behind the blocks weren't as lucky. All the races that were left for the day were to be postponed for later in the week and the time trials for the day cancelled, the pool reopening for finals. I think the day really threw some people off, and a lot of people had to scratch their time trials because of conflicts later in the week, taking away one of their best chances to make the cut time for Nationals next year. The other girl on my team was one of them. I guess this is to be expected in an outdoor pool, the weather isn't always going to be perfect, but I don't think it should take away some people's chances to succeed. Oh well, maybe next year. The second day of trials didn't go much smoother.
On the second day of time trials when I was the only one from my team swimming, he didn't show up at all. Having not done a time trial the day before I had to ask other coaches what to do, and ended up approaching the New Jersey team. Embarrassing. Our team looked like a joke.
I think our experience would have been a lot more positive if we would have had a coach there with us who would come to the meet, stay at the same hotel as us, have team dinners with us, and all around be there instead of across town. Maybe that's why the other teams are so much better than us, but whatever the case, we're going back next year, and probably taking a different coach. But that doesn't matter right now, because my relay of four and the other three from Walnut Creek represented Iowa at the meet, creating a presence I don't think it has seen in quite some time, and we'll be coming back. Iowa is there to stay. And with jackets next year.
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