Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Sporting update

Saturday was a big day for the young lass in the pool at her high school meet.

1. She made her qualifying time for the YMCA club Eastern District Pa. championships in the 200 freestyle. That's been her goal since she just missed it by 0.7 seconds last spring. She smoked it -- with 2-plus seconds to spare.
I run the console for the electronic timing system for the high school home meets, which are held at our YMCA pool. She came over by me after the race, but passed me quickly, heading for the hallway where the qualifying times are posted.
She came back all smiles.

2. The final race is the 400 freestyle relay. The young lass swims the second leg for the "A" team. They'd been close to getting their qualifying time for the high school district meet, but not quite there.
It was a great race. Our leadoff swimmer cranked out her best split of the season, but we were still down by about a second and a half when the young lass hit the water.
She cut the edge down to half a second, with her best split of the year.
The third swimmer turned it into a dogfight, cutting the other team's lead to 0.2 seconds.
It was dead even going into the final 50 meters.
We won by 0.3 seconds.
And both teams made their district qualifying times -- the other team did it by 0.06 seconds.
Now, the district has about 60 schools in the large-school classification. Usually, about 40-50 percent get qualifiers in any given event.
That's quite an accomplishment.
Especially for a team that's all underclassmen -- no Grade 12s (seniors). The leadoff is Grade 10 (sophomore), the young lass is Grade 9 (freshman) and the last two are Grade 11s (juniors).
The next couple of seasons could be fun, eh?