This year's first swim meet

Tonight was the first official swim meet for the season.  I enjoy watching my kids swim, although it certainly isn't a true talent for any of them...at least not yet.  I somewhat regret that they got started so late, but I'm glad they are enjoying it.  Catherine had a particularly rough evening, and because of improper technique was disqualified in two of her events.  Thomas struggled in some of his events, but did have one where he did't come in last.  This was Robert's first meet.  In two of his races, he was the only one in his heat so it's difficult to really know how he did.  In the other two events, he raced against only one other person, and of course that one other person was the son of our good friends here in town.  I hated that both Robert and Isaac were the only two racing...I would prefer to root for both!  He did manage to beat Isaac both times, which surprised me because Isaac has been swimming for years.  However, Isaac does no other athletic events during the year, and Robert is very involved in athletics.  With only two years remaining I know that Robert isn't going to be a consistently winning swimmer, but I think he'll be able to be competitive.

We also learned yesterday that Robert is going to be allowed to participate in cross country this fall.  Because he met the state requirements but it was the school standards where he felt short, the school had some flexibility in deciding how to apply the 2.0 rule.  Andrew met with the athletic director yesterday who decided he would use Robert's cumulative sophomore GPA and declared Robert eligible.  He felt it would only benefit Robert to be participating.  It's hard to argue that point.  The first semester Robert had a 2.6...when he was doing cross country and diving.  After he broke his hand and made several other poor choices that led to him not being able to continue in the dive season or participate in track, he recorded a 1.3.  We are very grateful that he'll be able to participate, and Robert was very excited.  Hopefully he has still learned a lesson, and things get better next year!