2008 Long Course State Championships

This first picture is actually from Finals last week and was taken by my friend and fellow swim mom, Tammy... I LOVE this picture, it's probably one of my most favorite of him ever, and definitely my favorite swimming one.



Here it is with a little edits, but I think I like the original better...



What a week! Our state fun started on Tuesday with a "carbo loading" spaghetti dinner with about 70 swimmers/family members. It was a blast, even if I did have a heart attack at the prospect of Caden spilling cherry slushie all over the Roberts' white carpet!

The highlight of the evening was the gift bags assembled by the coaches, which included an AWESOME apparel item, along with cool "good luck" gifts from the other families. Thanks to Tammy for some of these pictures, as my camera's battery died! (by the way Tammy, in my family we call that ocean salt stuff "slick sh!t" - well... I guess I call it that, my kids know better even if I don't!)









The jackets are SO cool! We had to deal with a tad bit of little sister jealousy when we got home, but she's happy and proud of William like the rest of us, and was cheering for him louder than anyone today.

Today I drove William to Rochester and back (about 4.5 hours total) so that he could swim in the boys' 11-12 400 Medley Relay. I teased him that he was lucky I liked him enough to drive 5 hours to watch him swim a 2 minute race... BUT he knows as well as I do that I wouldn't have missed it for the world.



This is most of the boys' relay team, chatting before warmups:



Getting ready for warmups...



I had my camera in moron mode, as usual, and ended up with a bunch of blurry pics... but I kinda liked this one, it makes him look like he's going SUPER fast (he was cruising pretty good, but was "just" warming up)...



THE BIG RACE!





William's Splits:





This was a good time for him! It's not an official time, since it was a relay start, but his first 50 was his fastest ever by about 1.5 seconds, which was AWESOME. His 100 was within .61 seconds of his fastest time from last weekend, so all in all, it was a great race!

We had to come straight back home today, since I have to work... We hadn't planned on him making the state team, so we had to do a lot of last minute rearranging in order to accommodate it but we are so glad for the opportunity. Most of the team will be heading up tomorrow for the weekend. GOOD LUCK SEA DEVILS!!!