Always our CHAMP!

Yes, I know that I've been MIA - blame Facebook!

I have to get out there and write about my sweet, strong, and amazing daughter. This girl of mine has had an entire TRANSFORMATION in swimming the past month or two. She has gone from someone out there having a good time to being a girl on a mission to become the best that she can (while still having fun!). She has dropped well over a minute of time on her combined events over the last month alone.

It recently became clear that she excels in the Breaststroke (just like her brother and mama!). She dropped 30 seconds on the 50 Breast since the beginning of the season (September). After our February home meet a couple weeks ago, she was within 4 seconds of a champ time in the 50 Breast.

Her last chance to get that state time came and went this past weekend. On Sunday, she swam it and missed the champ time by .20 of a second. Ouch! She had the opportunity to do a time trial in it at the end of the meet, giving her another chance. My girl had it in her, and dropped another 3/4 of a second, earning that champ time. Unfortunately, as I watched with shaking hands and tapping feet, I knew that this time drop was not going to give us the result that we wanted. As an ex-official, I am quite in tune with technique and was watching her and the officials closely, so I saw that she'd been disqualified, which meant that her time wouldn't count. My heart was broken for her, and it was so hard to watch her as she became so excited to see her time and then rush to me with the biggest smile on her face that I've ever seen. I had tears running down my face. Tears of pride, tears of joy, tears of disappointment. I hugged her as hard as I could and told her how simply AMAZING she was and how proud I was of her, hating that I was going to have to break her heart but knowing that I couldn't let her go on thinking that she'd be going to state.

She is disappointed. I think that I am possibly even more disappointed for her. The kicker is that the time standards change in April, and as of then her legal time will be a champ time... qualifying her for state automatically in August... BUT she ages up in June, so that champ time won't count. She's a hard worker, an amazing swimmer, and I know her chance will come. She's our champ.

Here she is with her finals shirt, she took 2nd place in the 50 Breast:

More awards, and a certificate for her first EVER A time!

We had a special celebration for her last night. It was fun and made her happy. Wish I could get over it as easily, this mommy has guilt. If I'd bought her a new suit for the morning session, maybe I pushed too hard, maybe we shouldn't have tried to teach her the underwater pull... But amidst all the heartache, one factor remains. She's our champ, and she's made me proud.