Swimmer of the Summer/Year

A few weeks before the end of swim team, Peyton got in the car after practice in tears. My friend got swimmer of the week, she said, and I did not. They said she always comes to practices and meets and she doesn't but I do. "Why didn't I get swimmer of the week?" she whined.

This was a teachable moment so I told her that she should be happy for her friend getting swimmer of the week.  However, I understood her disappointment as she really had been working hard at swimming - attending every single practice and meet when she didn't have to and doing pretty well overall for her first year of swimming. Keep working hard, I told her, your hard work will pay off (this is my mantra I use with Austen a lot too - If you put in the work, you'll see good results).

So she kept her head down, kept going to swim practices and all the meets (until she had to leave for sleep away camp for a week), but the day she got home she wanted to go to the pool to practice as the next day was her conference meet and she hadn't been swimming laps since she'd been away all week. Even though it was rather cool and started to rain, she went to make sure she was at least a little ready the next morning for her meet.

The conference meet was a lot like I remember going to my brother's meets. Inside, long and somewhat boring. She swam in 2 events and did okay as she was swimming against some kids that probably swim all season long. Still she placed 4th in backstroke out of 2 heats which wasn't bad at all and her relay team did okay too but placed pretty high.

The conference meet marked the end of the season before the awards banquet. We had a conflict the night of the swim banquet as Austen had lacrosse followed by baseball tryouts so one of us had to go with him and the other with Peyton. She wanted me to come so I went with her and I could already sense how disappointed she was going to be if she didn't win an award. I mean this is my kid who doesn't like to work too hard really at anything but she did put forth a lot of effort at swimming this summer and even though I was so proud of her, that was not enough for her.

They give awards (using superlatives) to all the kids first and she got the award for being a speedy swimmer. After they went through almost 100 swimmers, they announced the 8U girls swimmer of the summer/year....Peyton Szurgot! She was so happy - grinning from ear to ear and skipping over to me with her award. See, this is probably why she was never swimmer of the week - they don't win swimmer of the year. Everything happens for a reason, I told her.

I only wanted her to conquer her fear of deep water this summer and she did more than that. I think she found a love for swimming. If only she wasn't so fickle about that love (and wanted to do it year round or even next summer!)

Peyton with Coach Sophia (whom she said she might like a little bit more than me!)

Getting ready to swim at conference (she's in the middle with the yellow strap on her goggles)