Victory at the State Games

Hey, guys! I’m back with a tale of victory and adventure!

The first I’d like to remind you all about the past events of the summer:
I attended training camp in early July, and learned much more about my favorite sport of all: Swimming. My left rotator cuff healed with proper training and rest. I had the State Games coming up, and the National Games to qualify for…
So what happened at the State Games?
Sunday morning I arrived at the Aquatic Center at a college. It’s a nice complex, for sure! We checked in, and I warmed up by doing some of the drills the camp had taught me.
I was nervous, but I knew I had the tournament in the bag. My only problem was swimming against the older kids. See, when there aren’t enough people in an event, they merge the age groups so the meet can go by quicker and everyone can go home. But someone had told me that qualifications and medals were awarded by race, not age group. I began freaking out, and becoming so nervous and upset, I was pretty angered by the time the meet had begun.
Turns out, that lady didn’t know what she was talking about and I would be okay.
In my first event, the 50 yard Freestyle, I swam 29.34 seconds. It was a personal best, and I placed first! In my 100 yard Breastroke, I placed second with a meh time of 1:33.15. The girl in front of me was on fire. Literally. The smoke was unbearable. In my third and final event, I swam a winning 1:07.88. Not a best, but it’s good!
That means I qualified for all three of my events in the State Games of America in 2015. Only one thing to do: TRAIN HARDER. Next year, I’ll be one year older, and ready for more competition, and my times will have decreased even more. Believe me, I can’t wait.

~#1kid

Toughing It Out… OUT of the Water

Good day, friends! Welcome back!

Now, we’ve had plenty of life experiences to tell all about, but now it’s time to get to the real reason of this blog: Road to Gold.

What does it mean? It means this blog is supposedly about my Road to Gold. Of course. Any attempts to get one of those precious medals have failed. I’ve tried once, and it failed due to a head injury.

So now that I’ve gotten back on my feet and am all healed, I can continue on the Road.

This past season has been rather painful. As I mentioned in a previous post, I hurt my shoulder. The sport of archery (FF101, my bro, is well involved in it) has messed up the rotator cuff. It really, really hurt. And it limited my swimming, my skiing, my archery, my tennis, and even my sleep.

The consequence was my best stroke stripped from me for the whole season. Yes, I could not swim Butterfly Stroke at all. If you’ve seen the Butterfly stroke in action, you’d noticed the shoulders. How the work so hard to get those arms up and around with such force. Since Backstroke is also strenuous on the shoulders, I was stuck with my least favorite stroke of them all: Breastroke.

I surprisingly did alright. I definitely improved, an hour and forty-five minutes of freestyle and Breastroke, three times a week must have paid off!

It was a really interesting season. I couldn’t swim as hard as usual, so I wasn’t placed in the big championships. However, I was fast enough to win the smaller championships. 🙂 I got first in all of my events, and getting first and second in the relays.

Now the season is over. And a new challenge awaits.

Remember last summer? The state championships and the concussion? Well, THIS year, each state gets a chance to qualify for the State Games of America 2015 in Nebraska. How to qualify is simple: Get first, second, or third place in your event.

So that’s my goal for this year: Qualify for the SGA. It’s going to be difficult, but I have friends that know I can do it.

Ever think you’re going to fail? Did you feel encouraged to know that people had your back the whole time?

-#1kid