Maddy's PI Breaststroke

Here is Maddy's prelim and final round breaststroke. She swam a personal best both times so again broke the team record. Regan's medley relay swam this weekend as well and placed 8th. Not bad considering Regan was the only PI qualified swimmer on the team. They again broke the team record. You could tell Maddy was intent on swimming well by her "warm up" routine. :)

Regan's PI Freestyle Video

Here is video of Regan's prelim and final round freestyle. She ended up 10th overall. The finals round is a big deal... they play music and announce each swimmers name and team.

Ponderosa Day 2

Feels like a giant repeat of Saturday. Today was Maddy's day however. The girls swam fly, breast, medley relays and Maddy swam the IM. Regan placed 20th in fly, swimming a personal best by .5 seconds. She added a little time in breast, but still did great. Maddy swam a personal best in the breast prelims and then bested again in the finals, finishing 12th overall. Which means she again broke our team breaststroke record. I have videos and I'll post them tomorrow, maybe. It's been a long, long 2 days. Maddy is now done swimming 25's. Next year she moves up to 50's. I'm sure she can rise to the challenge! Regan also moves up an age group. Overall they had a truly phenomenal year!

Ponderosa Day 1

Well, it's 8:30 pm and we just got home from day 1 of Ponderosa Invitationals. Talk about a long day. We got there at about 6:30 this morning. I went through some stats and figured that about the top 5% of swimmers in the Gulf Coast swim here. The girls were in very good company. Today the girls swam freestyle and backstroke. They swim prelims and finals here, so the top 16 swim again in the evening. We were pleasantly surprised when Regan made finals and ended up 10th overall. Not bad out of about 50 swimmers. Maddy finished 23rd I think. Neither girl swam their best time, but neither did a lot of people they were swimming against. Not sure where they finished in backstroke, but it was solidly in the top 2/3 at least. We head back tomorrow, at about 7 am this time. Girls swim fly, breast, Maddy does IM, and both swim a relay. It will be a long day. Maddy's best chance for making finals is in breast, but she has some serious competition. She'll have to swim a personal best to make it. To let you know how fast kids are getting, 2 years ago, Maddy breaststroke time would have gotten her 3rd at this meet. Yikes..... little Phelps' everywhere!

Annual Kerrville Trip

We took our annual trip to Kerrville last week. We again went out to Hunt to look at Stonehedge II, the kids had to race each other to see if anybody has gotten faster. David can still beat Dakotah. Maddy takes one step for every three the other kids take. This year the kids got to serve the Blue Bell on free ice cream day. I wonder if they ate more than they served... Despite the heat, easily 100 in the shade, it was a good trip.

Newton Girls Rock at Divisionals

Saturday was our swim team's big divisional meet where we swam against the 5 other teams in our division. We hosted it at our pool and expected over 600 swimmers, 1800 people overall. And it was the hottest day of the year! It was a long, long, long day to say the least, waking up at 5:30 am. The meet lasted from 8:30 to 4:00, which is late for us. Our dual meets are usually over by noon. Not only was the air hot, but the pool water was easily over 90 degrees. It really felt more like a hot tub. Not easy to swim in. The girls each faced some competition here. They had several swimmers with times very close to theirs. I think we might have had an edge having practiced in the "hot tub" for the last week though.

Regan's medley relay took a close second, but they have previously broken the team record held since 1993. Maddy's medley relay took first. Both girls freestyle relays took first, and both broke the team records. Regan took first in free, breast, and fly. Maddy took first in free, swimming a personal best of 16.09 for 25m, breast, and IM. They really racked up the points for the team, but overall we ended up placing 3rd in the division. We're ok with that because we really don't want to move up a division and swim against the giant teams that have nothing but year round swimmers.

It was a long day, which ended with mexican food, margaritas, and bed by 9. One more meet to go next weekend where the girls will face "NWAL's Best" swimmers from all over the gulf coast of Texas. A few of their strokes are barely qualified, but they are in there pretty good for the others. We'll see how they rise to the challenge!