Quote:
Originally Posted by glatt
Yeah, I've never been involved closely enough to know the details of our fundraising. My daughter is in the school band, and they do band trips to competitions where they need to pay for the bus and hotels. But there is fundraising done so that everyone, regardless of income, can go. I don't know how they determine which students get a free ride, and which pay out of pocket, but we have always just paid out of pocket. (Maybe they look at the list of who gets the free school lunches.)
It seems a little strange that you have to buy the team suit, but then are encouraged to swim in a different one. Maybe they should tell parents about that up front, so you can decide where to focus your spending and get one or the other and not both.
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If they all go, then it's good.
having digested it and thunk about it, I'm kind of fine with it actually. Although I'd obviously rather not fork over the 150. This is a suit that you would only wear for the BIG meets. Teams suits are de rigeur at dual meets. This is for when you're REALLY FLIPPING SERIOUS. Only 10 of the team of 45 made MISCAs most had only one cut, she had two. Less than that have made States so far. She is good, $150 is not really a lot for a pice of sports equipment at this level. it just feels like a lot because it's an itst bitsy thin swimsuit. But we paid $70 last year for a used blocker and catcher for Hector and knew we had a steal. and $40 for used legpads and $40 for a used helmet and $40 for used skates...... And coach says these suits now last for much longer than they used to, and she's going to try and instigate a pass-it-down program, so if SG outgrows it, hopefully she will be able to pass it down to the next person with her body shape, and there will be someone to pass one to her....
So anyway, I was kinda thinking I was into it, but needed to discuss with beest, then i walked onto deck tonight and was immediatley accosted by coach, who let me know in no uncertain terms that SG is awesome, they have huge plans for her and the suit is pretty much not a choice......
And apparently Stu -the coaches husband- was one of the 5 responsible for it's design and development -the American part of a 5-people, 5-nation team. And then i saw him personally supervising SG's warm up. These people -who are well respected in the swim coaching world- are investing so much in her it's wonderful and scary.....
Today, while waiting to pick her up from school, I was reading her USA Swimming magazine, and saw that her time was much closer to the current olympians' times than I had thought it would be, so I checked it out, just a few minutes ago. Her current time for the 100 yard breaststroke -when converted to 50m long cours as per olympics) would have been a
world record in 1958. OK, so things have come a long way -but that's pretty bloody fast. She's 6 seconds behind the fastest high school girls in the State (who are actually also on her team), but she's 13 and one of them is 18. And she's dropped 8 seconds in the last 7 weeks. I'm totally blown away by this. I know it seems I'm all brag here, but that's really not the point of this. I knew she was good, but I really hadn't grasped how good and how excited people were about her until today.... So many other parents made a point of coming over and saying something complimentary tonight.... Their daughters are even faster, it's so nice that they noticed and took the time to say so.
Tonight, she didn't swim any relays because coach wanted her to save energy for the breaststroke (it's always the penultimate event). She swam the IM towards the beginning and took 3rd with a new personal best time. She came second in the breaststroke, only 4 seconds behind the State champion of 2 years ago and in front of the girl who
did get a state cut on Saturday. She hated her race -and it's true, her turns were poor, but she still swam her second best time ever.
We remain undefeated. Next week we swim the state powerhouse, though. they are undefeated in forever. But SG says she likes that pool and is confident she will get her state cut there. go SG, I love you. I'm so proud of you and the work you put in to be the best that you can be.