Quote:
Originally Posted by Breeze
That fly time is impressive...it looked really strong so I did a conversion on it and then looked up the time to see how it compares to down here. His time converts to around a 1:13.58...that would not only be good enough to qualify for state...that time is typically top 15 in the state for 11 year olds. In fact, Bear swam a 1:13.90 when he was 11 and he finished 13th.
Sounds like he's in for a strong season...
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we've been pretty stoked with the start of his training this season and as I said, we were happy it translated so well to times in this first meet. He's among the front runners when training in his 11-13 yo group and while last year he would be kind of happy to be in the middle, this year, he wants to lead the group when swimming laps.
We have this program around here where kids will practice a sport 4 or even 5 afternoons a week while having slightly longer mornings. They then become student-athletes. That program is in fact not only for sport but also for language (intensive English in our case) and art. Andrew (our oldest son) was in English for 5 years before he got involved in hockey and had an opening to switch to the school-hockey program where he played hockey MON/TUE/THU/FRI and had regular school the rest of the time, including the whole day on Wednesday.
I'm explaining all this to say that Matthew has been in intensive English for the last three years because we believe that English as a second language is of utmost importance for his future, but he has already committed to moving to the swimming team as a student-athlete next year. Andrew's hockey program wasn't the really high development one as Andrew started playing kinda late but the swimming one is recognized one for development of athletes. This means that the swimming program train five afternoons a week. So starting in September 2016, Matthew will be either swimming or doing a dryland training five days a week plus Saturday morning.
He has matured a lot this Summer. In May, he was saying he wanted to do another year of English but I think getting better made him want to be even better. We told him about his placement in the province and at the national level for 11 yo yesterday evening and this morning, kiddo had set his alarm 30 minutes early and he was doing pushups and running up and down the stairs when my wife went to wake him up. He really is almost absurdly competitive.
For me, I want him to do well, but I'm not the overly aggressive type. I really enjoy seeing him swim though, and overall, seeing him improve.
I'll keep you posted as his season goes on
FM