[Breeze]

Berry Swim Banquet

The awards banquet was nice. The food was pretty mediocre, but that was expected. I enjoyed seeing the team interact with each other outside of the pool. My only complaint about the banquet is the way the coach elected to do the awards. Rather than picking the person for each of the different categories (most improved, most valuable, etc.) she had the swimmers pick. Which is a great idea in theory. Allow the people on the team to recognize the person that meets the definition of the category the best. The only problem is - this creates a popularity contest. Combine that with the fact that the largest contingent of swimmers were freshman, and the second largest were sophomores, and it's completely unsurprising that they basically won all the awards.

One humorous item occurred during the presentation. They were recognizing the kids based on their years in the program, so Bear and Harrison were seen as 3rd year swimmers and called up with the Juniors. Then they recognized the seniors and their gift was a stole for graduation that stated student athlete. The only problem is Bear and Harrison are also graduating. In addition, Ross was called up with the graduates, but he's in his 3rd year so he didn't get called up to receive his 3rd year award (a Berry Logo watch). I believe Bear and Harrison are requesting a stole and Ross is working on getting a watch, but it's funny they couldn't seem to handle the early graduation thing.