Sectionals

Sectionals is over!!  I swam the 800 free relay and the 50 free on Thursday, the 200 free, 100 fly and 400 free relay on Friday, nothing on Saturday, and the 100 free and 400 medley relay on Sunday.  I had some great best LC times in everything! 

This meet was one of the biggest, if not THE biggest meet I have ever been to.  Everybody was so fast!  Warm-ups were crazy, there, I was the one being passed all the time!  There were so many fast swims, it was a cool meet to watch.  Get this; there was a girl who went a 2:13 in the 200 back, LC.  She shattered the meet record which was a 2:17!  And then in the A final of the men's 50 free, there were 23s and 24s!  This was an amazing meet.

My mom and I drove there together, while the rest of the sectional team drove down with Charlie.  The only thing that was upseting about that was parking.  Coaches got to park in the parking garage that WASN'T CROWDED.  Everybody else had to walk about a couple hundred miles around campus to the parking garage.  After finals, we had to walk in the sleet, the ice cold rain and billowing wind pounding on us, blowing our umbrellas inside out, and making us feel... ticked off.  Then we find out the next day that we could have cut through a parking lot and cut our time by over half.  *sigh*

This was the first meet where they had forever to warm up.  I mean really.  They gave us 2 hours!  I got there at the crack of dawn and we got to get in a lot of our warm up before the pool really got crowded.

Here is a first; they had a camera guy film everybody in finals and have it up on a screen by the score board!!  That was very cool.  Though I didn't make it to finals in anything but for our relays, I am pretty sure that they will have plenty of time to stalk me with the camera in the future.

Some people are just made for the camera... :)

Got my hoodie, my goodie bag, and my giant jaw breaker lolly pop.  Life is good.

Golds

Golds is over!  It was last weekend, and I'm really sorry I didn't post about it earlier.  On Friday was the MILE and the 800 free relay.  Our relay did great, making it to Sectionals!!  After about a year of waiting, because the mile is dead last, I swam it for the second time ever.  I dropped 37 seconds for a time of 18:50!  I am very, very, very excited and happy about that swim.  Like last time, I was under pace most of the time... that means I went faster than planned :) 

Next day I swam the 100 fly, 100 back, and 50 free plus relays in prelims.  I made it back to finals in all 3 of my events, dropping time in the 100 back (1:02.73) and 50 free in prelims.  At finals, I FINALLY broke a minute in the 100 fly for a time!!  I had a 59.42 in that, and a 24:40 in the free, which I took 2nd in! 

Sunday morning was hard becasue of the daylight saving time.  Ben Franklin invented those by the way.  Anyways, in prelims I swam the 200 free, 200 back, and 100 free plus relays.  Best times in all of them, 2:02.08 in the 200 free, 2:17.06 in the 200 back,(I dropped 3 seconds!!) and 54.89 in the 100 free.  I finaled in everything, but didn't have best times at finals, which is okay with me!  I am very satisfied with my performance at Golds, and can't wait for Sectionals!

Above- Me, my hardware, and my ribbon back at home.

Woop Woop!

Hola!  I attended the morning session of Silvers yesterday to watch Mason at his first USA champs.  He did well, dropping time in most of his events, including 5 whole seconds in the 100 free!  Great job!  Also, great job to everyone else who swam, we had some amazing time drops and a few Gold times, you all did wonderfully!  For those who are going to Golds, I'll see you this weekend, and good luck!

I am swimming...

1650
200 free
100 free
50 free
200 back
100 back
100 fly

See you soon!

Deep Breath...

It's Monday, again.  The time before Gold Champs seems to speed ahead at light speed with no stopping it.  It's 5 weeks, then 4 weeks, then 3 weeks.  Now Silvers is this weekend then Golds the next.  YIKES!  I am nervous, but also excited.  I am most nervous about the mile, becasue well, it's the mile!  It's long.  It's hard.  It's what the over-achievers do at Champs... it's the mile.  It will go well.  I just wish Friday was over. 

I have several time cuts buzzing around my head for lots of the events I am swimming.  They aren't really pressure, like, "You have to go this cut!!"  It's more like, "Pretty sure I'm going to go that."  But I'm not telling you guys them. :P

Okay, everytime I try it on I feel fast.  I look awesome and fear-striking in it, I have to admit.  It is... my kneeskin fastskin.  Let's just take a moment to appreciate what I just said.  I got a FAST SKIN that is also a KNEE SKIN.  That's, in a word, sweeeeeeeeeeet.  It's not the suit that is fast, it's the person who is, but still. 

So, we will just have to see how things turn out at Golds!  See you behind the blocks :)

CCS 11 & Over

Hello!  Today was the CCS 11 and Over meet.  Being a 13 year old(!), I was in the 13 and over age category.  I am very happy with today, I had 2 best times, 1:00.7 in the 100 fly and 1:02.99 in the 100 back.  My goal was to go a 1:02 in the back, and I just made it!  :)  My 100 and 50 free were a little off today, but that's okay.  Mason also swam today, dropping time in both events he swam, 50 and 100 free. 

I probably look really dorky behind the blocks.  I am shaking out, and jumping up and down and moving around while the others just shake their arms out once and take some deep breaths.  That's okay though, I think that's the best thing for me to do behind the blocks.  Stay happy and loose :)  I don't have a meet until Golds, so that will be nice to have a little break from meets.  Oh yeah, this was the pool with the sweet red blocks, oh yeah!  I wish they would go ahead and get new blocks for Twinsburg!  :)

Quads

Last weekend I competed at Quads at Ewwie Puuie, IUPUI :)  I was chosen to be part of Team Ohio again this year.  It is such a fun meet!  Even though I only had 1 best time, I had a great time.  My 200 medley relay took first... plus new meet record!  My 200 free relay was .04 off too!  Swimming against different states is really cool, though Illinois dropped out this year so it was only Kentuckey, OH/LE and Indiana.  As last year I traded caps, attended the dance Saturday night, and had a wonderful experience.  The second day when they were playing music, the chicken dance started and I hopped up on the blocks to dance!  Lots of other kids were too.  That's definitely in the spirit of the swim meet! 

I love this picture :)

Pre-Quads

I have been excited for Quads way before I got the email saying I have the easy fun events... 100s and 50 free, back, fly.  I really can't wait!  It's going to be a fun meet at a fast pool.  My goal is to get all of the caps again... at LEAST Kentucky.  I have these cuts for my events in the back of my head that pop up at random times of the day too, that's how you can tell you are a meet junkie :)  My buddies have been talking it up too and now we are all just pumped.  I think the only way they could get us MORE excited is if they stuffed us in a bus for 5 hours... hmm sound familiar?  haha :)  We got the relay info today, I'm in the 200 free and medley A relays.  Fly for the medley and I'm first in the free.  I am very excited about how that turned out.

Quads is going to be so much different this year.  For starters, instead of being the only one from my team and not knowing anybody, lots of people from USC are going (YES!!!) and I know a lot of the folks going.  Experiences like this are great because it's fun to have your competitors on the same team.  Then when you aren't, you end up watching and cheering for their swims even though they aren't on your team. 

I'm going back to Indy baby!

Back From Pittsburgh

Hello!  Pittsburgh was a long, tiring weekend, I will give you that.  But it was the best, nicest, fastest meet I have been to yet... faster than Zones and Quads!  I made it back to finals in everything I swam except the 200 back, but I was first alternate in that.  Here are my times and how things shook out this weekend~

Prelims 200 free 2:03.33 #6
Finals 200 free 2:02.31 #5
Prelims 200 back 2:20.96 #9
Prelims 50 fly 27.10 #1
Finals 50 fly 26.76 #1

Prelims 100 free 55.91 #4
Finals 100 free 56.30 5#
Prelims 50 back 28.93 #1
Finals 50 back 28.92 #2

Prelims 100 back 1:03.94 #4
Finals 100 back 1:03.35 #4
Prelims 50 free 24.89 #1
Finals 50 free 24.76 #2
Prelims 100 fly 1:01.65 #?
Finals 100 fly 1:02.14 #3

I would HIGHLY recommend this meet next year if you make a cut.  It is just such a great meet... so many FAST people! 

To see how great our other swimmers did, visit my coach's blog at USC Twinsburg.

Swimming! Part 2

I did well!  I made it to finals in the 200 free and the 50 fly and I was one place off from making the 200 back finals :D  I had a 26.7 in the 50 fly... 1st place!  2:02.3 in the 200 free and 2:20.9 in the 200 back- all best times! 

Swimming!

Well hey, I'm here at the hotel for the Pittsburgh meet... 200 free, 200 back and 50 fly up soon!

Wish me luck!

Shaker Shark

Hello!  It's been a bit since I last posted, sorry!  This weekend was the Shaker Shark meet at CSU.

On Friday I swam the 200 fly for the first time, with a time of 2:28... best time lol :D  Everyone thinks the 200 fly is this horrible event, I would say it's ranked up there but not worse than the 200 back or 500 free.  Speaking of which I also swam the 500 free and lowered my time, now I have a 5:32! 

Saturday was finals day.  I placed 1st in everything in prelims-- 100 free, 100 back and 50 fly.  Then at finals I lowered all my times again and placed first in each.  55.9 in the 100 free, 1:03.9 in the 100 back, and 27.3 in the 50 fly.  THAT was a lot of swimming!

And today I had 2 50s, 50 free and 50 back, and then the 100 fly.  I took firsts in those too~ no finals today :)  I had a 28.high in my 50 back, 1.03 in my fly, and 25 in my free...

But we time trialed in the 200 free relay at the end and I swam first- with a time of 24.86!  New LE record and my first sectional cut!  Our team broke the USC record for the relay, and we're a second from breaking the LE one... a girl on that went to the Olympics!  The relay was AMAZING, everyone swimming bests!  Everyone was so happy after, it was great.  The coaches really were excited too, standing with us behind the blocks and doing warm up with us.  It was just so exciting!  Best relay ever!

Good job to everyone who swam this weekend, I was very happy, lots of people from USC were there!

Just Keep Swimming...

Hello! Here is my follow up post on Friday's. I wish I could just fast forward to the post about how I did, but then everything that went along with DOING the times would be lost. I'm going to keep writing now.

First off, I had 2 meets in one weekend. 2. (Hold the shocked gasps}
On Saturday I had the Peg Neal Pentathlon- because I'm still 12 I only had to do the 4 50s and IM. I did well, not as well as I wanted or expected, seeing as it was only easy sprints. I placed well taking 3rd for the whole meet (for 11-12 girls)grabbing me a trophy :D I wasn't overly pleased with my performance that day but I am happy with how the cards fell this week over all. We had a tough week at practice, fast sets, F or F, and pace, it was one of the peak weeks of our work outs.

Today I also competed in the Mile Meet. Guess what we did there? I was heat 6. I got my favorite lane, 10! The mile was a long event. Matt was at the other end taking splits. I was looking for his signs for my race, but when I looked over he either had his hands up or sometimes out. Me, being far away, swimming, wet, and having goggles on, thought that they were the same so I swam the whole mile thinking how much I sucked and how mad Matt was going to be at me, how far off pace I was and just how freaking long it was! My coach owes me a cake. It was a good event, and I had a faster pace than what I was holding at practice for a lot of the 50s. I am very happy I swam it. After swimming the mile it puts a little different perspective on other events. I think this is somthing everyone should do at LEAST once. I made a AAA cut in both the mile and the 1000 (at the turn) and broke the team's 1000 record. I also took second place overall for 11-12 girls. I swam a 19:27, very much where I want to be. Even though I swam 5 other events this one seems to amount to more, I mean come on! It's a 1650! 66 laps! 19 & 1/2 min swimming!

Lastly but not least, we have the Swim Champions! That rocked! I got to meet 4 Olympians! Not only that, I got to hold a gold medal, swim and race with them, and get their autographs! They were so cool! The 3 guys just seemed like guys- having fun and loving what they are doing. They worked on drills and raced in all 4 strokes, and then we did a relay! The people were in the water with us doing the stuff! It was great, a once in a life time experiance. Oh yeah, hey coach, they had us do LANE LINE PULL as one of the drills. ;D I also made sure to tell Peter Vanderkay that Matt was my coach- he knew him, lol.

While we were waiting to go for our large relay, this one girl intruduced herself to me.
"Hi! What's your name?"
"Hey, I'm Amber."
"You're the girl who beat (girl be left un-named) in the 50 free yesterday! She was so so ticked."
"Oh wow, that wasn't even a best time!"
"It wasn't for her either!"

I'm sorry but that is the best. :D :D :D :D :D :D Bye!

CCS Age Group and Open

Hiya! To all that participated in this meet- good job and congrats!

This meet was good but I am glad that it is over. I dropped a lot of time in the 200and 500 free today, and dropped .06 from my 200 back yesterday! Yeah! I was really close to my 50 times but they weren't bests. I guess this was my distance meet though :D

Here are my results -

25.83 50 Fr
2:06.45 200 Fr
5:41.91 500 Fr
29.62 50 Bk
2:23.82 200 Bk

One Year and Counting

Hello! The first meet of the season was this weekend! It was really cool for me because this was my first USA meet last year. I have completed one full year of USA swimming :D Last year I would have freaked out, but this year I had fun, was calm, cool, and collected! Among other things, what I really am happy about is that I'm not nervous about meets anymore. I go, have fun, swim the events I have swam so many times before, and go fast! No more freaking out about an event. Not this year baby!

I think that helps a lot. My coach was talking to me about swimming scared at one of the first meets of long course. I was scared over the 100 fly I had last that day, and that affected all of my other swims a lot. They definitely were not the best I could be.

So I think that not swimming scared helped me set the LE district record in the 50 fly with a time of 27.00.

That kinda rocked. I was so happy, I had the Michael Phelps finish with the fist in the air! That's the first time I have ever done anything like that! That was the new district record, and the "any person who swam their time in LE" record, best time and the USC record by almost 2 seconds!

I dropped time in a lot of events from last year so I was very happy about that. I set USC records in three other events too, that was cool. One event that I was most proud of was my 100 fly. I dropped 3 seconds from last year and got the zone cut I didn't have before, and set the new team record. The reason I was so happy about that was 100 fly was one of my struggling events. I hated it mostly because I was scared of it, I thought it was long, and HARD! But I think I swam it right for the first time and I went fast without dying!

I even placed in my breast and dropped time!

The one thing I was disappointed about was the medley relay. The judge lady deeked me because SHE thought I did a false start. NO ONE agreed with her. People in the stands didn't know what we did! My head coach was really mad about it, he got up in one judge's face and told him what he thought about it. Matt was great too and said that whatever random lady said to me he still thought that was the best relay start I have done and 100% legal. When we were walking back, the lady told us that I false started. We just stared at her. As soon as she turned around my friend said loudly, "I hate that woman, always have. She's an idiot!" I felt so bad but my team was so sweet about it, they said that they didn't care, it was a dinky relay at a dinky meet and they knew it was a bad call. I'm just going to say we made 1st in that one though :D

*My friend has been trying to make some A cuts for a while now. Well, she made it by a chunk of time! She was super happy, and I am so happy for her too! She did amazing, and now hopefully she can go to Braun with me! She can go to golds too! If you're reading, YOU ROCK! You don't need onions and garlic anymore!

*Iman also did great, breaking into a 59 for the first time in the 100 free! Congrats!

*Mason's relay team took first in the medley relay, good job you guys!

*Michael and Matt also ROCKED! Placing and shaving time! YEAH!! :D

This meet was a great starter for the season, everyone did well! Great job to everyone who swam!

Matt also did a really nice overview post about the high lights of the meet... check it out at USC Twinsburg.

Bye!

Zones

Hey everyone! Zones is over! YES! It was really fun. The team drove together all the way there, which was about 5 hours. We stopped at Olive Garden on the way there, it was over run by swimmers! We did almost everything as a team, which was fun. We all had roommates, here is a picture of me and my roomy~

4 people from USC went to Zones: Iman, Scottie, Kingsley, and me. I thought that was cool, I was really happy I would know some people. But I already knew a lot of the people! It was cool because most of the girls there I knew because I swim against them at meets, and have met them at Quads.

I swam the 50, 100, and 400 free, 50 and 100 back, 50 fly, 400 medley relay, 200 free relay, 200 medley relay, and 400 free relay. It was a long, and hot weekend, but I had a lot of fun! It was weird to be at a meet with a different coach, but they were all cool. What was really cool is that the people who were on my team were people normally I would be competing against.

When we came in, everyone had a sign on their door with their name on it! I loved that, it was really cool.

So that's all, bye!

Last Day Of Champs

Hiya peoples! Congrats to everyone who swam this weekend! Here are my results from Saturday and Sunday. I am sending thanks out to my sweet Aunt who came to watch me on Sunday! :D


Saturday


100 Free..........1:05.80 4th Place

100 Back..........1:14:69 2nd Place

50 Fly..........30:94 2nd Place

Sunday

50 Free..........28:81 2nd Place

50 Back..........32:70 2nd Place

200 Back..........2:42:11 2nd Place


I swam the 200 back for the first time today and I got the team record and an AAA cut, though it isn't offered for 11~12 at Zones. I was very happy with my swims, I had a best time in everything but the 100 free, I was also .02 off a sectional cut in the 50 free. Oh well! I love this pool and I normally get best times in it... it rocks! Sadly, we had no relays. People for an 11-12 girls' relay just didn't show up ...and I can't swim on the guys' relays! :D



Only Zones left, then Long Course is over!


Bye!

First Day Of Champs

Hiya all of you blog readers! Today is the first day of Long Course Champs. I swam the 400 free and my time was 5.02.14. I was really happy because I dropped a lot of time from the last time I swam it, at Freedlander. It was also my 6th Zone cut, so I will be swimming the max number of events at Zones! :D I have the 100 free, 100 back, and 50 fly tomorrow, and on Sunday I will be swimming the 200 back, 50 free and 50 back. Then the bus for Zones leaves on Thursday...


There was a Zones meeting on Monday, and we went over lots of stuff. Though I could barely hear the guy talking, but that's not saying much because I am half deaf. :D Just kidding! We got our roommate assignments too, and I am rooming with this girl that USC "adopted" at Busby because her coach couldn't be there. She is really nice and I am happy about the way that turned out. We also got our team clothes, caps, water bottles, and any other trinkets you happened to buy for Zones. I am getting a suit, but we will get those tomorrow at the meet. I can't wait!


We also got this really cool warm-up jacket, you guys have to see it........

Anyways, that's all! Bye!

Mason's Champs

Hi! Mason had his team's champs on Sunday, and he did well. He swam 3 2nds, a 4th and a 3rd. He was most happy with the 50 free, his time before was a 37 and he swam a 34! Congrats!

Relays and (More) Cookies!

Hi! I have a bit of catching up to do, so here it goes!

Saturday was the Chagrin Relays. I went to watch my brother, Mason, and to hang out with the Twinsburg rec. team. Although I can't blog about how everyone on the Twinsburg team did, over all they did great! Mason took 2 3rds and 3 4ths. So, good job everyone who swam at the relays!

*************Cookies**************
I made cookies today! I also made some a few days ago... but sadly I have no pictures.

Yum!

This is my 50th blog post! That is a lot of blogging!

Now, I wanted to tell you about my new search thing I added, by Google. If you are looking for a post in particular, then this really helps. If you are looking for a swim meet, put Swim Meets, birthdays, Birthday, ummmm... School, fish, cookies, etc. I also uploaded a new background and removed my hit counter, so I hope it will load a bit faster for yours if you are having trouble... On my computer when I was getting on, my hit counter was the thing that was taking a lot of time to load.

I think that's all, bye!