Geeky Yet Waterproof

My secret buddy for State, whoever it may be, is awesome.

On Saturday night we had a high school swim team party at Sirenia’s house. I had never been there before, but I was surprised to discover that it was 1.2 miles from where I live!

The main game was a relay, which consisted of several generic party events (such as carrying a LifeSaver on a straw in your mouth), but with the inclusion of a Challenge from Hell™: Debra concocted a Drink of Doom from ice cream, tarter sauce, cottage cheese, nacho cheese?, Tabasco, pretzels, ketchup, and more (the drink was pink and chunky, suspiciously similar to vomit).
Once did I taste the infernal Drink, yet thrice did I almost taste my lunch again. I’ve eaten some very questionable things in my life, but this was the closest thing to death that has ever entered my mouth.

After the relays there were plates of whipped cream set out, with a piece of bubble gum buried in each. We had to dig in with our face and find the bubble gum, then be the first to blow a bubble.
It wasn’t pretty.

After everyone had gotten cleaned up and things were starting to slow down, five of us went on a “walk”, which ended up being a 1.2 mile excursion to my house. The only problem was we forgot to tell people that we’d be gone for a while, so apparently they sent a rescue party up the road looking for us… Needless to say, they weren’t too thrilled when we came back an hour later in a van, refreshed and wondering what was all the commotion.

This year’s high school swim season ended with a bang on Friday, with the conclusion of the State meet in Mt. Hood.
The adventure started not when we arrived at the pool, but on the bus ride there. You see, North Salem High School has a fleet of small white busses, all of them unreasonably old. And we took the oldest one. Yes, it took our assistant coach Kyla five tries to get the engine started. Then came the freeway part… it took us 10 minutes to reach 65mph. But after a while, as if the bus had heard us saying, “All we need is the engine and at least three wheels!”, it started billowing out smoke — from the inside. Apparently the heater, which was positioned directly in front of Jerelle, overheated. So from that point on our jackets heated us, not the heater.

To everyone’s relief (adding to that which resulted from our successful arrival), the meet took place in Mt. Hood’s outdoor 50-meter pool, rather than the crappy indoor 25-yard one. So how did they deal with February temperatures? They basically turned it into an alien spacecraft. The whole pool was enclosed in a huge rubber bubble, like being inside a hot air balloon. To get inside, you had to either enter through a revolving door, or through the airlock: a garage door opening into a room with another garage door leading to the pool, which was not to be opened until the first garage door is closed. This was possibly the coolest natatorium I had ever seen (let alone for high school…).

But as if to say “our coolness doesn’t end there!”, the scoreboard doubled as a huge tv screen hooked up to various underwater cameras, showing realtime video of each race.

Although this was still just a high school meet, it was actually faster even than club State. In club swimming, there are bigger meets that come after State, so a lot of people skip State to get ready for the bigger meets.
But in high school… State is everything. The end of the meet is the end of the season, and everybody shows up. So it was with minor dismay that I looked at my 100 fly seeding, only to discover that I was seeded 2nd to last (17th), with the fastest time being six seconds faster than mine.

But my less-than-grandiose placement seemed to have a positive effect. Somehow I don’t get as nervous when everyone’s faster than me, than when I’m seeded in 1st.
I ended up getting a 55.04 in my 100 fly, four tenths of a second faster than the weekend before. I also moved up five places, from 17th to 12th, and just barely made it into the consols (which were, as you might have guessed, top 12).

Our 200 and 400 freestyle relays were slightly slower than the previous week, but that didn’t really matter — we were all eight of us (four relay members and four alternates) just happy to be there. And even though we added three seconds in our 400 relay, it was still a Sr. Sectional time!

The next day, our team had twice as many coaches as swimmers. Um, make “swimmers” singular. Since our relays didn’t make it back, I was the only one from North who was there. But since it was all the same people at the club meets, I knew at least one person from just about each team — including the officials!

The fact that we didn’t taper for high school State started to show through in my second 100 fly. I was just worn out from the previous week of training, and I added .92 in my race. My first 50 was exactly the same split as the day before, down to the hundredth of a second; but after that, it just went downhill. By the time I finished, it felt like I had just sprinted a 200 fly.
Even though I added time though, I was just happy to have made it in to the second day. I took 12th overall, which I think is pretty good considering the fastest time was a 49.

Thus ended this high school season. It was even more fun than last year, and it led me to two extracurricular achievements: 1) the vast improvement(?) of my bowling, and 2) the memorization of the Red Robin menu.

In a week and a half will be club State, and a week or two after that is Sectionals. Then, finally, The Break.

This weekend was the high school District swim meet — the meet I’ve been waiting for since this time last year. I swam in two freestyle relays, the 100 fly, and as I feared, the 100 breaststroke (which turned out to be not so bad).
The meet lasted two days, with prelims on the first day and finals on the second day.
Since I was too lazy to attempt an entry on Friday, I’m going to split this post into two parts:

FRIDAY: PRELIMS

Our team took a school bus to Corvallis, where the meet took place. But because of some kind of “crisis”, we were forced to leave for Corvallis early and have a pizza party before the meet!
But fortunately the pizza didn’t soften our minds and dull our senses as we had expected it would…

My first race was the 100 fly. I was matched up against Andrew, who in our identical race last year set the District record of 55.72. My goal was to break his old record, and in the process pass through North’s record of 56.1, simply because of the fact that it was set in 1975.
Exactly 55.43 seconds after the beep, I was able to enjoy the feeling of holding the new District record. It’s somehow a lot more fun to know everyone I’m racing, rather than being surrounded by seven people from seven different parts of the country whom I’ve never seen before, nor will I ever see again except in videos I post on YouTube…

Next came the 200 freestyle relay, which consisted of Gerrit, Emiliano, myself, and Artem. As if the day hadn’t already started out awesomely, we not only beat out all the other teams but set a new District record, with 1:34.37!

Shortly after that was the 100 breaststroke. All I wanted for this race was to have fun (and maybe to remember what breaststroke felt like…), which is what I did. I got a 1:08.46, and I somehow made it into the finals. It’s interesting how (for me) breaststroke just plain sucks in practice, but it’s fun in a meet!

The last event was the 400 freestyle relay. This was the most exciting race of the day: we were in 2nd place for the first 300, with Redmond about three seconds ahead. Then in the last leg, I just barely pulled ahead of Redmond’s anchor and we won by a second. I had never heard people screaming so loudly for a swim meet.
When we slowed down our adrenaline ventilations long enough to go talk to Jodi, we discovered that we had set another District record, and on top of that our time of 3:30.74 was a Sr. Sectional cut by two seconds!

After the meet some of us from North went bowling to celebrate our victories. Where after my third gutter ball came rolling back to me, we discovered that simply being a good swimmer doesn’t make you as successful in other things…

SATURDAY: FINALS

The second day of the meet proved just as adrenaline-filled as the first, with the addition of podiums. An awards ceremony after every four events kept the excitement running high, and some great newspaper coverage from the day before made us hungry for more.

I started out with the 100 fly: I wasn’t expecting to go much faster than in prelims, which had already been a best time for me by a second and half. I ended up going 16 hundredths slower, but I still held my record from the previous day and took 1st.

In our 200 free relay we were .08 slower than in prelims and we lost to McNary, but we still took Silver with 1:34.37.

My 100 breaststroke was also .15 slower than prelims, but I ended up 6th in the Finals. Hey, for a stroke I never train for, I think that’s alright!

Our 400 free relay was again the last race of the day, and the one most anticipated. Redmond smashed everyone, but we took 2nd with 3:29.24 — a second and a half faster than our prelims time, and three seconds under the Sr. Sectional time! (Too bad there is no Sr. Sectionals for high school…) All of us got best times for our 100 splits, and mine was a 50.8.

This was probably my most successful swimming weekend ever, and I can’t tell you how pumped I am for State this Thursday. Although only the winner each event automatically goes to State, both our relays (which took Silver) got a wildcard time and made it in anyway. So, we’ll be doing it all over again in two days!

Victory!

Myself the next day

In the Statesman Journal.

Thanks goes to Eric for leaving me a phone message to let me know, otherwise I never would have found out.

On Tuesday we had our last high school meet before Districts, and it was against West. This was an interesting meet, partly because I swam the 200 IM and… 100 breaststroke. My 200 IM time wasn’t phenomenal, but I broke the school record by about 0.1 (with a 2:11.56).
My 100 breaststroke was also frighteningly close, because I won by 4 hundredths of a second — I got a 1:10.57, while 2nd place got 1:10.61.

We all decided that if our team would win the meet, we’d go out to Red Robin afterwards. As it turned out, West won. But we’re all winners at heart, so we went to Red Robin anyway!

And we saw the most awesome bird…