Geeky Yet Waterproof

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.