Our Big Weekend - Part 2 - the Swim Meet

Saturday was the big CRAZY day.  I mean really what are the chances that a 7 month dance program and a 10 week swim program starting at different times of the year would decide to have their final events on the same day - 2 hours apart?  So using every little bit of organization skills I could muster we decided to do both - I just couldn't tell Cate no.  And I'm so glad we decided to do it because for once everything went smoothly. 

The first event on Saturday was Cate's Adaptive Swim Team meet.  There are five or six "practice group" under this organization that Cate practices with on a weekly basis.  Each of the kids has a special need of some kind.  In Cate's group there were quite a few kids with Down Syndrome but as a whole there is a little bit of everything for CP to mobility issues to Autism.  These kids are so inspiring, upbeat and competitive it was amazing to watch.  All of these groups come together for an end of session swim meet.  The heats for each race are set up based on times that were taken during the last practice and there were 5-8 kids per heat.   We arrived at the pool right on time (amazing for us I know!) and got our seats while Cate did a team pictures, stretching and a warm up lap.

 I talked to Cate a bunch of times about how this race would happen and she watched the kids that went before her pretty closely.  Sure enough when the coach said "girls get ready" Cate got right into position.

When that whistle blew off she went with no hesitation!!  She's a natural!!!

You'll notice she is wearing a little float which is allowed at these meet.  She wears it during practice because they practice for a full hour and she gets tired towards the end.  She didn't need it for the race but since she practiced in it we decided to keep it on her for a feeling of security.   So she got a good start and was plugging along with the pack until about about half way when she started to catch up then pull up next to the first place girl.  We were all screaming & cheering like crazy - she put her head down one more time got a couple good strokes in and WON by a half body length!!!! 

 She got her ribbon right away and was so proud of herself.  I was over the moon proud of her and her daddy couldn't stop smiling!

The coach of Cate's team is one of her former aqua therapists whom we LOVE.  She played a big part in teaching Cate to swim so it was awesome for Cate to show her the blue ribbon.

Cate also competed in the 25 meter backstroke but she was last by quite a bit.  She really didn't start working on the backstroke until a couple weeks ago.    She can't quite get in a good position by herself so a coach got in to help her after some struggling.  After that she did better and she refused to give up.  She did the whole lap but it took over 3.5 minutes.  She is awesome !!!  I was just as proud of her for this 5th place ribbon.

After she finished that second race I grab her out of the pool and made a beeline for locker room to transform my athletic swimmer into a pretty dancer!  More on that tomorrow, for now I'll leave you with the video of Cate's race (go straight to the blog to see it if you get this by email).
Sorry for the yelling and the motion of the camera we were just too excited!!  This video has been transfered one to many times to it is a little blurry.  If you want a link directly to the You Tube version shoot me an email and I'll send it to you since I have this blog protected from copy.