2024 State Meet

 Marissa closed out her high school athletic career at the IHSAA state swimming prelims on Friday night.  (Is this a good time to mention that Marissa has competed in 8 high school sport seasons between cross country and swimming and she has gone to the state meet in all 8 of those seasons?!  Now that's quite the accomplishment!!)

It's hard to believe that after all these years and all of those long and hard practices, it's finally all over.  Definitely bittersweet for sure!  I think she will definitely enjoy this next week -- the first time she's gotten to come straight home after school since the year started -- but I'm also pretty sure that she will miss the competition and will look forward to her next big adventure.  

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On Friday morning, Melayna drove herself to school and then Marissa slept in a little longer and rode into the high school with Morgan, Nolan and I.  The state team would meet up at the pool for a couple of pictures and to pick up their snack bags and then the bus would be escorted out of town at 8:30 a.m.

After they left town, Marissa's club team posted this to their social media post.  (More on the magazine article later when it actually comes out)  Thank you Coach Chris and the Warsaw Aquatic Club for all of your support over the past couple of years.

A couple of hours later, we would receive pictures from their brunch at the Cracker Barrel.  Now that's a lot of food!!  'Funny thing is that Marissa said that most of the girls couldn't finish all of their plates so she ate her meal and then finished off a couple of others.  'Can't let good food go to waste - not when every calorie counts.

And it's good to know that the spending money that I sent with her went to a good cause.  One of these little plushies now belongs to Marissa, courtesy of the Cracker Barrel gift store.  LOL

The natatorium wasn't open yet when they arrived in Indianapolis so they went to the hotel so they could check in to their rooms and rest for a couple of hours before they walked together over to the natatorium where they would dress and get ready to warm-up.

Marissa said that it was a new Hilton Hotel and the beds were SO comfortable!

Meanwhile, we had picked Melayna up early from school and made the drive down to the natatorium arriving just around 3:45.  We would stand in line waiting to get in until after 4:30 when the main gates opened up.  Then we could just take pictures or sit and watch warm-ups until the first event started right at 6:00 p.m. 

I know that I say this every time I am in this place, but it's just an amazing facility.

One quick picture of them all together and then we left them alone so that they could get ready to warm-up and get into the right frame of mind to compete.  I know that the younger girls were pretty overwhelmed and really nervous so Marissa wanted to have time to help them all get acclimated to the big facility and to calm down a little before it was time to swim.

I wanted to just sit and take in Marissa's final high school meet so I didn't bring my "big girl camera" this year.  Once we got up to the nose-bleed section where our seats were, my phone pictures were all too blurry and far away to recognize anyone really so I don't have pictures of Marissa as they warmed up or as she competed.  But that's okay.  As I said, I wanted to just watch it and take it all in.

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50 Yard Prelims     29th Place     25.03 (she added .39 from her entry time but still swam a great time)

100 Yard Prelims     29th Place     55.01 (she added .66 from her entry time but again, swam a really good time)

200 Freestyle Relay     31st Place     Marissa swam a great 25.13 split

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Apparently, in addition to her normal warm-up strokes, someone on the team caught her swimming the "doggy paddle" and they posted it to the Instagram page for laughs.  LOL

Here are a few other pictures that were also shared on Instagram:

I'd love to say that Marissa was completely satisfied with her times when the night was over, but you could see the disappointment on her face as she finished each race.  Despite swimming well, she wanted to come down and cut more time and try to make it back on Saturday.  That's just the competitor in her.  But she still left the natatorium knowing that she did a great job, left it all in the pool,  and it was a great way to finish off her high school swimming career.  

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And then these pictures came in as the girls had to walk back to their hotel.  But first they tried to find a Blaze Pizza that was suppose to be on the way back.  Somehow their coach got confused by his Android maps and it took them a really long time to walk a mile or so to the pizza place.  Thankfully the weather was really mild on Friday night and they had a lot of fun (at the coach's expense) walking together.  They would enjoy dinner together and then after the coach went to his hotel room, all six girls hung out for a while in another room just talking and enjoying the experience.

A LOT of memories were made these last four years and we will be forever grateful!

We are blessed!