Northridge / Mishewaka, Goshen, and Plymouth Meet Results // NLC Swimming

Since we are now in the heart of swim season, Marissa is averaging two (or three) meets a week.  

Last Tuesday the team went against Northridge and Mishewaka.  They lost to Northridge but beat Mishewaka.  I'm just saving Marissa's times and results here for future reference.  

And then on Saturday, December 9th, the Tigers were back in action against conference opponents, Goshen.  It came down to the very end but the Lady Tigers ended up winning by four points.

+++

On Tuesday, December 12th, the teams traveled to Plymouth high school for another conference match-up.  Since it was an away meet and I wouldn't have any responsibilities during the meet, I decided to bring my "big girl" camera and take a couple of pictures of Marissa and her team.

Since diving was suppose to go first, Noel and I didn't arrive at the pool until 6:15 and the team was warming up.  This facility only has one pool so the swimmers couldn't warm up until diving was completed so we still had a few minutes to watch them warming up before the meet began.

And then practicing some starts before their first race.

At least I got one smile before she switched to her "all business" mode.

At 6:55, the meet was set to start and Marissa would swim in the Medley Relay.  Originally she was scheduled to anchor the relay by swimming the freestyle leg of the relay but with one of their faster swimmers sick, she had to switch to the butterfly, which is the third leg.  By the time she dove into the pool, her team was already in second place by quite a good margin.  She swam a really good 50 split, but it wasn't enough to catch them back up and they finished in 2nd place.

With that first relay out of the way, Marissa would go back to their "camp" at the opposite end of the pool and try to stay warm until she would swim the 50 freestyle for her first individual event.

A few minutes later, it would be her turn to take a spot on the starting blocks for the 50 yard freestyle.  She would win the event for the first girls' win on the night, (which is good for our points), but she wasn't happy with her time as she swam a 26.97.

After the boys' 50 freestyle was complete, they would take a 10 minute break where all of the swimmers could have more time to warm up (or warm down) again and then after the break, she would come back and swim the 100 freestyle for her second individual event of the night.  Once again she was seeded first, and once again, she took a first place for the team but she felt like she struggled with her time again and finished with a time of 58 seconds.

Marissa is in the middle lane wearing the black cap and orange lettering.  She was in first place right from the start and never gave up the lead.

Marissa would finish off her night a couple of events later as she would anchor the 200 freestyle relay.  Since we were missing a couple of strong swimmers on the back half of the meet, every point counted and the relays knew how important it was for them to have a good finish.  Thankfully the 200 relay was able to capitalize and take home the first place finish.

The coach was happy with Marissa's swims -- now they would just wait to see how the rest of the points would finish out.

Thankfully, the boys took home a win by a large margin of victory and the Lady Tigers also pulled out a win -- by just TWO points.  This brings them to 5-2 on the season heading into the Carroll Invite, which is this Saturday.

Congratulations girls.  Way to swim hard and overcome!  Now it's time to have fun and celebrate.

Swimming Traditions and Boys Conference Meet

As tradition would have it, this is the time of year that the boys compete in their conference meet (and bleach their hair) and the girls plan a fun few days supporting their boys team and having some crazy fun of their own.  (This year they had to be extra flexible however as we were dealt some bad winter weather at the same time)

The boys had their prelims at the conference meet on Thursday night.  The girls team was originally planning to head up after practice on Thursday to cheer them on but some of the roads were still pretty drifted and icy from the snow that came through the day before so most of them decided not to go pretty early in the day.  Morgan and Marissa were torn about it because they really wanted to be there, but they weren't crazy about driving up by themselves.  Thankfully, one of the other girl's parents were already planning to go up so they offered to let our two ride along with them.  They were able to cheer for the boys and I could relax knowing that they weren't driving on the possible black ice for over an hour each way.

Then on Friday night, the girls team was once again planning to divide up into several cars and head up to Ft Wayne dressed in outdated or "ugly" prom dresses where they would walk through the mall, eat dinner, and then head over to play laser tag.  Once again, my girls were planning to drive one of the cars so I was paying extra attention to the weather forecast.  Earlier on Friday it wasn't looking bad and I told them that they would be okay, but as the afternoon went on, the snow started coming down again, this time in an icy wintry mix, and I wasn't sure if the highway would glaze over or what the conditions would be like after the sun went down.  I didn't want to be an overprotective parent that never lets them learn how, but I also didn't want to assume that other parents would be okay with my girls driving on black ice with their daughters in the car.  I started texting around to other moms to get their take on the weather and to see how comfortable they would be.  Most of them agreed that it was only getting worse and that we should just have them postpone their night out.  One of the moms quickly agreed to open up her house for a sleepover and to provide pizzas and another mom volunteered to provide ice cream and other snacks.  I know that all of the girls were disappointed at first, but they still posed in their prom dresses and then went back to Julia's house and made the best of it.

Here are some of the boys showing off there bleached hair!  They will all shave it off before their sectional races in two weeks.

  

And the girls' swim and dive team all dressed up with no where to go!

After staying overnight at Julia's house, the girls woke up on Saturday morning and prepared to drive up to the conference finals.  This is the time when all of the girls teams from the conference schools dress up in themes and "compete" to see who has the best outfits.  Our girls had their theme picked out for several weeks and successfully kept it a secret from the boys team this year, which may have been a first.  Thankfully the roads were all clear and everyone made it there and back safely and without incident.

We received these pictures on Saturday morning.  'Looks like a crazy time for sure!

Can you guess who they were suppose to be?

Will the real Eminem please stand up?!  LOL

Even Pit Bull made an appearance.

And Marissa is thankful for Amazon delivery and these gold pants!

The girls said that the boys had no idea what they were going to dress up as and they were very pleasantly surprised that the girls put so much effort into it.

+++

Now its' back to the grind as the girls practice as a full team for one final week.  Sectional prelims are this Thursday night with sectional finals on Saturday afternoon.  It's hard to believe that a highly anticipated season - and Morgan's final season of competitive swimming - is already coming to a quick close.