My Champs Experience

 Hello everyone. We had our championship meet yesterday and that marks the end of the season. Now it is time to retrospect.

Yesterday for our champs meet I reached the pool around 6:45 a.m, and warmpus started at 8:10. We were competing with 11 other teams,so the pool was crowded. During warmups I felt nervous, but after swimming a couple laps I was ready to race.

After warmups and team cheer the races started.During Champs I swam 4 events. Krupa atta and Adi anna came to cheer me on for 2 of the events. Before each event I focused on nothing but the race.I wasn't fast enough to win a ribbon,or medal. In my butterfly race I finished 3rd in my heat, but I didn’t win anything because I didn’t make the top 3 overall.

My times over the course of the season

Event Name	Time Trials	Best Times	Championship
Freestyle	54.84 seconds	40.65 seconds	41.68 seconds
Breaststroke	57.85 seconds	49.34 seconds	49.34 seconds
Butterfly	64.87 seconds	51.45 seconds	51.45 seconds

 

Analysis

I feel like,I have improved over the course of the season.I have improved my freestyle time by 14 sec ,breaststroke by 8 sec ,and butterfly by 13 seconds.However one thing I can improve on are my turns,because one recurring theme was that in the first half,I led the race,but in the second half ,I lost momentum .I also need to work on my stamina as on the last leg of the race,I slowed down .

My learnings

Over the course of the season, I have learned new techniques like turns and diving.While I have stated I need to work on turns,I can still do them well . Coaches also taught me how to dive,and it took me few weeks to get comfortable but I like diving now.

Conclusion

I enjoyed my first year of swim league and made a lot of improvements. This experience was great as it allowed me to swim competitively and hang out with friends. I am glad that I got this opportunity and I can't wait for the next season. Let's go Dolphins!!

Thanks for reading.

Arjun

Summer Swim League

 Hello everyone, it’s summer vacation for me and do you know what's my favorite summer activity? The answer to that is swimming. Earlier in the year my parents signed me up for East Bay Swim League which is a summer swim league and you can find information about it here .

When I first heard about it, I was skeptical about participating as I was not sure if I was good enough to make the team. Mom and dad strongly encouraged me to go for the try outs and in retrospect I am glad that I did.

Tryouts:

My tryouts were on March 16th. Mom and I drove to Chabot College, our practice location. I was excited to try out for the swim team. After we reached the pool I met the head coaches of the swim team I would eventually join.

The coaches Aaron and Jesse asked me some questions about myself, my experience with swimming and my hobbies. They asked me to get into the pool for a speed test. For reference,the pool is 25 yards one way.So I had to swim 50 yards,to do the speed test. I finished with a freestyle time of 72 seconds. After the test I was curious to know if I made the team and I did it.

Daily Practice:

We have practice sessions Monday- Thursday 6:00-7:30 PM. Our practice session started on April 4th and will continue until July 21st.

Season overview:

We have six meets in one season, three home meets and three away meets. However,  if you get selected for champs you have to compete in a seventh meet at Chabot College[our home pool].

Types of swim meets:

There are two kinds of swim meets. They are dual meets and tri-meets. Dual meets are when only 2 teams compete with each other and during tri-meets 3 teams face off against each other.

Placing in the meets is also different,for dual meets the league gives ribbons up to eighth place,while for tri-meets it is ninth place.Even so placing at a tri-meet is harder than a dual meet

because of the fact that there are more swimmers competing in a given race.

Improvements on my times:

 In 2 months I have improved my freestyle swim time  by  30 seconds. I can swim 2 laps of freestyle in 40 seconds.On all the other strokes (Breaststroke,backstroke,and butterfly),I have improved my times by more than 12 seconds.

Champs Meet Selection 

 On 7/10/22 we received an email from the teams manager Jenny Kubicki that I had made it to the championship meet.The championship meet isn’t available for everyone teams are incredibly picky about who to send for champs which goes to show you how much I’ve improved. Our Champs meet is on 07/23/22.

What is “Champs”?

The answer to that is that champs is when the best swimmers from every team come together and compete.Making to champs isn’t easy as teams have a limit on how many they can put on the champs roster,so the selection is tough. As a result only the best swimmers get to go to compete in champs.

On my team,among my age group I have won 5 ribbons, as of 7/17/22 .In my opinion swim team is fun as it allows me to be competitive while enjoying the best parts of summer which are swimming and hanging out with my friends.I hope my team[Bay Area Dolphins] wins.

GO DOLPHINS!!!!!!!!

Arjun