Proud of our Stingray

After years and years of being around the ubiquitous swim club practices and meets at Marist -- how can we avoid them as the parents clog up the McCann Center bleachers? -- I am proud to report that we are now "swim parents" as well, for a short time anyway. Our daughter Natalie is on the Hyde Park Stingrays, a summer club team here. She practices for an hour each morning, and they have a short but intense meet schedule, that started on Wednesday night. We are very proud of her taking on this challenging sport at the relatively old age of 11,  soon to be 12 (and, I'm not joking; serious swim club athletes start early and often). This photo is of her before her first race, for which she was quite nervous. She did fine, not the best freestyle form, but from a guy who did not learn to swim till he was 34 years old, who am I to judge? She has about 5-6 meets in the next two weeks, and then -- poof! -- the season is over. Short and intense, a good introduction to it.

Of course, being a "swim parent" means getting roped into volunteer duties -- the other night, Heidi and I did the 50-50 raffle. Someone asked if I would be a timer for the next meet on Saturday morning. Uh. Hmm. Let me think. Standing outside in shorts, long-sleeve shirt and tube socks, for hours with a stopwatch, timing endless heats of races. Yeah. I think that fits my professional skill set.