I sent this letter to

I sent this letter to some good friends of ours back
home. Hindsight is 20/20 and I wanted them to know it. You are familiar with the
saying, "You don't know what you've got 'till it's gone?" Well we had our first
meet (a dual) on Saturday. After five weeks of swimming, the first meet...it has
been hard to keep our children motivated. Anyway, it was the most disorganized
thing I have ever been to in my life. R took the three older girls in for
warm-ups and I was going to come at noon (we planned on a K trade at that time).
When I arrived, I couldn't believe the chaos. I asked what was going on and E
replied, "Mom, Mr. Geddie isn't running this meet and we sure wish he was!"
There never was a truer statement. There was sometimes 5-10 minutes passing with
no events taking place. They have touch pads so use only 1 stopwatch timer per
lane as back up (understandably), but there are no stroke judges. Never did I
retrospectively appreciate stroke judging so much in my life. A kid really
learns from being DQ'd. My girls were amazed at what was being accepted there!
The saga continues...While they somehow printed Heat Sheets using Hy-Tek, they
didn't print off winning times and places, so we had to pay extra attention to
the heats and places and times to understand where the girls placed. There are
no "Best Time" patches, no heat winner patches, no nothing. We aren't even sure
they will get ribbons for placing. We still have no team suits, no team
t-shirts, no parental support/booster group. The coach drives a school bus to
the away meets because very few parents attend their children's meets. We are
incredulous. Fortunately, we had such an encouraging and positive experience
with L that we have decided to bring it with us. We are trying to get a parent
booster club and a stroke judge class going. Too late for team shirts and suits
this year, but at $270 (for all 3 girls) for June-August, I am sure that next
year we can try to have some of that cost cover those things. The upside is that
we are swimming meters here and with the higher elevation and longer swims, the
children are really building some endurance and developing fantastic lung
capacity. A participated in The Utah Summer Games and swam her strongest, best
executed, fastest swimming yet. She swam with 9 and 10 (and some 11 year olds
who have the perfect swim team birthday ;) ) and placed 6th in 50m Back with a
46.62 (the highest time for all the 9 year olds). She placed 8th in the 50m Free
with a 39.27. Her 50M Breast was a 1:02.43 placing 12th. She was disappointed to
not have received a medal but she knows she swam her best and is happy with
that. E swam some awesome times during the dual on Saturday and placed and won a
few heats, but we don't have definitive times yet. Please feel free to share
this with the other parents and kids and with D and S. We miss them desperately
and want the team and parents there to know that they have knowledgeable coaches
that encourage the kids to reach higher and push themselves and their team to
swim successfully and to walk away from a meet feeling like they did their
absolute best for themselves and their team. Lamar has wonderfully supportive
parents who care about their children's personal fitness and success. The
parents know each other's kids and truly encourage and rejoice with other
parents over those tearful swims and those triumphant swims.