Dad brag
Every now and then I post a Dad brag here and encourage others to do it too. There are some awfully impressive Scions of EN out there!
OJ (my daughter Olivia) has been keeping us busy. She competed in youth draft-legal triathlons over the summer and then USAT invited her to train for a weekend at the OTC in Colorado Springs a couple weeks ago. Talk about a Cool Thing To Do With Your Fitness! :-) She shared a flight with Gwen Jorgensen, who was also one of the leaders/coaches of the camp, along with Bobby McGee and others. She got to see a certain now-bearded multiply gold-medaled swimmer while they were at the pool, and all kinds of stuff. She came home saying the best part of the weekend was their talk on sports psychology, interestingly enough. And a very interesting take for a young 15 year old to come away with.
In our state, Cross Country and girls Swimming are at the same time, and she chose to swim. She's mostly a distance swimmer, but high school they only go up to 500 yards. She swam mostly the 200 and 500, as her team has several excellent swimmers. Anyway, her team won the HS state championship with 355 points and the second place team at 197.5... After having a very good day on her first three events (200, 500, 4 x 50 relay), she got put in as a last minute sub in the 4 x 100 and went 51.9, a 2-second drop from her previous best. That relay made the Junior Nationals cut and set a state record. Her 4 x 50 relay made automatic HS All American... so it's been a whirlwind with us now making arrangements for a trip to Jr Nats, where she will swim on all three free relays. She is still short of the individual cuts, but she gets to swim a couple events as exhibition entries (which is fine, since she'll obviously not make finals at a meet like that).
Oh, and she's a nice kid who is learning to drive. :-)
We miss her brother, who we know would be proud.
Comments
What is "automatic HS All American" btw?
Whoever grants the High School All American titles does it for the top 100 times across the country for the year. From experience, they know cutoffs that there will never be more than 100 of. Thus, if you make that cut, you get "automatic" All American. At the end of the season, they then look at the actual best times and count the best 100 (including the automatic ones). Presumably the "All American Consideration" times is the zone of times where they are pretty sure they will get past the top 100.
Her goal is to break 5:00 in the 500 free, but she came up a little short on that this year. Still...she got 3rd in the state, so not so bad. :-)
So happy for you all!!
William, So glad to hear OJ is having such terrific experiences and proving once again that hard work yields great results. Since I am involved in coaching high school girls, I can verify those are impressive swims. And she's only 15, so there's much more to come in swimming and triathlon for her (and her parents). Please continue to brag so we can all follow her athletic career.