North Shore primary school swimming champs

Yesterday, Mulan and Miya competed at the North Shore primary school swimming champs.  This was an inter-school swimming competition between about 30 primary schools in our local area.

I mentioned earlier that we'd recently had the Auckland homeschool swimming champs.  It was a huge success, the kids loved it, and for many it was their first time competing in a real swimming competition.

I also mentioned that we'd been invited to enter a homeschool (HASCA) team into the primary inter-schools competition.  Well, yesterday was the day.

(I also mentioned that the local intermediate and secondary schools are scared, selfish meanies (!), as so far they are not letting us homeschoolers enter the swimming inter-school competitions for those age groups.)

Anyway, we sent out invites to all the 7- to 11-years olds who competed at the homeschool swimming champs, and six (including Mulan and Miya) decided they would like to compete at the inter-schools.

All six children did extremely well, competing admirably alongside the best swimmers on the Shore.  This was not just a token team.  We had no last places, and quite a few high-ranked performances.  Equally importantly, we had lots of new PBs (personal bests), and often by a huge margin.

Miya competed in the 8 years and under girls, she did:

• 25m breaststroke, 32.77 sec, 15th (out of 27)
• 25m backstroke, 29.39 sec, 35th (out of 42)
• 25m freestyle, 27.62 sec, 46th (out of 51)

Miya also joined the HASCA relay team in the 11 years and under girls age group.  This was a pretty tough ask for an 8-year-old to compete against girls two and three years older than her.  They did:

• 4x25m freestyle relay, 1:29.69, 17th (out of 18)
• 4x25m medley relay, 1:45.07, 16th (out of 18)

Mulan turned 12 just a week before the competition.  Since it was for children 11 years and under, she was unable to compete for places/medals.  Nonetheless, the organisers very kindly allowed Mulan to participate (did I mention how awful the intermediate and secondary schools are?!).  Mulan did:

• 25m breaststroke, 22.88 sec, 2nd= (out of 41)
• 25m freestyle, 18.08 sec, 5th (out of 57)
• 25m backstroke, 21.68 sec, 11th (out of 41)

I think I am not merely being a proud daddy when I say that these are pretty awesome results.  Mulan and Miya started swimming lessons four years ago (learning at Swim Lovers' Swim School), when we first moved from China to New Zealand.  At that time they were pretty much complete beginners.  Since then they have both been doing 30-minute lessons once a week during term-time.  This term, for the first time they also joined a squad training group, doing an extra 1-hour session each week.

I mentioned to the girls that if they wanted to we could look into them joining the local swim club.  Mulan rightly wondered where they are going to find the time.  Yep, that is always the big thing -- finding enough time in the day to do everything we enjoy doing.