Sportsmanship

My father really believed in the true spirit of sportsmanship.  He was president of our swim league for awhile and he really wanted everyone to work together as a team and have fun.  Winning something was great, but it was not everything.  I have tried to live in that philosophy but really it is hard.  I am slightly competitive, more so then when I was younger, so it is hard.

I spent most of my childhood involved in swimming, literally most of my life surrounded the sport.  By the time I was in middle school I was involved in swimming year round, I think I had about a 6 week break time in the Spring and that was it.  I can not say that I always enjoyed it but in order to keep up, really you had to do it all year.  I loved it 90% of the time, but I think that I sometimes wished that it was a sport that had a beginning and end to the season.  Most people do not know that about swimming, if you are serious about it, it is year round.  I spent my summer swimming for Wedgewood swim team, during the school year I swam for our local YMCA and sometimes took a longcourse clinic with them in the summer.  Of course during highschool I did both the YMCA and highschool swimming, fun times for my Mom when I did not have my license yet!!   I started swimming on the summer team when I was 4, no I was not this incredible swimmer at age 4, I could make it to the other end.  At that time, the team was very small (now not so much) and they needed bodies basically.   I stopped swimming for them when I was 18, a lot of years!  A lot of memories.

Yesterday I was asked to come back to help present an award that has been given in my Dad's name for the past 22 years.  It is a sportsmanship award, this year a sweet 10 year old girl won.  I was not sure what I would feel when I came back to the pool.  I am not sure when the last time was that I was at the pool honestly, it has likely been 15 years.   This was during their end of the season swim championships.  Funny thing, I always hated championships.  I do not know if my Mom knows that but, I really hated it!  It was just very stressful for me, I liked hanging out with my friends and the cheering but I honestly relaxed on some of the years that I did not qualify for finals.  But when I was there last night, I really wanted to get back into that water.  When you swim for that many years, you go through chlorine withdrawal when you stop.  Your body simply craves to be streaming through that water.  I miss it I guess.  I am contemplating whether I should introduce Celia to a summer of swim team and see what she thinks, but I am not sure if I am willing to give up my summer to the sport yet!

 Here is the little girl that won, I normally do not post pictures of other children, however really, I do not think there is any harm with the amount of traffic that this blog gets!

 I love this photo because it shows over her pigtails, she actually let me put her hair up!!  Miss. Celia was not feeling great yesterday as she had a bad case of swimmers ear.