Dec 9, 2012

Swimming Carnival

Swimming Carnival time again at school. Eloise's last couple of swimming lessons had been devoted to championship heats, and she'd acquitted herself reasonable well, in the sense that she'd swum the proper strokes (e.g. no freestyle kicking in the breast stroke, able to actually swim the butterfly) and won her heats through elimination.

So when it came to the high-stakes, high-pressure, high-heat carnival day itself, in the absinthe of information we thought she might be in for a shout in those two races.

On the day, the hottest of the summer so far, the swimming pool was a heat-trap and we sat and sweltered in the 38 degree heat as things got underway. Some enterprising souls had a water-spray... nice. Otherwise the sun was high, the wind light, the air dry. The war-chants loud, the same as last year, not much originality there... again.

The carnival ran along the following lines: the final for each event (the best swimmers in the year) was held and then all the kids would race afterwards in a set of rapid-fire races that would earn their house points.

Eloise wasn't called up for freestyle, unsurprisingly, or for breast stroke or for butterfly, but was in the final for the back stroke, and though she came fifth out of sixth I'm proud that she made it to the final.

Due to some bizarre chicanery the championships were based on year of birth so the older kids would race in the carnival for the next year up. Who thought that one up is a total mystery, and was very confusing for a lot of people.

But Eloise did OK, her house came last as always, and the sounds of Gangnam Style (good grief) are still ringing in my ears, along with the worrying vision of a hundred and fifty kids (or however many it is) all doing the bleeding dance around the pool.

No comments:

Post a Comment