First "A" meet!

Lucy is 6 this summer which means that she swims in the 6 and under category for swim meets.  Her team has "B" meets on Monday nights in which the kids all swim all their able strokes and then the top 3 times in each category swim in the "A" meet on Saturdays.  But they don't have 6 and unders in the "A" meets so the chances of Lucy besting times of girls who are 2 years older than her has just seemed out of her reach.  Until this past week.  With one of her rivals absent from the meet and Lucy's ability to swim butterfly, she got her chance.
She started the week at Monday's meet swimming a time of 47+ seconds swimming against 8 and under girls and boys.  The coaches got to work.  If the team was swimming freestyle, Lucy was swimming fly.  If the team was working on starts, she was too, but with the intent to start at fly.  We asked one coach to give her a private lesson on Friday afternoon.  In just half an hour, she went from looking like she would tire quickly to looking like she actually knew what she was doing.
Saturday morning we arrived at our pool at 7:50.  It was already 95 degrees outside.  Lu was going to swim for less than a minute and we were going to sweat it out for 4 hours.  But that didn't matter, we just wanted her to be happy with her race.
Backstroke.  Breaststroke.  Butterfly. 
First the 8 and under boys.  Then Lu was up.  She usually looks around to see who is cheering.  Not this time.  She was very serious.  She even donned her swim cap, which up until this moment, she had refused to wear.  She was ready to bring her "A" game. 
And that she did.  She hung in there with the older girls and as one coach put it, "barely missed placing" since she finished in synch with 3 other girls, even flat out beating 1 of them.  And the best part- her time was 33+ seconds- she had shaved 14 seconds off her time, in 5 days.  Unbelievable!
Needless to say, we are very proud.  She is very proud.  She is certain that she'll never get to race in an "A" meet again this year, being only 6.  But if you look at her time, you'll see that she has a real chance to go every week. 
We found out today that she ended up DQing in her race.  She is not happy about this and is wanting to ask her coaches why.  When I explained to her that the judges are tougher in "A" meets.  She said, "I don't care.  I wanted to win and I wanted to make my coaches happy."  Looks like she has a new challenge ahead of herself.  And knowing that she can make great progress when she wants to, I have no reason to doubt that she will swim another "A" meet this season, and it will be a clean race.  And it will be faster than 33 seconds.  And it will make her coaches proud.  And us, too!