So... the kids I knew had BS seed times swam way slower than their seeds, so I wasn't hallucinating (and so did their team-mates in the main), but maybe 50% of the times were within 15%, so it wasn't so bad, as it turned out.
In the events where all our swimmers ended up in the slowest two heats, we blew everyone else out of the water and came away with all our swimmers finishing way before anyone else. Not a real race for them, but it was at the beginning of the meet, so i think it helped to bolster their spirits, because we are always lame duck team in the other sports andmany of them have never competed before. Karma I reckon. Good things come from being screwed
Side note on the lame duck thing... We're a public k-8 magnet school with an alternative program. We're the "hippy school" we're into co-operative rather than competitive learning, and are all about personal improvement rather than being top of the class. This attitude, obviously, is not as effective in a sporting environment. Plus we only have 150 middle school kids and a no exclusion policy, compared to the other schools who have 600 to choose from and are happy to pick an elite team and send the rest away. we just don't work that way. So we lose a lot. It's OK, we're good losers.
But swimming is the perfect sport for us and our philosophy, because it's a team thing, but to benefit the team, you do the best you can and aim to improve on your time and don't worry about anyone else. So you can be competitive and hippy at the same time.
Anyhoo... the Pandas Rocked today. all 19 showed up (we started with 15 and got up to 19, it usually works the other way with sports at our school) many of them had never competed before and were a little nervous about knowing when their races would be and what they needed to do, but once the medley relays were over (a logistical nightmare for us) they realized we knew our stuff and would get them where they needed to be on time.
We made them wear team caps. Only one other team had a team cap and only a few swimmers wore it. Ours really stood out in the pool (which helps when you're seriously outnumbered) It turned out that this helped with the team spirit -they loved that they all had the same caps, and I think the parents loved it too, because we asked for donations, but all swimmers got one regardless. after the meet, parents were falling over themselves to pay for the caps.
No team scores were kept, so we made our own, just to see... and basically the 6 Middle schools are in two leagues of 3. Those who score 550 points average and those who are more around the 100 mark. We hit the latter 3 - but in the middle. The school below us is the school my children should attend and the most "impoverished" school in the area. they get some awesome swimmers because they are the local school for the kids who swim at our sumer pool, but they also get a load of kids who can't swim at all and whose parents view swim team as free lessons. The other school is the biggest of the six middle schools, have 48more kids tan we do and ar in an afluent area. So to get half the ponts they did is very heartwarming.
But most importantly, Our Pandas were AWESOME. no-one got too scared, they all stepped up and did their best and almost everyone bettered their seed time -and that's what we asked of them.
this is them at warm-up