Sunday, August 07, 2011

 Tri-City Channel Cats Inland Empire Long Course Championships


Brayden is such a good swimmer!  I LOVE watching him swim - he just seems to have such an easy effortless stroke.  When baseball started in March -sadly swimming ended for him.  The swim team continued on but BV didn't want to - i was so sad... his focus was now on baseball:(  He did swim in a meet at the beginning of June but he really wasn't "gung ho" about it.  I encouraged him to swim because i wanted to watch him but also i needed to volunteer for some hours... He did great and qualified for 4 events in the last meet of the season the " Inland Empire long course championships"  To participate in this meet you have to have certain qualifying times... Below you can see his qualifying times and his final times.  In addition to those 4 events - he participated in 2 relay events.  He did fabulous in all of them!!  


BUT! He did OUTSTANDING in his very last race!  The 50 breast!!!!  Through out the meet, there was one other kid from another team that was giving BV a run for his $$ - granted that kid probably practice the entire summer - unfortunately, BV DID NOT practice at all this summer:(  He just showed up at the meet and swam - i tried to get him there but he just wasnt' motivated to get up at 6am for practice... Anyway, this other kid kept beating BV and going into this race he was ahead by about 1 sec. and BV was ranked 2nd in the finals...  I should also share that BV missed the warm up for the finals - since he only had 2 races that morning, we left and didn't realize the warm up & finals started an hr earlier than the day before!  So, we got a call from his coach asking if BV was going to race and that he was seeded 2nd and that warmups were going on now!  We quickly appologized and raced over to the meet in Pasco!  We threw BV in the extra warm up pool and told him to warm himself up...  About 30 min later his event was just about up.  During this entire meet, i had been praying that the coaches would talk to Bv and encourage him to continue swimming.  Many times i wanted to stop by their coaching table to mention that to them but something was telling me "no - be patient - whatever is supposed to happen with BV and swimming - it will".  So, i didn't - i just continued to pray...  Before he went to line up, i told him "B. you can do this!  You can win!  Just swim hard! If not, you will for sure have second and that's ok."  He says "no, 2nd is not ok - i want 1st" - cool - a bit of determination - that's what i like to hear and i can't remember if i ever heard it before in all of his 2 yrs of swimming...Anyway, he gets up on the starting blocks in lane 3 - the 1 seeded swimmer is in lane 4.  The announcer introduces all of the swimmers and they take their mark!.  the buzzer sounds and BV has a great start!  He's up and going strong and comes out of the water ahead of lane 4!  I'm just standing there watching in disbelief how fast he was going and he remained in the lead!  He never gave up - he kept going hard!  it wasn't until he was to the flags that it sunk in that HE's GONNA WIN!!  I started cheering super loud (not that he can hear me but at least everyone else knew that he's my boy ;) haha) He did it!!!  he touched the wall and won 1st place!!!  we were amazed and so happy for him.  I started crying (just as i am as i am writing and reliving this now;))  I was so super happy and proud of him!  THEN! his coach came out from under his tent (i have NEVER seen the coach do this ever before for any swimmer) ran up to BV and TOTALLY encouraged him!!  He said "that was amazing!!  I haven't seen you AT ALL this summer and you come here and you get 1st place in this event!  That's incredible!  Your brother's thing in hockey but your thing is swimming! i hope that i see you this fall"  Wow!  Thank you God!  You are awesome - thank you for answering my prayer!  I just love this story and i'm hoping that this fall that i can continue to blog about BV's swimming... the last i've heard is that "yes!" he wants to swim this fall!! - woohooo:):)


ps.  I've been praying about BV's swimming all summer and thinking that he was done by the comments he had been making up to this point.  But, there have been little signs all summer - a few of them are: while playing in a baseball tourney in Moses Lake, i overheard a mom from the other team say " look at that 3rd baseman (brayden) - he looks like a swimmer with his broad shoulders & long legs" i couldn't believe my ears! Then the next several times at church our pastor mentioned swimming in his sermon! - crazy stuff but i love it!


BV - thrilled for me to take his pic...



Page of 2
View 1 - 100 of 105

Athlete Name

Event

Tria

Prelim.

Finals

Pos

Pts

EventAge
Current

Date of
Swim

Meet
1Vickerman, Brayden RMale (11-12)
50 Breast
41.01L39.10L118.0012
12
07/30/112011 Inland Empire Long Course
2Vickerman, Brayden RMale (11-12)
50 Free
33.17L33.55L611.0012
12
07/29/112011 Inland Empire Long Course
3Vickerman, Brayden RMale (11-12)
100 Breast
1:33.55L1:33.78L215.0012
12
07/29/112011 Inland Empire Long Course
4Vickerman, Brayden RMale (11-12)
200 IM
3:19.88L3:18.83L141.0012
12
07/29/112011 Inland Empire

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