Nolensville Hurricanes

This year the big boys are doing swim team with the Nolensville Rec Center (last year Carter swam with the Franklin Rec Center).  We decided to change teams since our friends were changing teams to further away from us and I felt like our coach was just okay.  The Nolensville Rec Center is only 10 minutes away from our house, is only a year old so it's nice and clean, and I had heard has an amazing coach whose been coaching at the Maryland Farms YMCA and Brentwood Academy for a long time.  Plus our friends that live in Nolensville decided to join the team with us.

It has taken a little convincing but Rylan decided he'd try swim team - yay!  Practice started last week and unfortunately we missed it all week since we were out of town.  But the boys got to practice with the team for the first time yesterday before their meet today.

Our coach is extremely encouraging and wants any child who wants to be on swim team to have the opportunity to do it.  He doesn't expect the 6 and under age group to be able to swim across the pool on their own yet.  He has tons of the teenage swimmers in the pool with the younger kids during practice as assistant coaches.  It's great for the kids to have so much individual attention.

Carter is swimming with the 7-8 year old group and Rylan is with the 6 and under group.  This team is practicing both age groups at the same time (9:15 to 10 am) each morning.  This is another plus for switching teams!

Tuesday was the first meet.  It was a home meet against the Brentwood YMCA.  And the boys did great!  Carter swam freestyle, backstroke, freestyle relay, and medley relay (which Carter did backstroke for).  Rylan swam freestyle and freestyle relay.

I took videos of their individual races.

Rylan swimming freestyle (split into 2 clips):

I'm so impressed with Rylan.  I wasn't sure he could even swim the length of the pool (he's never done it before) and he did it for both races he was in (some other kids had to have a coach help them).

Rylan's time for the freestyle was 51.75 seconds and he got 6th place.

Unfortunately one of the other kids in his freestyle relay messed up and started swimming at the wrong time (there were two kids swimming at one another) so his team technically DQ'd.  However, the team still got a 2nd place ribbon.

Carter swimming freestyle (he was trying SO HARD to swim fast - he's one of the youngest of a 2 year age span so it's not going to be easy this season):

Carter swimming backstroke:

Carter did great!  He has only had one practice and his times were similar to his best times from last year.  Here are Carter's times and places:

Freestyle: 33.75 seconds, 7th place

Backstroke: 31.23 seconds, 2nd place

Freestyle Relay: 2:30.89, 2nd place

Medley Relay: 3:05.18, 2nd place

So far we really love our team this year!  We even found out we know a few other kids on the team.

Branson was on Rylan's soccer team when I used to coach the team:

And Max was in Rylan's class in preschool and played on his baseball team before:

After the meet Tuesday (we were there from 6:45 am to 11:45 am), we joined Jen and her kids at the neighborhood pool for a couple of hours.  Evie is 8 and Mae and Reed are 5.  These kiddos are going to be spending a lot of time together this summer and so far are becoming even better friends!!!

Gray really loved the pool.  There is a huge shallow pool that is a million times nicer than any regular baby pool.  Only time he didn't like it is when he'd start walking too fast and fall down and not know how to get his face out of the water.

He was a pro at lounging though!!!