hey world
Even though im going to be writing this about
the biggest day on our waterfront, I feel obligated to tell the world that my
co-counsellor, who is Australian, is currently showing my bunk the 2011 grand
final to show them what Australian rules football is… and they are loving it
‘oo’ing and ‘ahh’ing. One of the boys even has their parents bringing
Australian footballs for him on visiting day!
But that aside this really is about the biggest
day that waterfront has during camp. it’s a day that can be stressful, can be
long, and can be really depressing as I know all too well after being part of
the runner up team for the last two years when greylock were victorious the
previous 14 years. It’s the ‘greylock invitational swim meet’
Preparation for this day started a couple of
weeks ago when I was asked to organise the day by the head of waterfront cause
id been through it before – although id never been anything more than working
on the dock during the day and helping out with wake ups. So first thing I did
was tell greg he was coach of greylocks red team – we have two teams (red and
grey) to pair up with our two sister camps – and we worked together to pick the
team. While everything we do is don’t worry about winning just do your best,
the two of us went into this with ‘we must win’ in our minds. The result was
ridiculously stacking greylock red – just like every other year. The grey team
wasn’t full of bricks of course, they could still swim and get the job done, we
just tried to make the red team unstoppable.
The lead up to the day itself wasn’t ideal. The
day before woke up and was so light headed and suffering from dizzy spells they
had me quarantined me from breakfast till dinner just to make sure I didn’t have
anything worse since there was a mini plague going around hitting people hard
and fast. Given how much has to be done so we aren’t running around the morning
of the event, losing a member of waterfront really sucks. Thankfully the
waterski staff and some of the swim guys did a lot so that the waterfront was
still ready to go. Even with that done we still were stressed the morning of –
as always. This certainly wasn’t helped when I went to wake up one of the kids
only to be told they had been sick all night so was staying in the health
centre. Thankfully I already had a back up for him however what we were not
expecting was to find out one of our fastest swimmers had gone on a two day
hike not realising he would miss the meet even with him training everyday. His
individual events were worry enough but the 8 person squadron relay at the end
worth triple points was well worth worrying about. Thankfully not everything
was just happening to us, some other camps not quite organised either which led
to a 30-45mins delay to the start.
Once we got going it took a couple of events to
get into sync but the staff did not miss a beat all day, everything ran very
smooth and we had no complaints. I worked on the dock all day so never got to
see the score sheets. Whenever I asked for a score update it wasn’t given which
I assumed meant bad things but as it turns out we were on a constant back and
forth with another camp between first and second with third being too far
behind to worry about. I couldn’t help but get nervous, not only because I
wanted our boys to win since they wanted it so bad, and thanks to adrenaline
they were going faster than they did during tryouts, but also because I was
part of picking the team so didn’t want to fail at that job. the contrast in staff
participation when it came to cheering and being on the dock for the race from
the start of the meet to the end of the meet was amazing.
Early on it was all business and get the job
done. Once we realised our role and what had to be done, we also realised when
the downtime was allowing us to cheer and jump up and down – which yes that was
happening – this really came into play really during the relay races since it
was 2pts between first and second and relays were worth double points. The only
thing left after the relays is the squadron race. Its 4 boys and 4 girls, all
are doing one length of freestyle in a giant relay worth triple points and I
was told before the squadron race that we were leading by 5 or 6pts. Given my
early worries about not having one of our top swimmers available it all came
back again especially when the anchor of the race we were completely outmatched
so any way we were going to win relied on a big lead going into that last swim.
So basically we had a dramatic ending in sight and
it was the last event so everyone who had been working all day stopped and
watched the last race. Having some insanely fast 8 year old swimmers got us off
to a perfect start and even though the kids didn’t know how close it was on the
scoreboard they all gave it everything they had since they knew how much the
race was worth.
So with the strength of our boys, plus our
sister camp, we managed to get about a third of the way in front going into the
last leg. We weren’t sure if it was enough since we had been destroyed the
other kid all day but this only led to our cheering and encouragement to turn
into screaming to get our boy home.
So we had plenty of staff and campers losing
their voices, the fastest kid at the meet chasing after him and with a qtr of the
lap to go his lead was down to a body length and shortening… no pressure huh… I
wish I could say the touch was close and there was a fingernail in it just for
dramatic effect. But thankfully, for all of us, greylock managed to find enough
to win by half a body giving us the win.
So after two years having to watch other teams
take away our trophy, this time it stays at home and the greylock world is
happy.
After checking dates I cant believe ive been at
camp for 7 weeks. On top of that I cant believe the kids have already been here
for 3 weeks! Next big thing on the calendar is visiting day where I get to meet
all my kids parents. im actually looking forward to it! My kids are great so I
see no reason to think the parents will be any different. My only concern is
that after 3 of them had homesickness during the first week, there will be a
rough night or 2 ahead if it all comes back. Fingers crossed they are okay.
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