Down in the Cruisers' Cemetery...

...that's where your team's gonna get buried!

The kiddos uniformly agree that the Cruisers cheer could be improved. The lyrics are bad and the chant is far too long, but we musn't let it color our perspective.

The Castle Rock Cruisers rec summer swim team boasted three Crawfords this season - Eve hadn't joined their ranks since the summer of her 9th birthday - and though she's at most of the meets anyway and might as well put on a suit, it was a very full, very exhausting experience for the lot of us. 'Good' bordering on 'Glorious', but challenging. 

 Capturing the essence of these sisters - Eve is the Little Mother, the one who's not slightly overweight and unravelled by details. She also doesn't spend the majority of her time mentally preventing herself from physically throttling other spectators. The Mother, in short, who knows what to say to a nervous swimmer.

 Gracie's season was a success, for sure, though she was discouraged somewhat at not qualifying to swim at either Championships or All-Stars, as she did last summer (Championships requires that you place within the top 12 swimmers in any event at a Preliminary meet, and All-Stars requires that you swim an event in a set time at least once over the course of the season). Last year, at the ripe old age of 6, it was easier to qualify - once you hit that 7-8 girls' bracket, however, the sheer number of other swimmers rises exponentially, and it's just plain hard. But she improved so steadily and surely, we're just so proud of her.

 Backstroking Queen. My favorite swim moment for her occurrs at the neighborhood pool we seem to spend every afternoon enjoying - during the safety breaks, instead of joining the others in gorging on whatever we have handy in the cooler, she chooses to lap swim along with the adults, just for practice.

 Shaney-bo-Baney found himself on the lower end of his age bracket as well, so we were thrilled when he clawed his way to the Championships and earned an All-Star time in Backstroke. Every year he claims this is his last Cruiser season and that he'll just concentrate on the year-round Rock team, but every year he's back with the promise of underwater success...he'll be in prime position next year to repeat the award-winning magic of last season, so I fully expect him to be back in action.

 GoShaneGoShaneGoShaneGoShaneGoShane...

 The consistently butt-kicking 9-10 Boys Free Relay Team: James, Noah, Shane and Kenobi. Nope. Not a typo. His name's Kenobi, after your favorite Jedi. And mine, by the way.

 The maestro. Best memory: seeing him glide to the swimmer on either end of the lane to shake their hand...sportsmanship wasn't necessarily lacking before, it just never occurred to him to acknowledge someone he has either beaten or been beaten by. Lots of growth for the little man.

 Eve finally committed to doubling-up on her swimming commitments - not the biggest fan of the early-morning Cruiser workouts, but then, none of us are. The main pull for swimming rec is to reaffirm to yourself that 'Yup, I'm pretty dang good.' While club swim doesn't involve the sheer numbers of teams and participants as football and basketball, a healthy swim community exists in Colorado, and the long and short-course meets are filled with literally hundreds of swimmers per age group, which makes it common for you to whoop 'Yes! 24th in Freestyle!" 'Sweet! 14th in Back!" Cracking the Top 10 is a Herculean accomplishment, reserved for the hard-core kids who are eyeing Olympic trials and whatnot, a la local Missy Franklin, whom we hope kicks some tail in London.

 Rec swim also boasts a LOT of swimmers, but the best swimmers in any summer league spend their entire year swimming for another club, so by the time you hit Championships and All-Stars, it's just a mini state meet, with the added bonus of your placing in the Top 10 or even Top 5 consistently...the pleasure of leap-frogging the higher ordinal numbers is immense. Eve's here pictured with the Girls 11-12 Free Relay Team: Eve, Katie, Kelly and Grace, who forced all to eat their bubbles every time they crossed the platform.

 Eve made All-Star times in every event available to do so, as well as Championships for Free, Back and 200 IM (you can only swim 3 events at any one meet) and did beautifully, bringing home enough blue ribbons to wallpaper a room.

 For Rock, the long-course meets have been scattered this year...the team arranged a developmental meet with our neighbors just to the south in northern Colorado Springs, Peak Swim. You can't imagine the luxury of a nearly open deck, not packed to the hilt with tents and chairs and spectators - it's politically incorrect and I know it, but any swim meet can double as an ADD Convention: I truly don't get why everyone feels compelled to wander. Constantly. They bring these tents and chairs and line the deck, preventing free views for all, and refuse to sit in them for even a minute. Biggest summer pet peeve. And, for the love of all that's holy: if you're not watching your swimmer, could you kindly back away from the pool's perimeter? Maybe so one of the other 603 swimmers' families could catch a glimpse of their own offspring? I probably wasn't using my inside voice for that.

 Just to get unobstructed photos of your swimmer is what I imagine attending a swim meet in the Celestial Kingdom would be like. And don't think for a second that there won't be swim meets there. Just don't.

Fly isn't her natural or best stroke, but always makes for a fun picture.

 The best part of any meet: the crap. In this case, Ring Pops for earning a best time.

 Swim meets are, by and large, a HUGE time suck. I don't deny it. And due to the nature of our kids' strengths, combined with our unique talent for saying 'Yes' when all other families say 'No' (i.e., 'Sure, we'll swim the last leg of that last relay', 'Sure, we'll time the last half of the meet') we're always on hand from warm-ups to tear down, so spending 6-7 hours at a meet isn't unusual...it would bother some. But it's just family time for us; lots of time for kissing and wrestling and talking and chasing and, yes, bothering.

So we put a cap on it. Worth it, every summer.