Synchro

I thought participating in a team sport would be good for Rachel, so when summer started I encouraged her to do swim team or synchronized swimming at the city pool near our house. At first she would not even entertain the idea, but after some persuasion and showing her videos she finally agreed to try out synchro. She is not completely comfortable in the deep end yet (though she's a good enough swimmer that she is safe in the deep end, she's just a little nervous about it still), so that was a challenge she worked on overcoming this summer. She did great and had fun.
The night before the dress rehearsal for the water show she was so nervous, but it turned out to be a lot of fun for her.

All summer she has been swimming with 2 other girls on her team, but at the dress rehearsal all the girls in all the teams got to learn a routine together.

The following week was the watershow. The night before she told me she didn't think she was going to do synchro again next year. I responded that the night before the big show is not the time to make any such decisions. The next morning she was a little nervous and a lot excited.

Her team did a good job. Since they were all beginners and had just finished learning the routine 2 days earlier, their coach was in the pool with them reminding them of the moves. It's hard to see all the moves from our vantage point (10 feet in the air would have been better). But Rachel did a good job and, most importantly, had a lot of fun.

Here's Rachel's team's routine:

From 07

And the routine for the whole group together:

From 07

From 07

Purple Heart (her team) won the biggest smile/attitude award.

Naileah, Rachel, Coach Tahira, and Sara

Afterwards I asked Rachel what she thought about doing synchro next year and she said she definitely wants to do it again. It was a lot of fun to be part of a team.

To celebrate a job well done we took the kids to McDonalds for an ice cream cone and to let them play in the PlayPlace.