Super teams

Hey, It's Nationals. You get a chance to play tourist-swimmer. You meet some old friends from the opposite end of the country. You get to see some (if not all) of the very best do their thing, and feel a little bit like you belong with them just by getting to warm-up and compete with them. If you're lucky, you score and get to take home some hardware. If you're lucky and you've worked hard, you swim a really good time for you and feel like you've really done something that matters. If you're lucky and creative, you do something really meaningful (like swim a on a relay with your father and your sister) and create a memory that transcends the swimming. The team competition is for grins, giggles and telling funny stories for years afterwards. In the 1994 SC Nationals, we at San Diego Swim Masters thought we had a real chance to win, since the meet was driving distance (Tempe, AZ) and we had some real superstars like Karlyn Pipes coming to the meet. We even printed up "National Champions" t-shirts ahead of time. Well...Arizona Masters out-organized us, and we had this wonderful Abbott & Costello conversation in the middle of the meet about how we could alter these stupid t-shirts so we could wear them in good conscience. This conversation involved a little beer and a lot of laughter, and to this day, one of my fondest memories of "Buffalo" Bill Earley is his impassioned plea for simply adding "hips" on the end of "Champions." There is no whining in swimming. We didn't complain about Arizona bending the nonexistant rules a couple of degrees farther than we had. We had a good laugh at our own presumption, and got back to having a good meet. Get over your dang selves. Matt

Hey, It's Nationals. You get a chance to play tourist-swimmer. You meet some old friends from the opposite end of the country. You get to see some (if not all) of the very best do their thing, and feel a little bit like you belong with them just by getting to warm-up and compete with them. If you're lucky, you score and get to take home some hardware. If you're lucky and you've worked hard, you swim a really good time for you and feel like you've really done something that matters. If you're lucky and creative, you do something really meaningful (like swim a on a relay with your father and your sister) and create a memory that transcends the swimming. The team competition is for grins, giggles and telling funny stories for years afterwards. In the 1994 SC Nationals, we at San Diego Swim Masters thought we had a real chance to win, since the meet was driving distance (Tempe, AZ) and we had some real superstars like Karlyn Pipes coming to the meet. We even printed up "National Champions" t-shirts ahead of time. Well...Arizona Masters out-organized us, and we had this wonderful Abbott & Costello conversation in the middle of the meet about how we could alter these stupid t-shirts so we could wear them in good conscience. This conversation involved a little beer and a lot of laughter, and to this day, one of my fondest memories of "Buffalo" Bill Earley is his impassioned plea for simply adding "hips" on the end of "Champions." There is no whining in swimming. We didn't complain about Arizona bending the nonexistant rules a couple of degrees farther than we had. We had a good laugh at our own presumption, and got back to having a good meet. Get over your dang selves. Matt