School swimming competition

Two weeks ago Kai received a letter that all the children from Essex Heights could enter the qualification for today’s swimming carnival. Being the sportive kid that he his, no doubt that Kai wanted to try out. You needed to be up to a certain swimming level, but since we are not familiar with those levels, we just signed him up. Even though he finished his swimming lessons three years ago.

Last Monday, during school time, they drove up to the swimming pool by bus. To our surprise, we found out that Kai qualified for the breaststroke in the school swimming team a couple days later. Freestyle is the stroke that children in Australia learn first. In the Netherlands we start with breaststroke. This and his competitive nature, is probably why he made it.

So today was the day of the Mulgrave District Swimming Carnival, where six schools out of the district got to compete against each other. Only the 1st and 2nd places of the individual and relay races at this division level will continue to the Eastern Metropolitan Championships, the next level.

With 15 degrees Celsius and rain it almost resembled a typical day in the Netherlands, so Kai felt like a fish in the water!

Program:
The races where divided into age groups and boys/girls.

• Medley relays
• Freestyle
• Backstroke
• Breaststroke
• Butterfly
• Freestyle relays

Since the sports teacher had official duties that he was occupied with, the two oldest girls in the team were the leaders today. Despite the chaos that it seemed to be at times, the kids were all very disciplined. Only one kid missed his race because he was standing at the wrong side of the pool.

Some of the other schools have their own swimming pool at school, which was clearly visible during the races.

Even though Essex Heights Primary School placed 6th overall, it was a great experience and a fun day with good spirits.