Like father. Like son

Matthew was really keen to do the swimming carnival this year. We have tried to keep Matthew in particular away from competitive sports. He is exceptionally competitive (I have no idea where he gets it from) and he possesses a large amount of natural talent at more than one sport. (Gosh I sound like one of those braggy Mums but I am using my sports coaching background to make that assessment not my maternal pride. I promise!)

When Matthew grows up he would like to be an Olympian. He is going to compete at swimming (like Uncle Brenton of course!), athletics (because he came third at the cross country) and TaeKwonDo (because he loves it!) All of this though has to happen in the off season of the AFL when he will be playing for Carlton!

So with this in mind Nathan and I decided we want to protect him from burn out (and himself) so we have decided no competitive sport until well, we think he will be able to handle it. I think I do probably now have to add in a disclaimer here that competitive sport is probably different in our house than most because of our sporting backgrounds. For example we consider state swimming competitive sport. Club night at a swimming club is seen as fun....

Anyway school swimming carnival looms and Matthew is keen. So bearing in mind the kid hasn't had a swimming lesson in six months (Can anyone say cobbler's kids un-shod???) due to his brothers need to NOT swim we enter him only in the 50m Freestyle.

Where he comes second! By quite a long way!!!

 Unbeknown to me, he makes the qualifying time to go to regionals! Ummm decisions, decisions. We let him go to regional for cross country so we had better let him go to swimming...

The meet was held at the AIS pool. Where I spent many a year doing swimming carnivals and where my club trained. We called this statue thunder thighs. We loved her! In winter people would put a coat over her. Sometimes she sported a red silicon cap when we were sick of her bronze one. She is apart of my history. And now she is apart of Matthew's history. Although he was far more interested to know if Uncle Brenton had actually swum in his particular lane. (As a matter of fact he had. So had his father but that is not what is important!)
So Matthew swum his heart out at regionals. I unfortunately missed his swim as I had another meeting and his Daddy missed it as he was interstate. But the parents who were there cheered him onto 5th in his heat. They all commented on his speed off the block and the first 15 metre when a massive piano fell out of the sky and slowed his speed for the final 35 meters. (The piano is a swimmers metaphor, you will probably only get that reference if you swum but it means A LOT to Nath and I!)  But this is great news. Turns out he is exactly like his father!
Well done Matthew. I am sure this is the first over very many more swimming meets!