All City DIIIIIIIIVE

 Ok. So. Our pool hosted the All City Dive Meet which is usually a once-in -a-dive-life thing because there are 13 pools in the league, and hosting duties rotate on a schedule. I am so so so so happy we hosted on JACK'S SENIOR YEAR! How magical and special and delightful.

Also! Cooper was able to compete for the first time since he was a 10U because the USA Diving schedule gods smiled upon us.

I was on the planniung committee heading up awards and senior recognition, and I have been working on this beast for a literal year. We had the most wonderful 48 hours of hard work and awesome dives-- it was a core memory for all of us. 

I was at the pool for 10 hours on Sunday for set up and warm ups, 14 hours for comp on Monday and 16 hours for comp and clean up on Tuesday. Then I vegged all day Wednesday and Thursday and am just now crawling out.

Also! I am solo parenting because Ben and Coop are in WVA for nationals. They left from the All City boards and drive straight there for warm ups.  Cooper dove badly in 1 meter and finished 25th (top 12 go to finals). Then he was FREAKING AMAZING through 5 (out of 8) dives on platform and FELL APART SPECTACULARLY to finish 19th. Tomorrow he dives on 3M, and there's no way to know if Jekyll or Hyde will show up. Fun to watch both of them on TV tho!!

Back to All City!

DAY 1

97 degrees and so humid I literally thought I was going to die.

My friend and I announced the whole meet-- we switched off each age group, and we annonced awards for the group we were not announcing dives for. It was fun and also hard work.

THE WHOLE FAM!

YAY COOOOOOPER

Sibs

LOL Minnie. She donated her giant blow up sprinkler for tent city, and everyone had fun running through it.

COOPER WON 13-14 BOYS!!!!! ALL CITY CHAMMMMMP!!

I jumped in the pool in my sports bra and hotty hots

Then I remembered I had a swim suit, so I  jumped in again (NOT ALLOWED but who was going to yell at me?) and did some paper scoring in the shade.

DAY 2

Better vibes because it was only in the mid-80s. Phew!

Jack got to wave the flag during the national anthem.

Senior recognition was a slideshow on our awesome scoreboard, and I introduced each senior, read their slide, and asked them to do their favorite dive. Everyone loved it :) Jack's was epic, naturally

He made it to boys' 15-19 finals (natch) and had one last warm up with his coach who has been on the team as a competitor or coach since he joined 9 years ago **sob**

Boys finals are always epic and everyone screams and cheers and it's just a freaking magical diving wonderland. Jack dove SO WELL and took 7th to end his dive career on the absolute best note. He and his teammate won the high point award for their age group-- it was perfect.

Dorothy had a total blast diving and hanging out with her pool friends for 48 straight hours

After the boys' final while awards are getting prepped, the seniors and coaches start diving on the host pool's boards. It gets VERY ROWDY very quickly with kids taking 5 bounces and trying crazy dives and coaches showing off their skills (some of our league coaches are d1 college divers, so it's always a good show). Well. Our award label printer was having issues, and the crazy diving time was getting VERY ROWDY because it was lasting so long and I started to worry someone would get hurt. I was about to jump on the mic and use my best mom voice to make everyone stop diving when I noticed that our meet official, a homegrown college diver who is a member of team USA and currently training for the Olympics, was in his Team USA speedo doing a FRONT THREE AND A HALF, so we let it ride.

One Very Dumb Thing I did was not look closely at the box of medals I had (the pool who hosts the swim portion of the meet orders awards for both swim and dive, so all I had to do was pick up a box of ribbons and medals from the other pool). All I could see were gold, so I figured they were all the same, and we put a sticker on the back of each one with the kid's name and score. So we gave the top 3 winners in each event gold medals. Until we ran out and starting pulling out silver. OOPS. Let's just say by the end of day 2, everyone got rose gold (bronze lol).

Oh you also want VIDEOS? Sure.

I will remember this meet forever-- what a gift!