THAT FIRST YEAR

It was nice to see the senior prep swimmers yesterday and to hear what you have been up to.  We are trying to set something up for the gold group now.  For the next few weeks I thought I would share the story of my girls introduction into swimming both club and summer as a distraction from everything going on.  This is through my eyes with some help from the girls.

THE TWINS

It was an early day in June at the summer pool and the twin girls were a little over 6 months old.  Now you would think that their parents would know were they were but those were different times.  We come to find out that the baby pool was full to capacity but when we glanced over they seemed to be all of my older kids from the team playing.  Upon a closer look we were amazed to see the twins 👯‍♂️ in the middle of the pool floating on their backs.  After questioning some of the more “ responsible” girls we soon found out that they were attempting to teach the girls breath control, hence   Mom and dad realized that they just had their first swim lessons, the love of the water taught and they were destined to become dolphins on the swim team.  Their true introduction to swimming had come 3 months earlier in the Caribbean islands.

Bring the bambino’s with us exclaimed our travel agent at our first York Caribbean trip in March of 1988.  My first thought was Mari is not going for that idea after all those bambino’s would only be 3 months old when the plane would touch down in St. Croix.  Now of course Bob York first remark was “ yea man it will be great” and of course he would bring his daughter who was born 3 days after those bambino’s and had already bonded with them.  And so this was to be my girls introduction into the world of swimming, a trip to the Caribbean with its blazing sun on their baby skin ( more on that later) and a 1 day long course meet with the local team.

Two coaches who will remain nameless came into the suite one day to announce that they would babysit the girls for the afternoon so that Mari and I could have a free afternoon, what could go wrong they were responsible right.  Knowing that the girls were in the capable hands of Joe Viola and Scot Brown ( whoops that was a slip) we headed out for launch and to explore the beautiful island of St. Croix.  Hours passed and as we walked through the door their is Joe or Scott holding one of the girls over the sink with the other one spraying her down with the hose in the sink.  Startled 😱 as I took a closer look here is a baby in the arms of one of our coaches looking like a cooked 🦞 lobster.  Mari blurts out what happened?  Falling on his sword all I could hear was Joe exclaiming we took them down to the beach bar, and well I guess they may not have been completely shaded.  You think Joe I responded.

Thus was the girls introduction to international swimming that would take them to Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Barbados, Curacao among others through the years.  They would not return on a team trip until the age of 4.