My Swimming Competition

Taking my mark on the block

After school, I swim on a swim team. At the end of August, I went to a swimming meet.  A meet is a place where you compete against other swimmers.  In swimming, there are four different strokes: butterfly stroke, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle.  Each stroke has its own rules and if you don't follow them, you get disqualified (DQ). For example, for the butterfly stroke, if you legs separate when kicking and you don't touch the wall with both hands when you finish then you will get DQ. For backstroke, you can get disqualified if you turn around onto your stomach before reaching the wall.  Some swimmers turn around to make sure they won't hit their heads on the wall.  At this meet I got DQ on breaststroke for not having a correct kick.

There are many directions that a swimmer needs to follow to know when to get ready to start the race. There are 4 or 5 signals used by the Starter to start each race.

For Freestyle, Breaststroke, Butterfly, there are 4 signals:
1. 5 short whistles – next up/call to the blocks
2. 1 long whistle – step on the blocks
3. Verbal – ‘Take your mark’
4. Starter horn – dive in to start the race

Hannah is taking her mark

 Michael is taking his mark

For Backstroke there are 5 signals:
1. 5 short whistles – next up/call to the blocks
2. 1 long whistle  – enter the water/step into the water
3. 1 long whistle – mount the wall
4. Verbal – ‘Take your mark’
5. Starter horn – to start the race

Mounting the wall to get ready for backstroke

 The length of the pool was 25 meters and I swam fifty meters of backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle and 25 meters of butterfly stroke.  Parents volunteered as timers to determine how fast each swimmer swam.  These were my times:

• Backstroke- 55.94 seconds (50 meters)
• Freestyle- 54.88 seconds (50 meters)
• Butterfly-32.05 seconds (25 meters)

 Do you like to swim?

Have you ever been in a swim meet?