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I.

Introduction
When someone asks you, Would you like to go swimming? The first thing that may come to mind may be splashing water in a lake or playing water basketball in your friends pool. Saying that to a competitive swimmer takes on a whole new meaning. There are 3 main aspects of competitive high school swimming: our training, regular season meets, and finally the State Meet.

II. Body
A. The main building block of competitive swimming is training.
1. We have early morning practice 6days a week and also 2 afternoons every week. 2. We first do a warm up to get loosened up so we are able to swim well throughout practice 3. We swim 3 miles each day which is equivalent to about 36 blocks. 4. At the end of practice we do a cool down to help release the lactic acid from our muscles. Lactic acid is a substance that your body produces during exercise. Its effect is to make you sore.

B. The 2nd aspect is regular season swim meets. These are a few of the events that I swim at meets.
1.Events a. The first event that I usually swim is the 200 medley relay. Every person swims 50 yards. That is down and back in a 25 yrd pool. The first person swims a 50 butterfly. The butterfly is a stroke where the body has a dolphin like motion. The second person swims a 50 backstroke which is similar to the front crawl but is done on your back. The third person swims a 50 breastroke. The breastroke has a kick almost like a frog. The fourth and final person swims a 50 freestyle. Most people know the freestyle at the front crawl. I usually swim in this position. b. The 2nd event that I swim is the 200 Individual Medley. This is a very tough event for me because its long and you use all 4 strokes. You swim a 50 butterfly, 50backstroke, 50 breaststroke, and 50 freestyle. Kyla and I often swim this event together. c. The 3rd event that I swim is the the 100 freestyle. This is a sprinting race. Theres no holding back on this race. It is short and lots of fun. d. The 4th and final event I swim is the 400 freestyle relay. 4 people swim this relay and each person swims 100 yards. Our team is only 2 hundredths of a second away from qualifying for state in this race. This has been a big goal for my teammates and I .

2. In addition to swimmers many other people are required to run a meet.


a.There are stroke and turn judges which make sure that that you follow all the rules while swimming. b. There are also 3 timers per lane. 3 are needed to get an accurate average of the time.

3.There are 2 types of meets.


1. Invitationals a. These are meets where 10-12 schools participate. They normally last about 6 hours. 2. Duals a. are meets where there are only 2 teams. We have many more of these during our season than invitationals. They are held after school on weekdays and last 2-3 hours.

C. The 3rd and most exciting part of competitive swimming is The State meet. 1. Taper
a. Before major meets like state we use a process called tapering. This is where you swim less yards at practice and you dont have to swim as fast. This is supposed to get your body rested for the big meets.

2. Times
a. In order to swim at state you have to have either get a secondary or an automatic qualifying time at some meet during the regular season. An automatic time that you are guarantees you a spot at state. If 24 people dont make that time, the remaining spots are filled with people who have swum secondary times. 3. The state meet is a meet is very exciting because the fastest swimmers in the state compete. This is the meet that brings the High School swim season to a close.

III. Conclusion
As you can see swimming to me isnt just splash around fun, its playing hard fun. The meets make the intense training all worthwhile, but an opportunity to swim at the state meet would be the icing on the cake.

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