FIRST SWIM MEET IN NORWAY

'Narviksvømmen 2008' in the city of Narvik, 11/22-23

Here is the indoor pool that the meet was held at in Narvik. Typically the pools are operated by the city and the swim teams are organized by volunteers. Underneath the diving board you can see the Harstad Svømmeklubb team leaders for this swim meet. There is some great history from WWII about Narvik. Check it out on Wikipedia: wikipedia.org/wiki/Narvik

Narvik is about 2 hours drive from Harstad, which is our local city. Narvik is a alpine city with the slopes almost ending downtown. There are some great photos online from it.

Here is the 'kiddie' pool end of the swim stadium.

At the beginning of the meet, all the teams marched in and around the pool. The kids in the blue shirts are from Harstad. You can see Veronica on the far right in light blue T-shirt. Barbara is no 5 from the left. They all received a participating trophy. A great memory to bring home.

Veronica (in the pink swimsuit) getting ready for her first event, 25 free. She was excited to be able to swim 25M. She has not done that before. This meet was a 'recruiting meet', which means that the kids just practice. It is 14 years and younger and nobody gets DQ'd. It is just lots of fun for the kids to try it all out.

Barbara after her first event, 25 free.

Alli, or what??

Veronica and Oda (daughter of the head coach) returning to the stands to take a break.

Because of the drive and the meet being late the first day (until 6:30pm), we stayed at a local public school. Our team had over 30 people including parents and siblings, and we were so fortunate to get the gym to sleep in. The kids swam for a couple of hours, then they did gymnastics for a couple hours, then they fainted!

More fun!

As you can see, a swim meet in Norway is more than just show up and swim. What a great way to build a team!

When the kids played in the gym, the parents had a great time hanging out together. The election committee was hard at work finding new board members for next year.

In light blue t-shirts from the left: Barbara, Oda, Veronica and Jon (sitting down with no t-shirt) won the bronze in the 4x25 free. They were thrilled! On Sunday, Veronica participated in the 4x50back and won a bronze again.

This is the head coach of the swim team, Kjetil Bygdnes.

What a great group of kids. There were 17 participating at this swim meet. About 12 were at a swim meet for the very first time and I think most of them will be back.