Samoa Nationals Swim Competition

About two weeks ago Emma was invited to compete in the Samoa Nationals Swim Competition. She is in a swimming class that meets twice a week and some of the children were selected to represent American Samoa in the competition. We had two weeks of swim classes 6 days a week to get ready. The competition was to take place in (formerly Western) Samoa so imagine the excitement of all these kids getting to fly together on a plane! Here is the group, parents and all, at the airport.It was actually quite lucky that the majority of us were able to keep our flights because the Head of State of Samoa just passed away. There was a huge funeral planned for the same weekend and at one point the competition was even going to be canceled. We arrived in Samoa after the 25 mintue flight and piled into 2 big taxi buses. The drive from the airport into the capital city of Apia is over an hour long. Samoa is different from our island....there is so much more open space, people have farms with cows and horses, the roads don't have potholes, the speed limit is 45, there is not a lot of litter, there are stop lights and tourists, and the list goes on and on. Needless to say, it was refreshing to see a change of scenery.

We checked into a bed and breakfast and then waited to receive word that we could go to the pool to practice for Saturday's swim meet. The kids were really anxious to practice in the pool. Our swimmers are at a huge disadvantage as they swim in either a 8-meter pool (it literally takes about 5 strokes to get to the other side) or the ocean. Samoa is hosting the upcoming South Pacific Games and they have an Olympic facility with two 50-meter pools and a high dive pool. After a few hours of playing around the bed and breakfast (thank goodness we were the only guests!), we went over the pool. The kids got to practice in the outdoor warm-up pool. They were excited about the big pool, but not too sure about the diving blocks. The indoor facility was closed, but they peeked through the windows and became nervous and excited for the competition.

We got up bright and early on Saturday morning to a torrential downpour. We get a lot of rain here, but it had been a while since I saw such a powerful, steady rain. By the time we left for the swim meet, many houses and businesses were already fighting flooding with sandbags. We got to the stadium and it was so exciting! Our competition was several other swim teams from Samoa, and there were race officials everywhere. There was at least 50 officials. I was impressed by how organized everything was. The only glitch for the day was that the power was not working. That meant that the kids would not be seeing their names and race times up on a huge tv screen, but they didn't seem to care.

Emma competed in 4 events, all 25-meter races: the kickboard, breaststroke, freestyle, and backstroke. She was in the 9-10 age category, and each race had 8 swimmers. Emma got 3 bronze medals!!! They had a medal ceremony halfway through the competition and another at the end. It was so cool to see her get up on the podium accepting her medals. I couldn't help but imagine Emma on the medal podium at the 2016 Olympics!