Sweet Madame Blue

Since I have found myself in possession of time I did not intend to have, and because literary constructions is waiting for blueprints, and even though I should be in bed, I've decided to chronicle an event that was insightful, fun, and altogether satisfying. Of course, as it always is, anything important takes me forever to write.

Today was the Blue & Gold swim meet. For captains, those words spell stress. (I know, us captains can't read very well.) About a week ago, we picked our teams, and my team--BLUE--got stiffed with first pick. See, the system works like this: the first pick chooses one person (guys and girls choose together) and the second pick chooses two. Then we go along, choosing two at a time. Well, long story short, the teams were even in an uneven way; Blue's girls were handicapped when compared to Gold's girls, but Gold's guys were not matched perfectly with Blue's guys. So really, for me, it became a matter of hanging on to enough points to have my guys' team make up the difference. Sounds easy, don't it?

Not so much. I had forgotten to pick a backstroker. Not through sheer stupidity, but through confusion. I thought I had picked one, but my co-captain and I second-guessed for a moment and chose a guy for some reason (it was a good reason, I just can't remember it). So I went the entire time thinking I had a backstroker, all the while leaving a noticeable gap in my lineup. (I had no sprinters either, but I can make people sprint.)

In the end, responsibility for filling the gap fell to me--but I'm not a backstroker. My seed time was six seconds behind the second-slot backstroker (by the way, six seconds is a LOT). Anyway, enough about personal stress; let's move on to the stress that filling up the rest of the team gave me.

Really, the Blue & Gold is an elaborate game of rock-paper-scissors. Each captain tries to guess what the other captain will do, thus changing the strategy and fight for points. The Gold girls' captain was scientific about this; she got stats, numbers, times, charts, etc. from the coach's website and other sources. I visited the charts too, and wrote down a few times, but mostly I just thought it out over the course of four or five days. Eventually, I decided that I couldn't guess any better than I already had, and I threw my lineup together in 45-60 minutes. Not too shabby.

The only benefit of the way I did it was that the greyhound, the Gold girl captain, overestimated my intelligence. Of course, I helped her by talking about a supposed "stroke of brilliance" all week, but she should know better than to believe me when I'm trash talking. She thought I would split the fast people up in my relays to ensure second and third place, seeing as I couldn't take first against the fastest relays they could put up. So I won every relay, because she split her relays. Hah. Take that. That's what you get for out-thinking me on the fly, I.M., and 200 free.

Ultimately, I had my lineup set and there was nothing I could do about it but motivate people. Unfortunately, my best manner of motivation--yelling--doesn't always work on peers. I had to be NUTURING. Can you say "shoot me"? Before the first three events were through, I had two people stop in the middle of races. I had both of them telling me I was terrible for asking them to do the things I did. One of them, I might add, was doing the exact same events she does every stinking meet, but I still got crap about it. The other just wouldn't listen...to me, anyway. Eventually she finished the race, but she continually asked me to scratch her out of her second event. Hello! I can't do that! I only have twelve girls to work with! I need the events filled, hun! But saying that would have been mean. So I had to nuture. I growled to myself a couple of times.

But all was not lost, for others stepped up where I hadn't expected them to. There are twin freshman on the team, and I chose one over the other because--looking at the numbers--she does well under pressure. In the 500 yard freestyle, the longest race we swim in high school, these JV swimmers managed to finish within a tenth of a second of each other. But the one on my team came out on top in spite of nearly missing her last wall. I was so happy! You have no idea.

The meet wore on, times were placed, points scored, key DQs pronounced, I dropped two seconds on my backstroke time and forced the girl next to me to match her Region time, and in the end...well, let's look back on history.

I have never been on a winning team in the B&G. Never ever.

BUT I WAS TODAY! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! The Gold team had to serve us dinner tonight, because they LOST! Hah! Spaghetti never tasted so good. Delish.

My moral of the story: I'll never get mad at Dan about a meet's setup again, and I'll always try to do what he's asking me to do. Also, never underestimate your opponent, or your allies.

Though I guess the greyhound's moral would be: Don't overestimate people who don't like to do research.