Senior Awards

On May 27th Chaffey High School held it's Senior Awards Banquet. We got invited but didn't know what award she would be receiving. It was a really nice event, everyone was dressed nice and they had it set up out under the trees in the quad and had refreshments.

Tyaan got the science department award, which she was surprised about. But then a little while later she got called again for the cross country academic award. I was so proud of her, not too many other names got called more than once, and it was an honor to be invited to the event at all. She is such a great girl!!

Tyaan and her dad


Tyaan and grandpa Don

Jeff's Birthday

Jeff turned 19 on May 24th this year. It's still unbelievable that this is the same kid that used to spend hours and hours with me and go everywhere with me.


Jon


Dad



Andrew

Riding Trip

On May 23rd we went on a riding trip. Tyaan hadn't ridden since breaking her collarbone on Jan. 3rd. We didn't dare go riding again until after swim season was over. So we had been waiting a while for this trip!

This is me coming in after riding Jon's bike. I love to ride his bike out on the dry lake bed because it's SO fast!


Tyaan's friend Bryce came with us on this trip. He had never ridden before and hadn't been able to go on a young men's riding trip that Jon and other leaders had put together a few months before. So Jon had wanted to make sure he got the chance to ride. Since he is a swimmer also (he was captain of the boys swim team at Chaffey, while Ty was the girls captain) and also swam at CIF we didn't want him risking injury until season was over.


Here is Ty, back in her riding gear after all those months!


It was a fun day. We got to ride some trails. Jon doesn't get to ride very fast when he's with us because we're nowhere near as good on dirt bikes as he is. This was also the first time I had been out since I had crashed so I was pretty timid. (It hurts!!) But he is patient with us, and says he had a good time anyway!

Spring Sports Awards Banquet

May 19th was the Chaffey spring sports awards banquet. All the spring sports were recognized and any championships, CIF qualifiers, or other awards were presented. Swim was the last sport to be recognized. It was a big deal that both boys and girls swim teams had won league championships. First time ever I believe. Tyaan went up with the coach and was presented the plaque for the team.



Coach Brown also called up the other girls that swam at CIF with Tyaan. He mentioned that the qualifying time for their event was hard to acheive. Nobody in our league has qualified for CIF in that event for several years. And the last team that did was from Chaffey as well. I hadn't known that but thought it said a lot about how strong our team was this year.


The individual awards weren't given out because we were planning a banquet for the swim teams that took place on another day.

CIF!!

May 12th was the CIF swim meet for SoCal. Tyaan's 4x100 freestyle relay team had qualified along with several other swimmers from her school. The meet is usually held at the Belmont pool in Long Beach, which is 50 miles from us. But at the last minute we heard that there was some problem there so they moved the meet to Mt. SAC, a jr. college close to home. It's actually where Tyaan is now attending! That was great news and we enjoyed seeing all of the swimmers from schools closer to Long Beach because we knew for once they had to drive a long way instead of us.

It was a long day in the sun. The Southern Section for CIF covers most of California. Central and Southern California, so everyone who qualified for an event was here this day to swim. They swam and the top 16 in each event went on to finals which was held a couple of days later.

Here is Tyaan warming up in the competition pool. She's got great technique, and a beautiful stroke. I always say she's a 'pretty' swimmer.



This is the team getting ready for their race. The 4x100 free relay is the last event so it was later in the afternoon and they'd had a lot of time to be nervous!



You can see Tyaan standing next to her coach here. Chaffey had a pretty good sized group of swimmers qualify this year, so there was usually one of them competing.



Here is their race. They are in lane 6. Tyaan is the first swimmer.




She finished first on her leg. She is so good at pacing herself. A lot of times other swimmers will pull ahead but she never gets rushed by them. She sets her pace and sticks to it and passes the girls who pulled out ahead and burned out. Her teammates mom was timing their splits nearby and you can hear her say "1:01" when Ty finishes her leg of the race. This is her best time ever for a 100 free. It was the best time any of these girls got all season. I was thrilled when I heard she had done so well, and she told me later that she had a bad turn and slipped on the wall.

Here is Tyaan with Coach Brown after the meet. They didn't qualify for the next round, but they were all really happy with how they had done. Her coach called her his "1:01er"!




Here she is with 2 of her 3 teammates in this event. It was the last time they swam together in competition. It was really great that they got to swim at CIF! So Tyaan got her CIF patch to go with all of her letters and her league championship patch. She accomplished a lot as a high school athlete and I am excited for her to go on to college level, but will really miss going to the high school to watch her there.



As always, she did great and made me very proud!

Beach trip

On May 9th we took a trip to the beach. It was warm at home, but the beach was overcast so it was pretty cool. The girls still got some skim boarding in because it wasn't too crowded. We also got to play volleyball, which Tyaan has been playing more lately and is getting more comfortable with it. I love volleyball so I'm enjoying that!




I stayed out of the water...

Swim Finals

May 6th was swim finals. Chaffey went into finals being undefeated and had enough swimmers qualify during prelims that it should have been no contest to win. The worst that could happen was that Don Lugo girls would win finals leaving a tie for league championship.

The first event is the 4x50 medley relay. We had won this race in prelims and expected a win here.



As you can see Tyaan pulls ahead of the Don Lugo girl and Chaffey wins the relay. However this is when we learned what the day was going to be like. We had an official that we hadn't had all season. He was a horrible human being and spent the next few hours treating everyone on the pool deck like they were idiots. He talked to the coaches extremely rudely, a lot of times into the megaphone although they were only a few feet away (making sure everyone else at the pool could hear how 'important' he was). I didn't see 1 disqualification during a varsity race all season long. During finals this guy probably disqualified a dozen swimmers, maybe more. it was ridiculous. He acted as if he was officiating at an olympic meet. These poor kids were afraid to sneeze or they'd be DQ'd. (For example, he DQ'd a girl because AFTER the race was over, after having some teammates try to help her out of the pool, she swam under the lane lines to the ladder to get out. Said she should have asked him before the race...) He DQ'd Tyaan after this event. I saw him do it when she was 3/4 of the way back to the block when she passed the girl next to her. At first he said it was because her feet weren't even on her kick, then he told her coach that it had something to do with her turn off of the wall. Since this is her event, that she has trained for 3 years to do, and the guy was changing his story, I can GUARANTEE that she didn't deserve it. But, once the call was made there was nothing we could do. She was heartbroken of course, feeling like she'd let the team down. They didn't earn any points for that event and started the meet in last place. Don Lugo took first place and started ahead.

Tyaan's next event was the 200 free. She did her best to pull herself together since it was the event right after the medley and she was still pretty upset. She was undefeated in this all year, and she won it this day as well. So she got her first 1st place medal.

Next was her 100 fly. We were positive that the official would DQ her again because it was the same stroke that she swam during the medley. She was worried about turns and kicks but I told her to just swim it like she always did. If she tried to change after years of practice it would just slow her down, and if he was going to be unfair there was nothing she could do about it. Here is her race.




She finished 3rd. I was impressed because I knew she was emotionally exhausted, and worried about being DQ'd the whole time. The official didn't DQ her, in fact he told her coach that her stroke was "perfect". So she got a 3rd place medal for this event.

The last event was the 4x100 free relay. Nobody in league could come close to our relay team in this event. They had already qualified for CIF (State championships). They easily took 1st place, earning Ty her third medal, her second 1st place.

Unfortunately with the DQ's (he also DQ'd our breaststroker who took 1st place in her event so we lost those points as well) we BARELY lost to Don Lugo. The Don Lugo coach even said to give the league championship to Chaffey because they deserved it. It was very obvious that our girls got cheated. Worst was that Tyaan and the other girl who should have won 1st place in the 100 breast were both seniors and this was their last swim competition. It's heartbreaking that this is how it had to end. So the league championship was a tie. Chaffey's coach turned Tyaan's name in for league MVP. If Chaffey had won finals she would have gotten it, however it was decided that because of the tie Chaffey would take the League Champion Plaque and Don Lugo would get MVP. Tyaan really deserved it though.

Chaffey boys won league, and this is the first time any school has ever won boys and girls championships in the same year. It's the first time for Chaffey ever, not just in swim, but any sport...ever.


Here is the girls team with their plaque.


Here is 3 of the 4 100 free relay swimmers with their first place medals!


Here is Ty the next morning. She wore her letterman with her 3 new medals!