Swimming and Special Olympics

Jason has been swimming regularly now for over two years.  He enjoys being in the water very much, it's a form of therapy to him.  Late in 2009, he was invited to join the PST Piranhas.  PST stands for Plantation Swim Team, which covers the cities of Plantation, Sunrise and Tamarac.  The team has three levels, the first being Strokes 'n' Fun, which is where Jason started out.  He swam at that level through all of 2010.  At the end of the year, we were informed that the coaches felt he was ready to move up to the second level, JO1.  At this level, the kids start working towards getting their Junior Olympics qualifications.  When they swim at meets, each event has a time to beat to qualify for Junior Olympics in that event.  Jason has been swimming at this level in 2011, but has not been in any meets.  We just felt he wasn't ready for that experience.  It's a lot of craziness, noise, confusion.  However, his competitive nature busts out when his teammates get their medals and ribbons and awards for swimming in meets and improving their previous times and qualifying for Junior Olympics.  "Why can't I get a ribbon or a medal?" is the usual question we get.  Coach Christi, Coach June and Coach Scott have been very understanding and patient with Jason.  They have helped him grow more than I can say.  This was something, however, that I didn't see a solution for.  Thankfully, Coach Scott did. 

He suggested putting Jason on the Special Olympics swimming team, the Wahoos.  It would be an opportunity for him to do competitions, without the very strict guidelines of the regular competitions.  Get him comfortable with how competitions go, ease him into the real deal, if possible.  He would be swimming with others that wouldn't judge him or make fun of him. (Not that such a thing has happened with the PST team, quite the opposite)  We figured we'd give it a try, but Coach Scott said he wanted one condition: he didn't want Jason to leave the PST team, a condition we readily agreed to.  Last Saturday was Jason's first session with the Wahoos.  It went very well, and he even met up with a guy that had played baseball with him two years ago in the Challenger Little League.  (Challenger Little League is a division of Little League for disabled children)  The only real problem was getting Jason to go in the first place.  He first reminded us that he only swims Monday to Friday for practice, Saturday and Sunday is for fun.  Then he went on to say, when he got there,  "That's not my team."  The kids at PST have gone out of their way to treat Jason like any other kid, and the fact that he was hesitant to swim with anyone else but his teammates speaks volumes to that.  Once he got into the water, he was ok.  It just became swimming after that.  His first competition is in July, so we'll see how things go between now and then.