CHAMPS - Eindhoven Netherlands

CHAMPS is the swim event of the year. It is the last meet where all 17 teams across Europe meet to find out who is the best. The teams are comprised of mostly military kids, but Embassy worker's kids are included as well as some host nation kids. Bailey is a member of the Kingfish, the largest team in Europe.

Bailey worked hard all season to get to this point: competing at CHAMPS. You have to earn a lane to swim by either completing a qualifying time (determined by ESFL) or you are offered a spot. Every event at CHAMPS has 2 heats, each heat has 10 lanes. So if only 15 swimmer's have qualifying times, they will pull the next fastest 5 swimmers to offer the remaining lanes. Here is Bailey swimming in lane zero. She worked HARD to get that lane!
Bailey was offered lanes for 3 events: 1. 50m breaststroke 2. 200m Individual Medley and 3. 200m freestyle. She came into CHAMPS at around 19th place in the 50 meter breast and ended up at 11th place. Plus she shaved a significant amount of time from each swim, 11 seconds from her 200m IM! The 200m races totally challenge her and she doesn't "love" to swim them, but she did an awesome job. Here she is after marshaling, waiting for her chance to swim.
This picture is showing Bailey's lane and split time for the 200m free, but I put it up to show how the results were communicated to the whole arena. Pretty fun to see your swimmer's name up there.
Before the competition started, they had a parade of teams. This is a close up of Bailey in the parade.
Kingfish took 1st place again this year. Here is a photo of the team captain, with Coach Bob next to him, receiving the trophy. This was SO close, down to the wire and maybe only 1 or 2 medals decided it.
Here are Bailey's coaches, they are awesome!
And here are Bailey's swim buddies:
Father and daughter, cheering on the team!
Bailey has her work cut out for her next year. She will stay on the JV team but she will have to meet quicker qualifying times as she moves up an age category. Our goal for next year? Beat your previous personal times but most of all HAVE FUN!