Stressful

I haven’t written about swimming for a while, but the weekend before last our daughter swam in the Florida Senior Championships in Orlando.

It was big deal, with some extraordinary fast swimmers competing over the three days. There was a lot of pressure on her to swim times and make cuts, and although we try to downplay it, you could tell she was really anxious.

Generally over the weekend she was not swimming well at all, and shall we say in between the sessions the teenage girl grumps were out in full force!

She just made it into Sunday night’s finals, for what are her two best events, and happily she pulled a couple of big swims out of the bag. How, I don’t know, but credit to her resilience and the smiles returned fortunately.

The relief was palpable too, and the reason I found myself wanting to write about this was that particularly on the Saturday (her worst day) I was thinking how two such things that are so significantly important to me – my daughter’s swimming and Charlton Athletic – are also both extremely stressful.

Watching your kids compete in sports and your favourite team kick a ball about should be on the barometer of enjoyment. Yet, with success comes importance and anxiety.

However, the alternative, which us Addicks know full well, is monotone boredom. I think I’d rather the high blood pressure.