Collin Dive Nationals 2025

 Collin, Tanner and I drove home from Flagstaff Wednesday night and left again Thursday morning for Riverside, CA for Collin's AAU dive nationals! This time, Travis was with us. We took Collin straight to the pool for his first practice then got checked in at our hotel. That night we walked over to the cutest downtown district to get dinner. The sunset was beautiful and it was fun to see all the shops. He competed on Friday, then we had a free day to go to Knott's Berry Farm on Saturday and he competed again on Sunday. He did 1m, 3m and synchro with two teammates which was fun to watch. The pools were outdoors and it was so crowded. There were at least 8 boards being used and hoards of people coming and going and not much seating in the bleachers. He did fine but didn't medal. I was proud of him for qualifying in the first place. A good learning experience!

As far as Knott's goes... don't go on a Saturday in the summer! Yikes. So crowded. We should have bought the fast passes. We waited over an hour for so many rides. Travis went with Collin on the bigger rides and I went with Tanner on the smaller rides. I'm not into the big rollercoasters these days. But the trade off with little kid rides is.. they spin. And spin and spin! Near the end of the day we met back up and I went with Collin on the Silver Bullet. I was scared, but it was smooth and pretty fun! We laughed and I was glad I did it. But then he wanted me to go on Xcelerator and I did not want to! Trav and Tanner were already in line so we joined them and he convinced me by the end. Ugh. Its one of those ones that shoots off super fast. I hated EVERY SECOND. It was so fast, my bra straps fell off! Like, seriously! Tanner hated it too. Worst ride. One fun thing was we ran into Tanner's friend, Tyde Taylor and his family. We got two funnel cakes before leaving and Collin said a mean joke to Tanner and Tanner cried and the whole thing broke my heart. Why? Why can't we just get along? It was so uncalled for. I can't remember the last time I was so disappointed in Collin. Tanner worships Collin and Collin does that. It completely ruined an already not great day. So there's real life for you. Being in a family is hard.

Collin had a long practice on Sunday before competing but we had to check out of our hotel so we found a park and watched church on Zoom. Overall, grateful for the experience and that Collin got to compete on a national level. Grateful that Olive and Weston got to finish out the Evans Flagstaff trip while we were gone. His club team, EVDC ended up taking 3rd place overall which is amazing. There are two brothers on the team who are autistic and are incredible divers. We had a good laugh when Collin came home from practice and told us they took a picture with their 3rd place flag and said one of the brothers made sure they knew the only reason they placed was because of them, haha. Gotta love bluntness. He's not wrong.