Five swimmers from the Lakeside Seahawks are at the Olympic Trials, including Brooke (second from left) and Clayton. (Chip Dumstorf)

We went to the neighborhood swim meet Monday. There were the usual comic catastrophes.

The boy who was trying to swim butterfly with his goggles rolled down under his nose. The girl with her cap on sideways. The 8-and-under who dove in and swam the wrong stroke. The crying 6-year-olds.

Years ago, those kids were my kids – crying over cold water and bursting with pride when they won a heat ribbon. Watching that and remembering those days, it’s hard to grasp the reality of where they are now.

Specifically, they are in Omaha for the Olympic Swim Trials – the Super Bowl of American swimming. Representing the Lakeside Seahawks of Louisville, Ky., my 17-year-old daughter, Brooke, and 19-year-old son, Clayton, will compete in the 400-meter individual medley Sunday in front of as many as 14,000 people. Brooke also will compete later in the week in the 200 IM, 200 butterfly and 200 breaststroke. Oldest son Mitchell, a swimmer at the University of Missouri, narrowly missed qualifying and will be working for USA Swimming during the Trials in a journalistic role.

And I really don’t know how to act.

You work as a sports writer long enough, and you’ll see some things. I was there for Christian Laettner’s shot in 1992, and for Kris Jenkins’ shot in April. I was there for the Kick Six at Auburn and the Boise State Statue of Liberty play. I was there for Tiger at Pebble Beach in 2000 and Tiger at Torrey Pines in 2008. I was there when Michael Phelps won all eight gold medals and when American Pharoah won the Triple Crown.

But this? This is the biggest sporting event of my life. By far.

On Thursday, Brooke and Clayton practiced in Lane 5 of the pool built into the CenturyLink Center. Some guy named Phelps was in Lane 4. On Friday, they worked out in the same pool with Olympians Katie Ledecky, Ryan Lochte, Conor Dwyer and Elizabeth Beisel. I watched those scenes and tried to play it cool – but covering the Final Four and College Football Playoff will never be as dazzling as that was.

Thankfully, I don’t have to feign journalistic objectivity or pretend to be a dispassionate observer when my kids are competing. I will take the credential off, move out of media seating and cheer like a fool for them with family and friends. I will have a lump in my throat when they report to the blocks. And I will be very nervous.

Will they make the American team and compete in the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro? Not likely. You don’t want to put limits on a dream, but the realistic outlook is that they will not finish in the top two in any of their events and earn an Olympic berth.

Brooke, a member of the U.S. Junior National Team, will have the better shot of the two – she is seeded 15th in the 400 IM and 19th in the 200 IM. Eight make the 400 IM final and 16 make the 200 IM semifinals. (There is no semifinal for the 400.) Clayton is seeded 60th in the 400 IM.

In the grand scheme, they are simply two of nearly 1,800 competitors here. That’s a lot, but consider: it is less than two percent of all USA Swimming-registered athletes nationwide. It is hard to reach this level.

But mostly, just being here is its own reward. The goal is to have the best swims of their lives this week and see where that can take them, but simply making it to the nation’s biggest swim meet is a great honor. Their teammates back home gave them a hero’s send-off, with good-luck cards and goodie bags and fatheads on sticks for the family to wave.

They’re proud to be here and my wife, Tricia, and I are wildly proud of all three kids.

I take zero credit for any of their swimming accomplishments. Tricia deserves considerably more credit. She was a college swimmer (Northwestern) and basically taught them all how to swim. More importantly, she is far more likely than I to wake up with them at 4:20 a.m. three days a week to make a quick breakfast and see them off for their 5 o’clock workout.

They also get their work ethic and an inherent toughness from her. This is a woman who has survived breast cancer and brain surgery with barely a complaint and not a single step backward. I firmly believe that the kids have seen her example and decided that nine practices a week is simply not much of a hardship in comparison.

But this isn’t simply a sport they tolerate; they love it. They love the camaraderie with their teammates – the road trips, the big breakfasts after morning practice, the locker-room banter. They love the races and the rewards of doing well. They love the coaches who have invested in them at every step, from the Douglass Hills Hurricanes neighborhood team where they started to where they are now. They love the grind of getting better, pushing the limits of their bodies, tapping their potential.

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