Hello All,

I can’t imagine feeling anything but completely exhausted after today; it was an incredibly energetic and exciting meet, but the heat definitely took its toll. While we didn't win, I want to congratulate our swimmers on making remarkable progress! The coaches and I agreed before the meet started that our focus would be to improve as a team, not to try and win the meet, and you guys met and exceeded those expectations!

A couple notes/reminders:

PARENTS: Please, please, please try not to scratch your kids last minute from their events, ESPECIALLY relays. While many of you have perfectly reasonable excuses, it's really difficult to rearrange relays at the last minute; if we don't have enough swimmers, we have to scratch the whole relay entirely. If you know you have conflicts, please let me know no later than Friday evening.

If you are planning something outside of swim team for saturday, I would encourage you to plan it for sometime in the early to late evening. While we give an estimated time for the meet to finish, the meet can be delayed for a ridiculous number of reasons. Again, this helps make sure all our swimmers are present and available for relays and such.

Additionally, please avoid wandering into the heating and staging area if you are not actively volunteering. I understand you want to encourage your kids before their races, but we already have Coaches behind the blocks giving reminders, race tips, and pep talks. When too many people are back behind the blocks, it becomes chaotic and confusing, and it makes it harder for us as Coaches to do our job.

SWIMMERS: While I have no doubts the majority of you were excellent in this regard, please remember to be respectful and courteous to both your other teammates and swimmers on the other team. If someone is trying to harass you or get under your skin, it is best to ignore them or walk away.

One last thing: While we are continually working on improving our swimmers technique in each stroke, we are still having lots of disqualifications in Breastroke for the younger age groups. Breaststroke has a reputation for being the “easiest” or “most fun” stroke, but in reality it is the hardest to swim legally. I encourage you- both swimmers and parents- to think about signing up for some other events!! If you have questions about whether your kid is legal or not, please reach out to me or another coach.

As I said, the coaches and I will continue working to improve each swimmer's ability to swim the strokes legally. However, we also want to push some more endurance work for our older age groups, as well as perfect streamlines, turns, and so forth.

I think were in a good position going forward! We know the groove of how practices and meets work, so we can start to really jump into the nitty-gritty of the season. I hope you all have a restful weekend, and we will see you tomorrow!

Daniel

P.S. If you want to see some really fast swimmers, tune into the U.S Olympic Trials! They start tonight, and last through the whole week. I believe its streaming on NBC sports