Good Morning,

Thank you all for your patience and flexibility as we tackled our speedy meet assessment and time trials this week. And thank you to everyone who stepped up to volunteer as a timer.  We appreciate you! We were blown away by what we saw in the pool, even though both time trial sessions were cut short due to thunder and lighting. Your swimmers were amazing!

A quick note about time trials:

We will NOT be completing time trials to fill in missing events. We will use a combination of times swam at time trials, times from last year, and times pulled from Swimmetry and Meet Mobile to use as entry times for our first meet. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this matter, please email coach Tiffany at [email protected].

This week’s schedule:

• Monday, 5/27: No Practice - Memorial Day
• Tuesday, 5/28: Practice 6:00-8:00
• Wednesday, 5/29: Practice 6:00-8:00
• Thursday, 5/30: Practice 6:00-8:00
• FRIDAY, 5/31: FIRST SWIM MEET AT WYNFIELD (details below)
• SATURDAY, 6/1: FIRST SPEEDY MEET AT HIGHLAND CREEK (details below)

This week's focus in the pool:

• Speedy Meet Swimmers: This week coaches will continue to introduce and reinforce skills for freestyle and backstroke. For swimmers who show a good working understanding of both free and back, we will begin introducing breaststroke.
• 10 & Under: We will continue to reinforce freestyle and backstroke skills. We will focus more on breaststroke, and will dedicate some time each practice to work on starts.
• 11 & Up: We will work all 4 strokes this week while we build up some endurance. We will also be focusing on turns, especially for those swimmers new to swimming 50’s.

***REQUEST: Please make sure your swimmers are prepared for practice. Please consider the following:

• Caps are important because it prevents swimmers from picking up their heads and shaking their heads while swimming. Good technique in swimming involves the whole body–head to toe. When swimmers do not wear caps, they are reinforcing bad habits with head and body positioning.
• Goggles are important because they maximize visibility. This is important to be able to swim straight, and especially for timing of finishes and turns. Swimmers use visual cues (backstroke flags and the “T” on the bottom of the pool) to judge distance to adjust stroke lengths for proper turns and finishes. If your swimmer struggles with goggles, it might be useful to try different styles. As coaches, we recommend the Speedo Vanquisher goggles. These goggles come with 3 different nose pieces that can be removed/adjusted to allow for the perfect fit on your swimmer’s face.
• Swim Suit: Please encourage your swimmer to wear a swimsuit meant for competitive swimming. In particular, we discourage boys from wearing swim trunks. Many times these are loose and swimmers break their streamline when pushing off the wall or diving in to pull up their swim trunks and tighten the waist. A jammer will stay in place and allow your swimmer to focus on swimming and technique.

Upcoming Meets:

• 5/31: HOME MEET vs. Peninsula (Team USA theme). PLEASE DECLARE YOUR SWIMMER BY MONDAY, 5/27. Any swimmer who has NOT been declared as “attending” will NOT be entered in the meet. If there are changes to your swimmer’s availability AFTER the declarations window has closed, please contact the coaches AS SOON AS POSSIBLE by emailing to [email protected]. We will send out more meet specific details later this week, but please plan for a long, fun-filled evening. Swimmers will arrive no later than 5:00pm. The meet will end no later than 10:00pm.
• 6/1: Speedy meet AWAY at Highland Creek. Please declare your swimmer by Thursday, 5/30 to help our coaches have a swimmer count for the meet. Unlike regular meets, if your availability changes there is no need to notify coaches. We will send out more meet specific details later this week, but please plan for a short, fun-filled morning. Swimmers will arrive around 8:30am for a 9:00am start. The meet will end around 10:00/10:30am.

A few other items:

• Useful Apps (we highly recommend downloading both of these)
  • Remind: We will use this to push out information regarding weather and other important updates.
  • SwimTopia: This app will allow you to easily declare your swimmers for meets, see their events (including heat and lane assignments) for meets, and view their meet results. The process is very similar if declaring your swimmer on the website. Your username and password for this app should be the same one that you used or created during registration. Here is a quick video on how to declare your swimmer on the SwimTopia App
• T-shirts and LATEX caps will be available for pickup poolside starting tomorrow.
• Silicone caps will be in later this week. We will get these to swimmers before the first meet. For now, if you ordered a silicone cap we ask that you wait to claim your latex cap. Our team is larger than it has been in the past, and we have additional latex caps ordered to cover our full team. However, we do not currently have a delivery date for that order. Thank you in advance for being a team player and making sure everyone has a cap to wear at the first meet!
• Please be patient and kind with t-shirt/cap distribution. Our volunteers working with this are coordinating the ordering and distribution of products for over 170 athletes PLUS their families. Please extend a huge thank you to them for all of their work behind the scenes in coordinating the design, ordering, and distribution of these items, all in the crazy month of May and getting it done before our first meet!!!

We are looking forward to an amazing week together. As always, don't hesitate to contact us at [email protected] if you have any questions or concerns.

~Coach Tiffany and Coach Kristina