Wahoooooo! We are proud of how our swimmers did at the 1st meet, and we look forward to watching their improvement over the next month!  It was a crazy night, so we appreciate your patience as new parents/swimmers learn the swim meet process, new coaches learn the process of getting all to the right spot doing the right stroke, and we all learn names of swimmers and their strengths/weaknesses.  The next 2 meets will be much easier as there will only be 2 teams with fewer swimmers, and it's at our own pool with a bull pen right next to the starting area which is right next to where the families sit, plus most swimmers understand what a swim meet is after last night.  A few things of note about the meet and the results:

1.  I am attaching the meet results as a pdf here and I will hang them at the pool on Monday.  You can also go into the app to see your own child's results, which I love!  It even does the math of how much your swimmer improved ("dropped time").  Do not worry about the points attached, as we keep the focus on our dropped times.

2.  You will notice that a number of swimmers got disqualified ("DQ").  Coaches will look at these and continue to work at improving swimmers' strokes to make them as legal as possible.  Some common DQ reasons are: flipping over onto your stomach during backstroke, not touching with 2 hands on butterfly and breaststroke, and doing improper legs or arms in butterfly or breaststroke.  Please do not get frustrated by your swimmer getting DQ'd as this is part of the learning process.  Our hope is that a DQ will motivate your swimmer to work with coaches to improve technique.  

NEXT MEET:

1.  Please rsvp (whether you're coming or not) for Thursday's home meet against Timberlake by 8am Tuesday - use the app or the website.  DO NOT EMAIL COACH SUSAN WITH YOUR RSVP INDIVIDUALLY!  Unlike last week's meet, your swimmer may choose the 2 individual events for this meet when you rsvp by checking the boxes - YAY!.  (No 100 IM will be swum, so don't choose that race - if you do, then the coaches will substitute it with another race).  The coaches will choose strokes for relays.  If you have anything special (ex: swimmer will be running late to warm ups, swimmer will miss practice all week but WILL be at meet), there is a place to say that when you rsvp. If your swimmers is younger/newer, you might want to stick with backstroke and freestyle as the other strokes have more rules for DQ.  If your swimmer is more experienced, I recommend you change around strokes each week to try a variety of things/build confidence and to help score points for the team.  If you want input from coaches, we can talk in person on Monday about your swimmer's choices before/after practice.

2.  We need all available hands on deck to volunteer for this meet!  Home meets need a LOT of volunteers, so please sign up to help out in some capacity if you can can.  I have tried to explain each of the jobs on the sign up, but I'm happy to explain in person on Monday too.  We really appreciate your help with this!

Enjoy the weekend off, and we'll see you at Monday's practice!  Go Wahoos!!!!!!

Coach Susan