Thank you to everyone who came tonight. If you weren’t able to make it, no worries at all. Here is all the information you need:

Practices: Schedule for June is on the website

We will be splitting practices into two groups based on age. The first group ages 10 and under will practice Monday-Friday from 8:30- 9:45. The second ages 11 and up will practice Monday-Friday from 9:15-10:45. The first 15 minutes will be stretching. The last hour will be swimming, with at least 15 minutes spent on starts and finishes.

We will also offer evening practices for anyone who wants to come on Mondays and Wednesdays from 5:30-6:30.

Every Friday will be FUN FRIDAY with donuts, games, and the coaches will get in to swim too!

Meets:

The meet schedule can be found on the website. If the meets are on Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday. For Tuesday and Thursday meets, warmups will be at 5:30 and the meet will start at 6 P.M. For Saturday meets, warmups will be at 8:30 and meets start at 9. Warmups aren’t optional. If your child is swimming in the meet, they should be there by 5:30 for Tuesdays and Thursdays or 8:30 for Saturday meets. If this is a problem and you know you will be more than 5 minutes late, please let me know. Last year we had a big problem with people showing up with 10-15 minutes left of warmups and it was just a mess with kids jumping in on top of each other and running into each other.

I know we have a lot of swimmers who have never been on a swim team before and are probably very nervous for swim meets. I just want to say that I will never sign your kid up for a race that I have not seen them complete in practice. For example, if you have a 7 year old and he has never done a 25 butterfly in his life, then he will not be signed up for that at the meet. Also, if your kid needs to stop and hang onto the lane line in the middle of the race, they CAN.

Away Meets: Please sign up for away meets. The farthest we travel is Taylorville. All of the coaches will still be at the away meets and we want to have swimmers there to watch. Swim meets are more fun for everyone if there are more kids. At several away meets last year, I was scrambling to put together relays because we only had two or 3 kids in an age group. I’m not sure why people don’t go to away meets, but if it is because you can’t get your child there , let me know and I am sure there will be parents willing to carpool. If we have at least 25 swimmers signed up at an away meet, I will bring treats to practice the next day.

Another incentive to encourage participation: the coaches have come up with choosing a SWIMMER OF THE MEET for every meet. Whoever wins the swimmer of the meet will get to choose what we do for part of practice the following day. We will also have an award at our banquet for swimmers that attend the most meets in each age group.

This leads to my next point: CONFERENCE

To compete at the conference, you must compete in 3 regular season swim meets.

I want everyone to mark their calendars for Sunday , July 16th. Last year was my first year coaching and I was surprised and disappointed in the lack of participation at the conference. While summer swimming is fun and laid back, we are still preparing our swimmers for a championship meet at the end of the season. We are going to plan many fun activities the week leading up to conference to get the kids excited!!! So please, make sure you have this date written down and plan to be free the whole day.

Also, at the conference there is an award for high points for both male and female in each age group as well as trophies for teams that score the most points overall. I think it would be awesome, and is very doable, to bring home a trophy this year if we have everyone’s participation! One of our swimmers last year, won Conference swimmer of the year, and in order to win this award you MUST compete at conference.

I am still figuring out how to allow you guys to sign up for meets on the app, but I will provide a detailed explanation for that. In the meantime, I am going to send a spreadsheet to sign up for the purple vs. green meet on Saturday, June 3rd.

Here is the spreadsheet link for our intersquad meet: Meet Sign Up for Purple vs. Green Meet on June 3rd at 9 A.M. - Google Sheets

Volunteering:

We NEED everyone’s help to run an efficient meet. I was pleasantly surprised by everyone’s willingness to step up last year and help, and I hope to see that again. We have an awesome announcer again this summer. Keith Anderson graciously volunteered to do that, so thank you. My mom will also be doing the computer system every meet. So that leaves us needing 16 times and 1 head timer. You don’t need ANY experience at all to be a timer. Keith will have a timers meeting before every meeting and will explain exactly what you need to know.

Apparel:

Swimsuits: We went with the same suits as last year. Solid purple arena suit. Use the team store tab on the website and the link will take you straight to the our team store on swim outlet. I’ve received many emails about sizing, As far as sizing goes, you will just need to follow the size guide on the website and the measurement guide. There isn’t a girls and a womens suit, they are all the same. You can try them on and/or buy them at The Running Center if you aren’t sure about sizes.

T-Shirts: Please order t-shirts. I emailed you all the link on Tuesday, and I added it to the website today under the team store tab. The team store will close on June 3rd, so make sure to get your shirts ordered before it’s too late!!