Hi Sturgeons!

What a fun and successful weekend we had! We welcomed over 125 swimmers from 5 different local teams to our first US sanctioned home meet! All the coaches and swimmers were so happy to have this opportunity. I have attached pdfs of the results to this email. These times are unofficial until NE Swimming gets a chance to verify them. Many of our swimmers had good races and best times! Thank you to all those who stepped up and helped out! We need a lot of help to pull these meets off. I think all of us would like to have more of these home meets.

In order to do that we need to have more Stroke and Turn Officials and Administrative Officials.

So I plan to host a watch party this Thursday. Those interested, bring your laptops and we can get the online courses started for you. You can do one or both. I have taken both, they aren’t that bad. It would be huge for our team to have 4 more officials. We have 2 right now, so we really need to multiply our numbers. It does not take any previous outside swim knowledge. Also I am so committed to this recruitment that we will be offering a 20% discount in registration fees for people who get registered and serve as officials. Think about it. I will be there Thursday in the stands at the start of practice helping people get connected with the training.

Next order of business:

NHSA Meet

The NHSA meet this Friday afternoon and all day Saturday at UVAC. We have 45 swimmers going, so we will likely have a fair amount of team assignments that we must fill. So get excited! I will have those assignments for you tomorrow.

Here is the general timeline of the meet it is subject to change:

Saturday morning has 10&Unders plus 11-12 Boys. Saturday Afternoon has 11-12 girls, 13-14s, and 15-18s. I have included a copy of the NHSA meet announcement for more general information. Expect the specifics tomorrow with jobs included.

Swim-athon:

The DoJiggy fundraising platforms are active and ready to start collecting donations for the swim-athon. For some reason when I set it up, it would not allow me to do a donation based on unit swam (lap). It would only let me do a flat donation request. I am looking into why that is the case. But if I don’t resolve this issue you might have to just accept flat donations from people or keep track of the pledges per lap by people and then give them the total after your swimmer has completed their laps. So sorry, for the confusion. All these systems have different quirks.

I sent you all invites before break, click on the invite, set-up your page for your swimmer, and start collecting donations for your swimmer on their quest to do more laps. I did get some nice prizes for the event.

Dates to remember:

The swim-athon will take place on Friday March 28th.

Our banquet will be on Saturday March 29th at Pizza 44 on Pine St. in Burlington.

Our last day of practice for the season will be Friday April 4th.

I hope you all had a good weekend and are ready for a great last 4 weeks of the season! 

If you find yourself with extra time, watch "For the Love of the Game" it is an oldie but goody. I am always drawn towards sports movies. I just really love listening to the internal dialogue of this fictional major league pitcher as he works to pitch a perfect game. A lot of sports psychology is displayed in this movie and it is just plain heartwarming. I talk to the kids about being their own coach inside their head, this movie is a great example. Also there is a part in the movie where he is falling apart and his catcher says, "don't worry the team has your back, we got you." It's just solid gold. I highly recommend a watch.

See you at the pool!

Coach Hilary