Hi Fall Training Group!

I hope you are all having a nice Labor Day Weekend and I can't wait to welcome you all back to the pool in just 3 short days!

Many of you know me, but for those who do not I am passionately committed to providing your swimmers with the best possible swim team experience I can. I was an age group swimmer from the age of 8-18 in the Adirondack Swimming District.Then I moved on to swimming at Amherst College and swam all four years there. I competed in many different levels of swimming competitions from Zones to the NCAAs. And I still can not get enough of being around swimming, talking about swimming, being on the pool deck, and teaching your swimmers every ounce of knowledge about swimming that I can.

I am so grateful to have the opportunity to coach your swimmers this season and beyond.

For those of you who don't already know the routine:

Pick Up/Drop Off Reminders:

You enter Ross Sports Center through the Tarrant Recreation Center Doors (see attached map).

Parents are free to hangout in the stands during practice.

You can drop off and pick up your child if you have a solid plan or they do not require management in the locker room.

Remember this is a college sports facility and they do not always have a front desk person available, so please do not drop your child off earlier than 15 minutes before the start of practice.

The last thing we want is a lot of 10 and Unders wandering around a college rec facility unattended. We will give the kids reminders about how we treat the facility and reminders about how to be good guest and how we share the space. But it is good to give that reminder to your child as well.

Also locker rooms can become rompus rooms if we don't keep on the kids. Usually kids (especially boys) need some help staying on task in the locker room and not flooding the building. We definitely don't want that to happen.

Equipment:

We need to bring our own equipment and leave with our own equipment everyday. We have accumulated a very limited amount of equipment we can have to share with kids that forgot or don’t have it yet but it is nice to have your own for ease of use. Also in my opinion you can never have too much swim gear.

We love to use fins so if you don’t have any already please get some, Swim Outlet is the best/cheapest source:

For the littlest group we like these:

Long Sporti Fins on SwimOutlet

For the older groups we like these:

TYR HydroBlade Short Fin

Also it would be nice if you could bring a kick board:

Sporti Kick Board on Swim Outlet.

And a Pullbouy for the older groups:

Sporti Pullbouy on Swim Outlet

We (my coaches, me and my kids) love these mesh bags for carrying this wet gear in:

Sporti Mesh Gear Bags on Swim Outlet

Team Gear:

I will open a team store with caps, googles, team suits, and warm-ups at the end of October at the start of winter season. However, I do have a limited number of CVSA caps for $15 each if you need one right away. Our team suit is just a plain burgundy suit, so any plain burgundy training suit would be a near match if you want to purchase some on swimoutlet.com here is one for the girls and one for the boys.

Meets:

Meets are fun and we encourage all our swimmers to try out meets in the season. They are an awesome chance for some team bonding and testing out new swim skills.

We will have a large schedule of both home and away meets for the winter season, I will publish a schedule for those next week.

For this fall training session we are offering 2 away meets: 1 at Upper Valley Aquatic Center in White River Junction VT on October 11th and 1 in Western Massachusetts on October 17-19th. I have opened the entries for the UVAC meet on our swimtopia website, please sign-up if you want to attend. We will have time to submit entries, so no huge rush on that. Let me know if you have any questions.

Fall Training Schedule:

For the first 2 weeks of training our schedule will be:

5-8 year olds: Any 2 days M-Th 6:30pm-7:15pm.

8-10 year olds: 4 days M-Th 6:30-7:45pm.

11&Over: 4 days M-Th 6:30-8:30pm.

After September 15th our schedule will be:

5-8 year olds: Any 2 days M, W, and Th 5-5:45pm and T 6:30-7:15pm.

8-10 year olds: 4 days M, W, and Th 5-6:15pm and T 6:30-7:45pm.

11&Over: 4 days M, W, and Th 5-7pm and T 6:30-8:30pm.

I think that is all for now. Please let me know if you have any questions. Have a great Labor Day Weekend and see you at the pool soon!

Coach Hilary