NEWS AND SCHEDULE FOR 2017 SEASON IS HERE!

HELLLLLOOOOOOOOO TORPEDO!!!

I hope everyone has had a fantastic year since we left the pool deck back in August. I am looking forward to seeing you all again this coming summer!

I have some news for everyone before getting to the schedule. McDowell Mariners will be hosting Conference this year on Saturday, July 29th. We will not be using sessions, but many of you will be happy to hear that the meet will be held at Valdese! Last year I wrote a long post regarding hosting the championship meet at other locations. After much discussion, the league unanimously voted today to engage the Valdese Recreation Department as the default location of the conference meet, with teams reserving the right to host at their facility should they desire to do so. If a team chooses to exercise that right, they must make it known at the fall meeting a year in advance so there will be plenty of lead time for everyone. This was something the overwhelming majority of respondents to our survey wanted, and I'm pleased with the compromise we were able to reach.

It was also confirmed that officials will need to have served in their capacity for several meets in order to have the privilege of serving at the conference meet. We will need to have several more folks out to help with stroke and turn, scoring, and timing operation this season, so don't be shy if you want to learn!

We were unable to secure sessions for this season's conference meet, although all teams agreed to revisit the idea after this coming season. The hope is, by hosting the meet at Valdese, we will be able to move the meet along quickly enough to not require sessions.

Finally, on to the good stuff everyone wants to know about:

May 1: Sign-up begins!
May 28: Stroke and Turn with Colleen Gillan (Time TBD, but definitely in the afternoon)
May 30: Practices start in the afternoon! (Time TBD, but more than likely similar to previous years)

June 12: Begin AM/PM practices by age group (Time TBD, but more than likely similar to previous years); Team Member Meet and Greet/ Season Kick-off at 6:40pm following 9-10 year old practice.
June 15: Meet #1: Forest City Stingrays @ Valdese. Warm-up at 5pm. Entries due Wednesday, 6/14.
June 20: Meet #2: McDowell Mariners @ Valdese. Warm-up at 5pm. Entries due Monday, 6/19.
June 22: Meet #3: Valdese @ Granite Falls Sharks. Warm-up at 5:30pm. Entries due Tuesday, 6/20.
June 26: Meet #4: Valdese @ Forest City Stingrays. Warm-up at 5:30pm. Entries due Friday, 6/23.
June 30-July 5: NO PRACTICES FOR INDEPENDENCE DAY HOLIDAY! (ENTRIES FOR JULY 6 MEET DUE JUNE 29!) 

July 6: Transylvania Aquabats and Black Mountain Stingrays @ Valdese. Warm-up at 5pm. Entries due JUNE 29.
July 11: Granite Falls Sharks @ Valdese. Warm-up at 5pm. Entries due Monday, 7/10.
July 15: Sprint/Distance at Forest City. 11 and Up unless coach approved. Entries due 7/7.
July 20: Valdese @ McDowell Mariners. Warm-up at 5:30pm. Entries due Monday, 7/17.
July 25: Valdese @ Black Mountain Stingrays. Warm-up at 5:30pm. Entries due Friday, 7/21.
July 28: Annual Potluck Spaghetti Dinner, 5pm, Rotary Park.
July 29: TSL Conference Championship @ Valdese- Hosted by McDowell.. Entries due by 7/21. MUST HAVE SWAM TWO MEETS TO PARTICIPATE IN CONFERENCE.

August 12: End of Season Awards and Potluck, 5pm. Rotary Park.

That's all for now! Check back frequently for more information. I look forward to having you all with us, and keep on encouraging others to come and join us for what will be a great summer!

Thanks for a GREAT SEASON!

In the week between the extremely hot champs meet and today, I've spent a good bit of time reflecting on the season. Sure, there were ups and downs along the way, and that last meet was a doozy, but through it all, I have no other conclusion to make than it was a GREAT season.

We saw numerous first-time swimmers grow in the sport and the team.  We saw some of our veteran swimmers become real leaders in and out of the water and help their teammates to achieve practice and meet goals. We saw parents jump at the chance to volunteer to help meets run smoothly. We saw families and our community become closer through the support of our young ones. We saw our parents become more invested in our program, including in our boosters, who assist with running our meet concessions.

While we may not have come away with the League trophy, the list of accomplishments of our swimmers can not be overlooked. A win-loss record is a nice thing to tout, but it is not at the core of who I believe we are as a team. If our other goals of sportsmanship, improving self-confidence, improving fitness, increasing a love of sport, bringing the community together, and providing a positive environment for our youth to interact are met, then I would consider our season a success. Our win-loss record reflects a part of who we are as a program, but it does not tell the whole story of what takes place and what we all share between late May and late July. Certainly a championship trophy is nice and is something to be proud of, but it is icing on the cake. I would much rather hear consistently from our parents and parents of swimmers in other programs how impressed they are with the positive attitude and sportsmanship of our swimmers and our parents.

One of the great coaches in the sport, Eddie Reese of the University of Texas, puts it this way: "Winning doesn’t give you class, it just means you won. I always want my teams to have class, and we’ll go from there. You have to be good when you win, and when you lose. It’s an indication of who you are as a person, who you are surrounding yourself with, and the respect you have for other people and all the hard work they put in." I love this quote because I feel it captures the essence of what I hold to be most important as a coach. I could continue to elaborate on this, but I feel Coach Reese said it best, so I'll leave it with him.

There are certainly areas that continue to need improvement, but I am optimistic we will be able to address these areas and remain in a good position going forward. One area I have already started working with Rec staff on is continuing a relationship between the local schools and our team. This year we found ourselves somewhere we haven't been in a number of years, and that is with a lower number of 8 and Under and 9-10 swimmers. I fully take responsibility for this, as I was not as on-the-ball with getting registration forms to the schools. There are several ideas in the works to make sure this failure in communication doesn't happen again, and that we are on top of things with regards to getting information to the schools in a timely manner before team registration begins.

Along the same line, we had several swimmers join us later in the season as a result of learning about the team during their summer swim lessons. In an effort to strengthen the bridge between the swim lesson program and the competitive programs available in Valdese, the Rec is going to start sending team information for both Xcell and VTST to swim lesson graduates of levels 4 and 5. Hopefully this will help us continue to grow our younger ranks in future seasons and allow for a more consistent flow of swimmers into the program.

I know that many of you have your own thoughts on ways that we can continue to improve the team experience. I enjoyed having mid-season feedback from you all and beginning my "From the Coach" blog posts. I texted everyone on our remind list the link to our end-of-season survey this morning, and I hope you make use of it (Last year we had 41 responses, our most yet, and I would love to have even more this year).

I look closely at your feedback and see how I can work to implement changes or inform you of why we do things as we do. I already have a growing list of things to take to the fall meeting of the coaches and team reps, and it is my hope to get these things addressed or begin working towards a solution that works for everyone. Many of the league-wide changes we have seen over the years that you all have wanted have come as a result of the feedback you provide.

In closing, I meant it on Saturday when I said that you should all hold your heads up high for the effort put forth this season. I am incredibly proud of where we are as a program, and I can honestly say I am proud of each and every one of you. Thank you again for trusting me and the coaches with your children this summer, and I hope it has been as great a season for you as for me. It is my sincerest wish to see you all back with us again next summer as we embark on an even greater season.

From the Coach...Part II: About the Conference Champs

Good morning, everyone!

One of the recent things to come to my attention has been questions regarding the league/conference championship meet, and how its location is decided.

Our league by-laws state that we rotate the location of the meet alphabetically every summer. On occasion, a team will decide to opt-out of hosting for various reasons. Transylvania never hosted, primarily due to it's distance from the other teams in the Tarheel Swim League. Others have declined due to facility issues, or even inexperience with running a large meet and wanting some time to see how it is done.

There have been discussions over the past years to keep the meet in Valdese and to work out some sort of hosting agreement where the host team still retains entry fees, while the Valdese Rec might charge a small facility charge per swimmer. This is not an uncommon arrangement for USA Swimming programs who rent out large facilities for their large meets. We do charge modest entry fees for the swims, mainly to cover the cost of awards and ribbons, and the money from those fees do help give each team a small infusion of capital every so many years. The fees currently stand at $1.50 for individual events and $4.00 per relay team entry. With each swimmer maxing out at 5 events (4 ind./1 relay, or 3 ind./2 relays), this means each swimmer contributes a maximum of $7 in entry fees, but when you add together all the swimmers who participate, it adds up. Before deducting costs on trophies, ribbons, and medals, Valdese took in just over $1,000 in 2014.

Other issues that have prevented a permanent location are concerns for local businesses who would potentially stand to lose money with the meet relocating permanently to Valdese. Local eateries, especially, benefit from the meets as the other teams don't have established kitchens and concessions as we do in the bowling area of the Valdese Rec. Two different eateries from Granite Falls will be setting up at their meet this year, and Forest City and McDowell have had several vendors benefit from their championship meets in years past. These businesses often help support the teams and are valuable relationships for the community. We want to support local business for all of our teams, not just out own. At the same time, the host team also gets the benefit of a percentage of the t-shirt sales from the mobile t-shirt vendor, which could happen regardless of location.

The coaches and team representatives are also aware that the champs meet takes quite a long time on days that are particularly hot, and we have discussed various ways to try to make the meet run faster (see the recent purchase of the Colorado Timing System Dolphin timing equipment by both Forest City and Granite Falls). Other suggestions that have been floated are to separate the meet into sessions by age group, where the older swimmers (11+) swim in the morning, and then the younger swimmers swim in the afternoon. This would present some difficulties, especially in events where swimmers may be swimming up an age group across sessions, and it wouldn't solve the issue of a long day for families with swimmers who would be in both sessions. It certainly would cut down on already cramped lanes for warm-up, which is almost useless when trying to get 60+ swimmers in three lanes as we will have to do this coming Saturday. As the overall number of swimmers participating in the meet has declined in the last several years, there has also been a decreasing urgency to consider the split-session approach.

One of the biggest things that can help us move the meet along is consistency, and more the familiar swimmers, coaches, and volunteers are with the various roles each performs in order to make the meet possible. If we are constantly training new people year after year, it means we will find ourselves facing familiar problems. Just as in an employment situation, having workers who are experienced helps with efficiency. This isn't to say that we don't welcome first-time volunteers, as we certainly do, but it also means that having a strong, experienced group of volunteers who have performed their jobs (computer operators in scoring, timing system operators, starters, stroke and turn officials) can seriously impact the quality of the meet. This has been a big part of why our home meets have been able to go smoothly this summer, and hopefully that will help translate into a more efficiently run meet this coming Saturday. YOU ALL HAVE NO IDEA HOW THANKFUL I AM FOR YOUR VOLUNTEER HELP THIS YEAR!

Ultimately, as with most things, there are positive things that come out of our current system for the championship meet, and there are a few things worth considering to improve the meet quality for future events. The leadership of all the TSL teams have tried to preserve some of the benefits while also investing significantly in ways to improve the meet experience for everyone (for example, the Dolphin system with two watches for a six-lane pool costs in the neighborhood of $3,300, adoption of the Meet Mobile app, moving to timer sheets instead of cards, embracing more central training for officials, computer training). If you do have any suggestions on how to improve the meets, don't be shy. Let me know, and I will bring it to the League at our fall meeting for the consideration of everyone!

See everyone at practice tomorrow!