Gator Updates: Week of June 9th

It’s a quiet week, ramping up to a 3 events next week.

Summary:
Tue/Wed 6/10 and 6/11: Night Practice
Saturday 6/14: Home Meet vs. Genesee

Week of 6/16:
Wed 6/18: Intrasquad
Sat 6/21: Home meet vs. Wheatridge
Sun 6/22: Pentathlon Invitational

Details:
Night Practice: Due to movie night at the pool this Thursday (6/12) night practice for upper division will take place Tuesday (6/10) and Wednesday (6/11) instead.
Home Meets: We have 3 home meets in a row, so please volunteer if you can. I don’t think we will make it to 3rd shift of either meet with Genesee or Wheatridge since they have smaller teams, but we want to be prepared just in case. Please see the side bar to sign up.
Pentathlon: This is a fun Sunday morning meet at the Applewood Athletic Club (AAC) where swimmers swim in all 5 events: back, breast, fly, free, and IM. In order to swim in this meet, your swimmer must have qualifying times. If your swimmer has a “B” time or better in 3 of the 5 disciplines, then talk to your age group coach about signing up. We generally send 15-20 kids to this meet.

Important Seating Update for Saturday Meet at 5Parks

We just received a clarification from 5Parks on the seating/tent situation at their pool. You absolutely can not erect a pop-up tent on the AstroTurf that has legs. We will attempt to bring a 10×10 team tent and put it up on the concrete. If it extends onto the AstroTurf we will have to take them down. Here are the exact instructions they gave us:

“The amphitheater area is available to our visiting team for seating. Please be aware that the Village of Five Parks HOA has a new policy that bans the use of canopies and tents with legs/poles on the artificial turf in the amphitheater. We know this is not welcoming news but rules we must adhere to or we face significant fines from the HOA. Please make sure your families know that they can utilize blankets, towels and those pop up tents, but absolutely nothing with legs or poles can be used in the turf area. We’ll have volunteers monitoring this as well on Saturday morning and if anyone has these items we’ll ask them to remove them. Chairs are okay.”

See below for a picture of approved tent style..

Important Parking Updates for 5Parks Meet

Here is all the parking information we got from 5Parks. We’d hate to see your car towed or ticketed, so please take a moment to look at the map and read through….

Parking: As you likely know, parking is limited in the Five Parks neighborhood. Any of the parking lots near the pool are off limits and the neighboring businesses will tow cars that are parked for the swim meet. Ask your families to park on the street in the neighborhood. Here is the info we give our team:

Please self monitor your parking as well as that of others, especially members of the visiting swim team that are not aware of our parking situation. If you see someone that is about to violate any of the above parking rules please remind them to comply. If they’ve already parked illegally and have entered the meet, please note their license plate number and their situation and report it to meet personnel so that a public address announcement can be made.

Obey all Arvada City ordinances regarding parking; no blocking of service entrances to businesses, resident driveways, alleyways, fire hydrants, etc.

NO PARKING in the lots located at 13825 W. 85th, 13741 W. 85th, and 13767 W. 85th avenues for ANY Piranhas’ events including practices (designated by red X’s on map)

Do not park along W 84th Drive and W 85th Drive posted as “No Parking – Fire Lane.”

Meets Only: Do not park along the front of the Depot / Pool as this will be designated as a “drop off” zone (designated by yellow line on map.)

Do not park on lawns.

Please consider parking along W 83rd Ave. between Devinney St. and Cole St. It is fairly close to the pool and is a nice morning walk. If you would like a bit longer walk, please consider parking at Meiklejohn Elementary School.

Gators: Week of 6/1

Summary:
– Upper Division Night Practice Tue/Thu 8-9pm
– Saturday 6/7 @ 5Parks: warm up 6:30am/start 7:00am
-Thank you to our amazing Gator Family!
-A word about ribbons…

Details:
Upper Division Night Practice starts this Tuesday. Practice will be held on Tuesday and Thursday nights from 8:00pm-9:00pm for swimmers ages 13 and older. This is chill night-time practice that will also have a lane available for any Gator parents that want to swim. Practice is hosted after hours at the pool, so we ask that everyone please be mindful of trash and belongings. The staff work hard at the pool to keep it clean and we want to make sure that we do too!
GMST @ 5Parks: Our next dual meet is at the 5Parks pool with warm-up starting at 6:30 am. Address details can be found on the sidebar under “NEXT EVENT”. 5Parks is a great pool, but they do have a few rules. Rule #1 is that no tent stakes are allowed. We will set up our Team Tent outside the pool area for the swimmers. Any parents that bring their own tent, please do not stake your tent into the AstroTurf. We will still need about 16 Timers for this meet. Please click here to volunteer: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090D4DABAC28A1FF2-56899742-gmst#/
Thank you to our Gator Family! I can’t express to you how well the Saturday meet went in terms of our team volunteering and stepping up. Everyone showed up for their shifts (amazing!) and then stepped in at the end of the meet to break everything down quickly since the pool was opening. We had parents, grandparents and swimmers helping out. We are grateful beyond measure to have such a hard-working and positive team. We hear lots of woes from the other Team Managers and Coaches that are struggling for involvement. We just wanted you to know that it did not go unnoticed. We truly do have the best team and we know it!!
A word about ribbons this season: It turns out that ribbons are very expensive (like thousands of dollars expensive for our League). In order to keep swim team fees low, a decision was made at a League-level that ribbons would be given to the 12 and under swimmers for all dual meets. If you are an upper division swimmer, you can get your ribbon(s) on-demand if you request them. If you had a great swim and really want that ribbon, it’s not a problem! Just talk to the coaches and we will get that for you.