Green Mountain Swim Team

Alright! Finally have some time…

Ken Caryl/Pentathlon

The meets this weekend were awesome! Despite having a rather tough week of practice, we had best swims for 9/10 races at KC, which I’m obviously very pleased with. Alex Sutherland, Ethan Schick, Kevin/Molly Kruse, Kelsey Bollig, Cassidy Stein and ALL the 8-unders had really excellent meets.

It was really fun to see the swimmers out pace their seeding in nearly every instance. In fact, it got to the point that by the end of the day Friday (uhh 10:30 p.m.) I could tell a swimmer to go and cut 10 seconds and it would happen. That’s the kind of confidence and attacking attitude that will make this a dangerous team come championship season.

For the final, we finished 9th out of 19 – beating out teams like Bear Creek, Governor’s Ranch and Greeley Country Club. Most of the 8 teams that did finish ahead of us (5 or 6) are traditionally division 1 teams at state – we should be very proud of our finish. Most impressive? The fact that we moved UP from 10th to 9th on day 2 (lower division), something that virtually never happens with us. It’s just another sign that we’re starting to garner the depth with our lower division to make us a solid, well-rounded team.

Congrats!

Practice

This week is Technique Week! Today we did butterfly and spent about 45 minutes talking on deck before we got in. Expect the same the rest of the week, but please make sure you’re ON TIME so you don’t miss any key points!! Wednesday is backstroke day! I’ll also be posting the videos I show as well as my stroke outline that we discuss so the swimmers can reference them again in the future, or catch up if they missed out! Watch for those this week!

Water Polo

Is now going to happen on Tuesday nights, rather than Wednesday mornings. This is in an effort to draw more people to night practice as well as provide swimmers who DON’T like polo a chance to have a cohesive practice every day.

Photos

I’ll get em up as soon as I can, still working for it..

Water World

Info at the pool! The date is July 5! It’s a good deal and a great time, make sure you’re there!

Weekend Meets

Sat – Gators @ Mt Vernon Country Club. Warm-up is 6:30 for lower division, 6:45 for upper division. Please be there 15 minutes before your warm-up, and allow time for travel! It’s off the Genesee Park exit on I-70, map available in the calendar! This is a meet against league and division rivals, a very good team. Come if you can, sign-up will be on Wednesday!
*NOTE – this is a yards pool! Note that when making cards! We’ll get a yards best times print-out at the pool ASAP!

Sun – C/D @ Wheat Ridge Rec Center! This is for swimmers who have not qualified for A/B times, and is really a helpful meet! Entries are DUE from us Thursday, so we can’t take anything late. Warm-up at 6:00 a.m.!

That’s it for now! Sorry to miss so many days, I hope this quenched your thirst…

Too busy to post all that I need to post..but

– Night practice is ON. I’ll be back from Boulder in time (barely)

– C/D meet is requiring us to get a headcount TOMORROW… So yeah, it’s getting a little crazy but if you want to attend C/D meet (you must have swum your event and NOT made an A or B time) on Sunday morning, I need to know via e-mail or at practice Tuesday if you can make it!

– I don’t think there will be a yourhub article this week, there’s just no time!!! It’ll be back, so sorry!

I’ll post more later, perhaps tonight!

Luke

Can be found here. Watch for it Thursday!

Oh, and give me stars, it makes me feel good about myself.

Here’s a big ol’ heaping hunk of post. Don’t read it too early – it might spoil your dinner.

First – 3 practice reminders!

1 – Monday night practice is canceled because of a league meeting. There will be no coaches around! (btw, upper division – that’s the hardest you’ve ever worked for me today.. So, uh, thanks.)

2 – Friday morning practice is canceled for upper division because of Ken Caryl! The other 2 age groups WILL swim that morning!

3 – Monday practice will be canceled for ALL age groups following that fabulous 3 day weekend of Ken Caryl and Pentathlon. We’ll get more info on C/D tonight, but it’s very doubtful for Sunday.

Second – Let’s talk about the Stingray meet!

Everyone swam extremely well and I was especially pleased with the fantastic team atmosphere we had. There truly was a ‘home-field advantage’ and it had hardly anything to do with the Bucket ‘O Swamp Sludge (TM) I dumped in the pool right before the meet.

Here were a few lessons learned this week.

– Quality over quantity. Our medley relays, outnumbered nearly 2-to-1, won seven out of eight races. There were big time performances from nearly every swimmer involved and it really got the team off on the right foot. The team, outnumbered by nearly 30 swimmers, showed enormous depth and ran away with a 50 point victory.

– Big things come in small packages. Sophie Aiken completed a week-long sweep, continuing her incredible improvement streak by hitting best times in every event she swam in the week’s two meets. Kevin “Krusher” Kruse turned his peashooters into potent weapons, blowing away his old best time and grabbing a league qualifying time in his breaststroke – a goal dating all the way back to the beginning of last year.

– Hard work pays dividends. Ethan Schick, one of the hardest working swimmers I’ve ever seen, dropped six seconds in a gutsy 200 free that earned him a league-qualifying time and showed off his sky-high potential. Talk about leaving it all in the pool!

– New blood keeps the heart pumping. Gator 17-18 “rookies” Cara Cogswell, Dan Cope and Sam Garin demonstrated their true value to the team. Aside from being potent relay weapons and versatile individual competitors, they bring a strong work ethic, dedication and great spirit to the team. Welcome to the Gator family!

– Aim high. Miss and you’ll land amongst the stars. When Ianna Debrunner told me at winter clinics that she’d like to attend the Pentathlon this year, I had some doubts. But this week when she hit three of the four times she needed, all doubt was erased. She didn’t miss her goal, but she has the chance to be a real “star” there.

– Perseverance pays off. Longtime Gator Rebecca Garner was beginning to hit her stride at the end of last season, a result of hard work and an uncanny ability to actually listen to her coaches. This year she’s taken off, hitting three more solid B times this week and threatening to qualify for league in nearly every event. Watch for a breakthrough soon!

Lots more great swims too, y’all are making my job easy…

Final note – Looking ahead to the JULY 7 quad meet between GMST, WR, state-powerhouse AAC and defending state champions GOLDEN! This will be a truly incredible opportunity to swim the absolute best competition in the league, and some of best in the entire state. The problem? The sheer mass of this meet will make it extremely long. Unless events are severely limited, the sun will be well on its way West before we pack up (read 3 p.m.) That said, I think this will be a great chance for us to come out as a team and show what we can do against the very best, I’d like as much of the team there for as long as possible, so plan ahead now!

I’ll post intrasquad photos either later this afternoon or tomorrow afternoon, there’s just so many it’s taking my computer eons to pull itself together…

Fact (this hardly seems fair while he’s out of town…) – Rich dressed as Cupid for Halloween last year, wearing nothing but a diaper and fairy wings for three days.

And there is a picture. But…he’d have to something horrible like run over my cat for me to publish it, I think…

We’ll see everyone tomorrow!!

Hey everyone!

A few quick things..

1 – Monday night practice is canceled because there is a league meeting that I have to attend and Julie is out of town. So there will be no coaches available. Sorry!
2 – Ken Caryl entries, info and directions are posted! Check em over, notify me of mistakes!
3 – I’m still very much planning on writing about the meet Saturday, but the combination of Ken Caryl entries yesterday and Fathers Day today have put me a bit behind. The CD compilation of intrasquad photos (nearly 400) from Sean Hill that crashed my computer 4 times today didn’t help either…

Anyways Mr Hill worked from start to finish at that meet and there are so many great shots and almost every member of the team is in it, so as soon as my computer stops threatening to explode, I’ll get them online. Check back late Monday for more…

Oh, and we did win the meet, 427-375. And we were outnumbered, 105-76. Very nice. Everyone swam great, I couldn’t be prouder!