December 19, 2023 NEWSLETTER 13
WORKOUT CHANGES
Thurs Dec 21 NO Age Group Gold AM workout
Fri Dec 22 NO Senior Bronze or Age Group Blue/Bronze workouts
Sat Dec 23 Senior Gold/Silver 5:30 - 7:30 am CGAC
Sat Dec 23 Senior Bronze swim 5:30 - 6:30 am dryland 6:45 - 7:30 am CGAC
Sat Dec 23 Age Group Gold/Silver swim 6:30 - 7:30 am dryland 7:45 - 8:30 am CGAC
Sat Dec 23 Age Group Blue/Bronze swim 7:30 - 8:30 am dryland 8:45 - 9:15 am CGAC
NO WORKOUTS FROM DEC 24 TO DEC 28 – Happy Holidays!
HOLIDAY SCHEDULE - DEC 29 TO JAN 6 – is posted on the LAC website under the “schedules” tab.
THE COACHES REPORT
The LAC Holiday Time Trial
The Holiday Time Trial saw 129 swimmers race at home to a 77% improvement percentage! Many of our age group athletes raced longer distances that utilized the training they undertook this fall. The coaches were excited with the engagement of the athletes taking on a new challenge and learning to manage the nerves that often accompany racing a new event.
Congratulations to first time Western Region Qualifiers: Grayson Lee, Charlie Park, and Lucy Perugino, as well as first time Provincial Qualifiers: Gavin Howard, Brynne Webb-Nicholls, and Caden Zhang.
Brantford Aquatic Club’s Team Showdown
LAC completed their fall training and competition cycle at the BAC’s Team Showdown with an extremely exciting 80% improvement over 3 days of racing at the Wayne Gretzky Sports Complex. The coaches searched the races looking for improvements in skill development. The swimmers impressed with growth in many of the finer skills like no breath on break-outs and no breath on the race finishes.
A piece of valuable information we took out of the weekend, was a reminder to all of families about the need to prioritize recover management earlier in the weekend over the course of a multiday competition. Prioritizing rest early in the competition will pay off in the swimmer’s performances during Sunday night finals.Thank you to all the families who made it possible for LAC to compete in the relays at the end of finals. Although swimming is an individual sport, working together as a team, makes us all stronger.
Cracking into the All Time Top 10 for the first time this weekend was Arthur Pinto (11-12 100 FL), Elise Webb (13-14 50 FR) and Jackson Cooke (13-14 200 BK).
Congratulations to first time Provincial Qualifiers Kaitlyn Chen and Rudolf Weggaesser.
Ontario Junior International
OJI had LAC athletes gain valuable experience competing in an extremely competitive environment. The 8 athletes at the competition rose to the level of the competition coming out with an outstanding 72% improvement percentage. The weekend saw 8 All Time Top 10 performances, as well as, 2 Club Records.
Congratulations to Connor Barnardo for his new Club Records in the Men’s 15-17 200 FR at 1:52.08 and the 50 FL at 25.32.
Congratulations to each and every LAC athlete who competed over the weekend; from the Holiday Time Trial, the Team Showdown to OJI, LAC becomes a stronger team from the valuable experience they gained competing this weekend. The coaching staff is proud of the progress our athletes have achieved so far this season. Thank you to our entire swim community for your commitment to our sport.
We wish everyone a safe and happy holiday.
GO LAC GO!
ALL TIDES SPIRITWEAR - has arrived!
The orders have arrived and will be available to pick up Wednesday Dec 19 5:30 - 7:30 am at CGAC - see Coach Liz. After that they will be available from your coach.
LAC BURSARY PROGRAM
The London Aquatic Club (LAC) was fortunate to receive $2295 from the London Community Foundation (LCF) to help member families who may need some financial support this swimming year. If you could use some financial assistance, please take a look at the Bursary Application.
The Club Manager will receive the applications via email to [email protected] or in a sealed envelope deposited in the LAC mailbox at CGAC. Identifying information will be removed and then the applications will be forwarded to the LAC Finance Committee for review. All funds must be awarded for the 2023-24 swimming year.
Applications are open from December 7, 2023 -Jan 6, 2024 and communication of the results are anticipated the week of January 15, 2024. Any bursary awarded will be in the form of a credit to the family LAC swim account.
IT’S OFFICIAL!
Merry Christmas LAC Officials! Great work at the Holiday Time Trial! Every event is bigger this year than last! Quality and positive attitudes are still great even with the slightly longer sessions. Thank so much for that! This was another excellent event run by a great team! As always with this meet, a lot of our more experienced officials were away, and the newer officials stepped up and did a great job! I knew you would.
Kim Forgetta - Special thanks this year to first time meet manager Kim Forgetta. There was learning to be done and Kim stepped up and got the job done in fine fashion!
Remaining 2023/24 LAC-Hosted Short Course Meets:
January 20 - 21, 2024 - LAC - 12 & Under Celebration
January 20, 2024 - LAC - 13 & Over Time Trial
February 23 - 25, 2023 - WOSA Short Course Champs – I am STILL looking for Meet Manager(s) for this meet. There are 50 or more people who have taken the Meet Manager Clinic. This is a championship meet so I need 1 person with a meet or two behind them to be leader, but the bulk of the work could be delegated to members of a Meet Management team. If you are willing to be the lead or a member of the team, I am ready to hear from you. I would love to do this myself, but I cannot be both Meet Manager AND Competition Coordinator so I am going to need your help.
Senior Officials: It is not too soon to start offering to work senior jobs at upcoming meets.. The 12 & Under Celebration is typically double-ended and we will need lots of officials for Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. If interested, email me, a separate email for each meet, with the name of the meet in the subject and in the body the people who will be helping, the jobs they would like, and the sessions that they would like to work at.
Minor Officials for January 20 and 21: Job postings will go up January 9 at the latest.
Clinics: If you missed the recent round of clinics, I will be having more after the holidays and before WOSA Champs (Feb 23 – 25). I will have multiple Inspector of Turns and Judge of Stroke clinics, the first prior to the 12 & Under Celebration. A few clinics are also available to take online which allows you to take them whenever it suits you. If you go to Swim Ontario - Clinics there are instructions on how to take the online clinics.
If you have any officiating questions please contact me, Mark Lukings, L.A.C. Co-Club Officials Chair at [email protected] Note: This is volunteer work for me, so I may not get back to you immediately but, if urgent, I can handle a reminder.
NOTE TO MEET VOLUNTEERS:
Please remember when you sign up to work at our meets that our volunteer co-ordinators do their best to place parents in the end where their swimmmer is competing, however this is not always possible and we ask for your understanding as this is an onerous task for our meet management. Thank you for your continued support of LAC!
SWIM MEET VOLUNTEER SESSION CREDITS
Please note that high school students can get their volunteer credits for school as well as session credits for your swim family by helping out at our meets.
To check your session credit balance - log on to your LAC account on the website, go to "my account" and click the "service hours" tab to view your account summary. Any questions contact Donna at [email protected]
Our club has a long-standing policy regarding volunteer participation in our hosted swim meets, which includes the earning of mandatory session credits through working at our hosted swim meets. The session credit policy can be found on the LAC website under the "parent info" tab under "LAC policy #2 - Club Hosted Meets and Session Credits".
Families of swimmers in Age Group and Senior are required to earn 22 session credits.
Families of returning Development swimmers are required to earn 11 session credits.
New families are not required to earn session credits but can transfer up to 5 session credits if they should decide to volunteer (which of course is encouraged and applauded).
Families with swimmers that have transferred from another team are considered returning swimmers and are subject to the session credit policy.
Any unworked session credits will be billed to your swimmer account at $40 per session at the end of the season.
The Session Credit Policy is under the constant scrutiny of the Board of Directors.
