November 28, 2023 NEWSLETTER 11
WORKOUT CHANGES
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 8:45 - 9:15 am CGAC
NO WORKOUTS FROM DEC 24 TO DEC 28 – Happy Holidays!
TENTATIVE HOLIDAY SCHEDULE FROM DEC 29 TO JAN 6 – is posted on the LAC website under the “schedules” tab.
THE COACHES REPORT
The London Aquatic Club - Nother’s Fall Invitational
Great People and Great Teammates at LAC!!
The LAC Coaching staff would like to celebrate some actions of our athletes from this past weekend during the Nothers Invitational. As our mission statement reads: “it is the goal of the London Aquatic Club to develop, support and promote competitive swimming for all ages and abilities in a positive, caring, and safe environment. Competitive swimming encourages fitness, friendship, and health, and produces people who are a credit to their sport and their community”.
Saturday night during finals, a LAC athlete gave an athlete from another team her goggles when their goggles broke while they were stepping onto the starting block. The LAC Coaches want to highlight this outstanding act of sportsmanship!
Our coaches were approached by an official at the end of a session for another positive piece of feedback. One of the LAC athletes had taken the time to thank the officials. She took the time to let them know that without them, we wouldn’t be able to have these incredible events and sport. Thank you to our athletes for demonstrating appreciation for all of the hard work that goes into these competitions.
Diving into the performance details- It was a very successful weekend of racing with an 85% improvement percentage. We saw many athletes requalify for a variety of competitions, and Seven Top 10 times achieved by 4 athletes! Congratulations to first time Western Region Championship qualifiers: Abigail Chew, Emily Regan Swift, Maclyn Sales, Quinlyn Sales, Gloria Zhang and Ryan Zhao. Congratulations to Alex Lee, Emma Podesta and Sarah Schoelier on achieving their first provincial qualifying standard.
The LAC Coaching staff extends many “thanks” to all our amazing volunteers that support the great sport of competitive swimming and the London Aquatic Club; and a special thank you to Rezki, Lisa, Mark and Rose for their countless hours.
Quebec Cup
Connor Barnardo was a member of Team Ontario that competed at the Quebec Cup this past weekend in Montreal; congratulations to Connor who raced to two LAC Top 10 swims while gaining some early season Long Course racing experience.
The LAC Nothers Development Time Trial
Last Thursday evening saw some of our younger swimmers putting their skills learned at practice into competition. For many this was their first time at a 'meet' and for others it was an opportunity for them to challenge themselves with new events or events at a longer distance jumping from swimming 50's to 100's. These are great opportunities for our younger swimmers to gain an understanding of a meet set up, marshalling, hearing a start for the first or second time allows these athletes to be better prepared when it comes time to race in larger meets. The younger LAC Swimmers had many successes - diving from the blocks, great streamlining off the walls, doing the proper turn and finishing strong! Congratulations to all of the swimmers - we look forward to seeing you race again!
From The Kitchen
Thank you to our generous swim families! Thanks to the Dela Cruz family for their generous donation of hot dog buns (from Harina Bakeshoppe, now in London on Ernest Ave!)and their hot dog machine for our concession stand. Thanks to the Lee family for their sushi donation (from Cupbop Plus Sushi, Richmond Street London ). Also, thank you to Sherwood Tim Horton’s for donating coffee for our volunteers all weekend. It was greatly appreciated. Anyone interested in making food donations, contact [email protected].
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!
LAC - Nothers Fall Invitational: Another great LAC meet! Thank you everyone for producing a great big pre-covid style Nothers Fall Invitational! Before scratches we had 750 swimmers registered! It has been a while since we have had that great a turn out! Everyone’s contributions were an important part of our success! Congratulations to our new Nothers Meet Manager, Rezki Awulia on a job well done! It was a pleasure working with you Rezki! We had lots of compliments and those go to all of you as well. This was a team effort. As good as this meet was for the swimmers it was great for us officials too with MANY people trying new jobs, lots of people teaching and mentoring, and I even had one person teaching a job that was new to them too! See, easier than you might think! Congrats everyone and rest quickly. There are more meets on the way!
Next LAC Meets (The rest of Short Course, 25M Season):
December 16, 2023 - LAC - Holiday Time Trial – Minor Official sign-ups will be posted next week. Senior officials. I am going to need some help there too. Email me if interested.
January 20 - 21, 2024 - LAC - 12 & Under Celebration
January 20, 2024 - LAC - 13 & Over Time Trial
February 23 - 25, 2023 - WOSA Short Course Champs
It is not too soon to start offering to work senior jobs at these meets. 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. I will be approaching some people shortly looking for volunteers to be part of the Meet Management team. If you are interested, let me know.
Clinics: If you missed the recent round of clinics, I will be having more after Nothers and before WOSA Champs (Feb 23 – 25). I will be spreading them out a lot more this time and WILL have multiple Judge of Strokes and Inspector of Turns clinics. 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 Mark Lukings, L.A.C. Co-Club Officials Chair at [email protected]
9TH ANNUAL JANSEN CHRISTMAS TOY DRIVE
There will be a Donation Box at CGAC once again this year from Nov 1 to Dec 3 for LAC families to dropoff their gifts. Further information can be found here.
SWIM MEET VOLUNTEER SESSION CREDITS
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.
