March 24 Update: new TShirt/Hoodie deadline Monday, Upcoming dates, Spring season routine sneak peak

Good morning Tritons,

Thank you to all those who attended and helped out with the banquet Friday!

I wanted to quickly go over some important upcoming information:

• I forgot to mention the TShirt/Hoodie fundraiser at the banquet; the deadline will now be pushed to tomorrow by the end of practice (7:00pm). If you would like to still order a tshirt or hoodie, let me know and I can provide or fill out a form for you!
  • I will be sending out a confirmation email by 12:30pm today to those that submitted orders. If you believe you ordered and did not receive a confirmation email, please let me know!
• We will be on Spring Break April 1st-April 5th, normal practice times will resume on April 8th

We plan on starting the following with the start of the next month:

• The coaches have worked on creating a swim team dynamic warmup, something that all swimmers can do 10 minutes before practice, and if we attend a meet that has a small/insufficient warm up period. We will be posting this to the website during Spring Break, as we rework and update some of the tabs and content!
• We have also planned to add the following:
  • Monthly challenges (different fun swim based challenges / challenge sets that all practice groups participate in)
    • April will feature the 10 yard challenge, May will feature the breastroke X stroke challenge (more info and details soon)
  • Season of Y Core Value
    • Spring will be the season of Caring, Summer will be Honesty, Fall will be Respect, and Winter will be Responsibility
    • There will be activities and awards/recognition associated with each Y Core value

Here is a quick recap of the awards ceremonies:

• Swimmers who attended our swim meets received certificates detailing how many personal best swims they had achieved from September 2023 to March 2024. With 59 swimmers participating in swim meets (out of our total 65), our team had swam 636 new personal best swims in total!
• The following team records were broken:
  • Artemiy Lisitskiy broke his own record in the boys 15-21 200 Fly with a new time of 1:54.76, and broke Luke Pusateri's record in the 100 Fly with a time of 51.05
  • Dima Lisitskiy broke Robert Simmon's (1993) boys 9-10 200 Free record with a time of 2:11.63
  • Emma Jackson, Liesel Williamson, Shelby Bahe, and Olivia Zheng set new team records in the girls 13-14, 800 Medley and 800 Free Relays. The medley had a time of 13.28.72, and the free relay had a time of 11:41.40.
  • Suhani Karwal broke her own record in the girls 15-21 500 Free with a new time of 5:40.87
  • Weston Weishaar broke Loch Elliot's (2007) 8&U 100 fly record with a time of 1:54.39
• A swimmer was nominated by their coach in each practice group as being the most improved. This was not just an award for dropping the most times, it also encompassed a swimmer's growth as an individual outside of just swimming times. The following swimmers were presented with a most improved plaque:
  • Rachael Shipman from Riptide B
  • Ezra Dryden from Riptide A
  • Liesel Williamson from Tidal Wave
  • Shelby Bahe from Tsunami
• The Golden Triton Award is presented to a swimmer who has been a constant, above-and-beyond role model of the Y Core Values and excellent teammate.
  • Victoria Jomantara was the Golden Triton for 2023-2024
• Our Y Core Values recipients (back from Y State) were recognized as well and received a large duck!
  • Heather Santangelo - Responsibility
  • Levi Slagg - Respect
  • Finn Clark - Caring
  • Alice Smith & Kodi Levy - Honesty
• At the banquet, swimmers voted for who they thought was the most inspirational.
  • Sadie Jones received the most inspirational swimmer award
• We also recognized our senior swimmers. As tradition, they received a kickboard with all of their personal bests. Congratulations to our graduating senior swimmers, I hope that you all continue to swim and come back to visit every once in awhile! 
  • Suhani Karwal - member since Spring 2013
  • Gabby Fernandez - member since Fall 2014
  • Heather Santangelo - member since Fall 2016
  • Artemiy Lisitskiy - member since Spring 2023
• We had a great slideshow made by Pamela Santangelo, with pictures submitted by the swim team families! There was also the senior slideshow with pictures of our graduating seniors from when they were babies to their current day selves. There were also slides honoring our retired head coach Jim Cornforth who played a big role in the early swim lives of the oldest members of the team. The seniors also came up with beautifully unexpected gifts for the coaches and ended the banquet with a coach quote trivia.

Again I want to thank everyone for supporting the team! I feel like I am still unable to really express how grateful I am to have such a good group of people in our Tritons family. 

Best,
Joseph Shelly