PIRANHAS HAVE FANTASTIC WAG MEET
The Piranha Swim Team has outdone itself once again in hosting a meet at a level that raises the bar for other hosts. We accomplished the two main goals of any meet: 1. Provide the best possible experience for the swimmers and 2. Make sure the officials, coaches, and visiting parents are comfortable and well taken care of. On top of all that we swam well as a Team. See Coach Jeff's thank you letter bellow. The meet was well received and even covered on the local news!
Piranha 15 and up girls were the leaders of our team scoring. Our older girls swept all five relays scoring a combined 200 points in those events. Kat Wickham won four individual events and was our teams leading individual scorer while Faith Travis was close behind winning three events. Indiria Ceranic, Shelby Andrade, Alexa Wasserman, and Lindsey Letellier also earned top 8 finishes rounding out our top point scorers.
The younger girls also were successful in putting points on the board for the Piranhas. 11-12 girls Kelli Andrade and Desiree Lewis were individual point scorers. Kelli had five top 16 finishes while Desiree finished her 500 free in scoring position. The two girls were joined by Emma Johansen from the Junior Olympic Group and Naomi Asencio from our Silver group in earning top 16 finishes in three relays. 13-14 girls Alissah Koochaki and Lexie Letellier ended up with individual top 16 finishes and medal swims and along with Erin Fleet and Taylor Harvey swam in five scoring relays.
The boys were lead by Cody Meyer, Bennett Hayley, and Bryce Ramos. Cody, while earning three new JO cuts, was our highest scorer on the boys side in his first ever Championship meet with three top 16 swims in the 10 and under division. Bennett ended up 11th in the 50 back and Bryce Ramos finished 10th in the 200 back after dropping 7 seconds in two weeks and making his first finals night swim. The 11-12 boys relay team of Bennett Hayley, Cooper Harvey, Christian Meyer, and Matthew Dore finished 11th in the 400 free relay.
The Piranha team ended the meet finishing 8th in the combined team scoring and 5th in the girls scoring. On Wednesday of this week our Sectional Team of Indira Ceranic, Kat Wichkam, Alexa Wasserman, Shelby Andrade, and Faith Travis will travel to Long Beach for the USA Swimming Sectional Championships. Good luck to our swimmers!!!!
PIRANHA PRIDE!!!!!!
Letter to the Piranha's from Coach Jeff:
Piranha Families and Staff,
We did it again! The meet this past weekend was another success for our club and showed the Swimming community that the Piranha Swim Team knows how to put on great events. Our primary goal in hosting meets is to give the swimmers a great experience. Our secondary goal is to make sure the visiting coaches, officials, and families are comfortable and enjoy being at our meets and in the City of Palm Springs. We met both goals with flying colors and because of that you will see our events continue to grow bigger and bigger. Teams want to be at Piranha meets!
It's all because of you. As the Head Coach of the Piranha Swim Team I was thanked and complimented many times this weekend and it's embarrassing because I'm not where the credit should go. I usually don't like listing names of people to thank in letters like this because there is no doubt I'll miss someone that played a key role. But I have to mention our Meet Committee of Missy Ramos, Geoff Johansen, and Sunday Tomlin along with our Snack bar and Hospitality coordinators Sylvie and Francois Gaertner. The pre-planning coordination and daily meet operation was in their hands and every member of our team should be thankful for the time and effort they put into the Piranha's and this meet. Their leadership along with ALL of your help is why we will continue to have meets that the kids enjoy and teams will want to come to.
As great as the compliments were from our visitors were, the greatest compliment of all I received came from some of our own long time parents. Being told that the level of volunteering has improved is what I liked hearing the most. It wasn't as hard filling jobs as it has been in the past. Alumni parents and swimmers were once again involved, even more than our meet two weeks ago. Many of you went above and beyond the donation requests for food items. And the number of you that worked well beyond your 10 hours was what I'm the most excited about. Keep it up Piranhas! Hosting two large meets in a three week span is difficult, especially for a small team like ours. You'd never know that based on the quality of our volunteers and the finished product of our two meets.
Thank you Piranha Parents, Swimmers, and Coaches. I said it before and I'll say it again, these are the moments that I know Alicia and I made a great decision coming to this team.
Jeff
