Why These Last Few Meets Matter The short course season is a long one…nearly half a year for our littles (that’s 4% of the time a 6&U swimmer has been alive!), considerably longer for a high school girl. It can be a slog in late January & February, especially when we have no desire to go outside and we’re getting no Vitamin D. We ALL feel it this time of year. It makes it really easy to say, “nah, we’ll skip the last few meets and take a break.” But...

This Saturday Planning for Saturday feels a lot to me like picking out my cabin for a trans-Atlantic voyage on the Titanic. I feel very certain that this isn’t going to end well, but I’ve gotta plan for the best. We’ll start our hypothetical morning with practice for Typhoon, Senior, and Performance at SP East from 8:30-10:00A. As they wrap up, they’ll be greeted with donuts, juice, and milk to power them through their volunteering efforts with the Rising Stars Meet. The Rising Stars Meet, with arrival times at 10:00,...

A Throwback Meet When we started hosting the Winter Classic, we went with a prelims/finals format so that swimmers who didn’t typically get to experience the morning and evening swims, got that chance. The meet was usually comprised of a lot of smaller teams, but no massive squads. This created a very different environment than if 200+ BAC swimmers were attending. There was a *vibe*. Add to that the hard work of our parents, and we quickly created a very unique experience that teams would travel far and wide to...

The Winter Classic is Here This year marks our 10th Winter Classic. Over the years, we’ve had 33 different teams take part in the meet, bringing over 2,600 different athletes to Sun Prairie. Despite snowstorms, COVID years, bad air quality years, all sorts of “fun wrinkles” teams continue to come back because we put together a fantastic event. That’s 100% due to the care of our parent volunteers. Thanks so much for all you’ve done over the years to make this meet a significant part of swimmers’ lives in Dane...

Happy New Year! It’s wild to think the majority of our swimmers only have 7 more weeks of the season. It’s absolutely flying by. A pair of things I wanted to show gratitude about this week: More kids than I can ever recall brought me gifts over this break. The thoughtful cards, the gift cards, the sweet treats---there was so much. Thank you all for considering us gift-worthy this season. Coaching youth sports is a constant pendulum swing from “it’s just swimming, it shouldn’t be that serious” to “Sorry mom...

Two Updates On the Top Dryland is off through the end of 2025, we’ll resume in 2026 ‘Tis the season for missed meet deadlines. Three deadlines occur before Christmas. Distance Challenge (12/20), Storm Winter Classic (12/23), and Waukesha (12/23). PLEASE commit your athlete with a yes or no before you get bogged down with holiday activities and forget! A Pair of Contests It’s time to announce a pair of contests for our swimmers! Regional Cap Design – Back again this year, we’re looking for creative, artistic minds to design the...

Fall River Reminder A quick note that while we might need to utilize Fall River a bit over the break, we won’t be doing the Tuesday nights at the River as planned until at least January. We’re back to the early winter schedule for Tropical, Cyclone, and Hurricane. Sun Prairie Boys High School Swim Youth Night The budding yet fun rivalry that is Sun Prairie East vs Sun Prairie West continues this Friday at Sun Prairie East. This coincides with Youth Night, an event co-hosted by the two schools. There...

Buckle Up The content kept piling up for this one, so relax and take this one in over a hot chocolate tomorrow as you debate why we continue to exist in a state this cold and unforgiving. This one has a lot (1200+ words--yikes), but it’s all pretty important. Last Monday’s Parent Meeting Thanks to those that dropped in for our Q&A session on Monday. The crowd was small, but the conversation was great. Being able to gather around a table and discuss all sorts of points in a small...

Meet Fueling It seems like the most regular educational piece we’re needing to deliver is that on nutrition for athletes. Pre-meet, post-meet, between events…all of it. Not to be one of those “back in my day,” folks because frankly—I grew up in Appalachia and ate way too many Little Debbie snacks and drank too much Mountain Dew as a child—but, I knew when I was looking at a nutrition facts label, what I was looking at. Health classes hammered that into our heads. I had a few swimmers read the...

The Culture We Set One of the things that separates us from the very largest teams in the LSC is a feeling of community. While we come from several different zip codes and represent many high schools, our kids aren’t strangers. Nor should our parents be. Before COVID, the vast majority of our parents would plan their away meet hotels together, would carpool together, would sit together at meets. Even if they didn’t recognize a parent, they’d recognize the Storm name and they’d scoot over a bit to make bleacher...