We had a wonderful weekend, with our first ever parent practice on Saturday.  As a fun new experiment, it was a huge hit.  Parents were good sports, our swimmers were excellent coaches, and everyone had a great time.

Sunday, we had our annual banquet with recognition for many of our athletes and their accomplishments.

Thanks to everyone who came to the events over the weekend--it's really wonderful to see buy in from our families, both new and experienced.

Below is a quick recap of the awards....

Short Course Female Swimmer of the Year Sophie Diers	Short Course Male Swimmer of the Year Trevor Nicodemus
Long Course Female Swimmer of the Year Hailey Diers	Long Course Male Swimmer of the Year Trevor Nicodemus
Female Newcomer of the Year Gabbie Tan	Male Newcomer of the Year Liam Gebhard
Family Award The Harms Family	Volunteer of the Year Todd Loess
Official of the Year Michelle Perko

 

Thunderstorm 1 Female Most Improved - Vivian Taylor Male Most Improved - Mason Lehmann Coaches’ Award - Anya Quamme Thunderstorm 2 Female Most Improved - Eriana Rusch Male Most Improved - Isaiah MacDonald Coaches’ Award - Jensyn Storm	Tropical Storm Female Most Improved - Tenley Wiley Male Most Improved - Atharva Karpe Coaches’ Award - Stella Schiro
Cyclone Female Most Improved - Mazie Nault Male Most Improved - Lucas Lechner Coaches Award - Yeva Maretski	Hurricane Female Most Improved - Meghan Kendrick Male Most Improved - Dheeraj Manchikanti Coaches’ Award - Megan Spredemann
Typhoon Female Most Improved - Maya Prathap Male Most Improved - Max Larson Coaches’ Award - Ainsley Ruark	Senior Female Most Improved -  Alivea Vande Hei, B. Gearing Male Most Improved - Charlie Reeder Coaches’ Award - Michaela Loess, Grace Johnson Coaches’ Award -  Owen Acker

 

 

With group changes and end-of-season awards added, we’ve taken the time to update swimmer folders.  This is where you can find your swimmer’s ribbons after meets, the end of season awards, etc.  Folders are sorted by family and align with the oldest swimmer.  Quite simply: if someone in your family is in Senior or Performance, then the family folder is at West.  Those folders are found on the pool deck by the window-side pace clock.  All other groups can find their folders at East, on the lost & found table between the locker room doors.   

Even with last week’s newsletter update, the social media blast, and the last minute email reminder…there were quite a few folks unaware of 1) yesterday’s pictures and 2) today’s practice changes.

PLEASE consider syncing your calendar with the group-specific calendars we’ve provided.  It’s a new feature and one we think we save everyone quite a bit of time / frustration.  The links below will take you to the group links.  At the very bottom of this email I’m pasting directions another team used for how best to put the calendar into your phone.

Thunderstorm	Tropical Storm
Cyclone	Hurricane
Tsunami	Typhoon
Senior	Performance
Masters	Meets/Events

 

With events now coming up quickly, it’s time to start checking deadlines and signing up your swimmer for events.

Date	Event/Details	Deadline / Status
4/27	Kalahari Open Water Training For: Anyone under 8:30 in their 500 freestyle	4/25 OPEN
4/27	Kalahari Play Day For: EVERYONE	4/25 OPEN
4/30	Panera Bread Share Night For: EVERYONE Order from 4-8pm and take the flyer with you for Storm to earn a percent back on each purchase
5/4	Storm Spring Scramble For: EVERYONE First home meet of the season, open to any and all Storm swimmers	4/21 OPEN
5/5	Storm Golf Scramble For: Anyone who wants to have some fun golfing	4/24 OPEN
5/11	American Red Cross Blood Drive For: Any adult willing to help save a life	OPEN
5/11	NBSC A-May-Zing Meet For: Swimmers looking for one last meet for the spring session	4/23 OPEN
5/18	Burn Boot Camp Storm Trial For: Anyone interested in trying out a new workout!	5/11 OPEN
5/31	BAC Jack Pettinger Meet For: Anyone with at least one state cut	5/11 OPEN
6/1	STAR Spring Splash Meet For: Anyone without a state cut	5/18 OPEN

 

Saturday, April 13^th (all at SP West)
Performance & Senior 7:30-9:00A
Typhoon 7:40-9:00A
Thunderstorm/Tropical Storm 9:00-9:50A
Cyclone & Tsunami 9:50-11:00A
Hurricane: OFF

 

Finally, we’ve made a separate calendar for meets & events, it can be found here on the schedule/results page.

On Saturday April 27^th we’ll be doing two big events.  First, an intro to Open Water Swimming at the Kalahari Water Park Lazy River.  This year, we’re expanding our field a bit to allow for some newer swimmers to get the experience.  Any swimmer, Tropical Storm or above, that’s under 8:30 in their 500 freestyle pay participate in the open water training.  We’ll swim with the current of the river and against it—learning turns, pacing, sighting, and pack swimming.  It’s a perfect place to work on endurance without the worries of fish or seaweed.  There’s no charge to the event.  Swimmers need to 1) sign up on our event page and 2) be ready to walk into the water park area of Kalahari around 7:50A. The event will run until 9:30, at which point we’ll pop back out of the water park and collect ourselves for Part 2….

Swimmers, siblings, family, friends, foes, and competitors are all invited to play at the Kalahari at the conclusion of the OW Training.  This event runs from 10:00 on the 27^th until swimmers conk out or the park closes.  Tickets are sold in advance here, and include the group rate, a slice of pizza, and a drink.  We’ll have a cabana for families to store things as well.  Tickets can be purchased here (it’s $60).

We’re excited to see spots filling for our 2^nd annual Spring Scramble golf event, held May 5^th at The Oaks.  This event is quickly becoming a great fundraiser for the team and requires just a bit of work from each family.  There are three ways in which to help, any of which are extremely valuable:

1. Come golf!  Find some friends or join someone else’s foursome and golf 18 holes with us.
2. If you don’t want to golf, find us just one sponsor.  Sponsors range from $50 hole sponsors all the way up to some big ones with lots of perks.  If you find a sponsor for us and get referred, you’ll get 10% of any golf sponsor credited to your account.
3. If none of those work, consider donating an item that might work in a raffle basket.  Gift certificates, sports tickets, any new cars you have lying around, whatever.  Reach out to Erin if you have something for a basket.

During our State of the Team, we touched a bit on expanding our Rising Stars offerings to give more of the cheap, fast, fun meets that our newer and emerging swimmers have come to enjoy.  It’s one of the big reasons we have a swimmer retention rate so much higher than the state & national averages.  Anyway, we’ve got some fantastic meet options being offered this summer:

• 3 Rising Stars Meets on the books
  • A multi-team one session meet in June in Columbus (outdoors!)
  • Two July dual meets, one outdoors in New Glarus and one indoors in Jefferson
• High Level Long Course Meets
• Short Course Yards meets throughout the summer
• Multiple Open Water opportunities, including the potential to return to Devil’s Lake for the Big Swell Swim
• A Team Travel meet for all 11&O swimmers to Noblesville, Indiana June 28-30

We’re really excited about being able to provide opportunities for all swimmers.  If there’s something we’re missing that you’d like to see, let us know!

 

These details are borrowed from Delta Aquatics---I’m pretty sure they’ll work!

 

We’ve got an easy way for you to SUBSCRIBE to our practice calendars on your phone or tablet! 

 

Why do you want to SUBSCRIBE to a calendar and not just import the events to your calendar?
When you import an .ics file, you get a snapshot of the events in the calendar at the time of import. Your calendar doesn't refresh the imported events automatically -- even if the calendar's owner makes an update. This is a good way to add events to your existing calendar that aren't going to change.

 

Subscribing to an iCal online calendar connects it to your calendar. Whenever the owner of an iCal you've subscribed to makes changes to the events, your calendar gets updated. This is a good way to track events that may change frequently, like practice and meet schedules.

 

iOS (older iPhone, iPad, iPod, etc.)

1. On your device, press and HOLD the iCal link for your group. DO NOT JUST CLICK TO OPEN IT!
2. Copy the link
3. Go to Settings → Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and click on add a new account under the mail section
4. Click “Other,” and choose “Add Subscribed Calendar”
5. Paste the link into the server and click “Next”
6. Once verified, the device may ask for further information (like "Username" and "Password"), leave these blank.
7. Click “Save”
8. Repeat for any/all calendars you need

 

iOS 11+ (newer iPad, iPhone, etc.) - Need to use Safari!

1. On your device, press and HOLD the iCal link for your group. DO NOT JUST CLICK TO OPEN IT!
2. Copy the link
3. Open the "Settings" app on the device.
4. Scroll to "Accounts & Passwords".
5. Under "Accounts", tap "Add Account".
6. Choose "Other" from the options and select "Add Subscribed Calendar".
7. Paste the calendar URL being subscribed to and then click "Next".
8. Once verified, the device will ask for further information (like "Username" and "Password"), leave these blank.
9. Toggle the "Turn off SSL" option, you can toggle it on.
10. Hit "Next" again and then "Save".
11. Now in the "Calendar" app the subscribed calendar should appear.
    
     

Android (assuming you have a google account attached)

1. On your device, press the link for your group. 
2. Click the “+ Google Calendar” link in the lower right hand corner of the calendar
3. Click “Yes, Add this Calendar”
4. Repeat for any/all calendars you need

 

From a computer to subscribe into Google Calendar (assuming you have a google account)

1. On your computer, right click on the iCal link for your group and choose copy link address
2. Go to calendar.google.com and login
3. On the left side click on the + to open the dropdown
4. Choose "From URL"
5. Paste the URL of the calendar, which you want to subscribe to, in the space provided
6. Click on "Add Calendar" and wait for Google to import your events. The calendar will appear in the "Other calendars" section of the calendar list to the left.

 

Outlook 2010 (and above)
NOTE: Outlook 2010 and above for Mac does not support CalDav, and so cannot subscribe to remote iCal feeds. The directions below pertain to using Outlook on Windows

1. Open up Outlook.
2. Switch to Calendar "mode".
3. Click the "Home" tab on the Ribbon.
4. Under "Manage Calendars", click on "Open Calendar \ From Internet".
5. Enter the iCal feed URL into the "New Internet Calendar" field, then click "OK".
6. Click "Yes" when prompted to verify that you want to subscribe to the calendar.

If the calendar(s) are not showing up 

After you have subscribed to a calendar in Google Calendar it may not show up on your devices. This happens because Google turns sync off by default for new calendars, particularly shared ones. But there's a fix:

1. Log in to Google Calendar in a web browser by going to calendar.google.com.
2. Change the URL on the browser address line to: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/syncselect
3. Tick the calendar you want to be synced
4. Save.

It can take a few minutes before the calendars appear. You may also need to close and re-open the calendar app.

This is the best way to keep up with the practice and meet schedules. When changes need to be made to something that has been posted already, they will happen on the calendar first and when you are subscribed it will update automatically on your calendar. When a change is made to something that has been posted already, it will also be emailed out to families.