Welcome

Tomorrow kicks off our 12^th season as a club.  Oddly enough, from a personal standpoint it’s the most relaxed I’ve been to start a season in a long time.  I think we’re putting a great product with organized groups, experienced coaches, and opportunities for everyone to grow in the sport.  For the 200+ joining us this fall: thank you!  I say this often but it bears repeating: A 20 minute drive will get you to almost half a dozen other swim teams in the area.  It means a lot to see folks coming back year after year. While the Madison West side gets so many transfers from one season to the end, one of our strengths is our stability.

By the Numbers

At this moment, we’re at 201 athletes (matching our numbers as of 10/1 last year).

The average age of a Storm swimmer is 10.92, the youngest since 2018.

Our ten Masters swimmers is also the highest since 2018.

Our largest single age categories are 10 and 11, both with 33 athletes.

We have 34 8&U swimmers this fall.

Custom Caps/Swim Gear

We have exactly one week left for the custom order provided by Simply Swimming.  That includes things like parkas, fins, team suits, swim equipment, and limited clothing options.  The caps usually take a few weeks to arrive, so we’ll cross our fingers on them being ready for our home meet.  Purchase equipment here.  Note that if you order something for the curbside pickup, it ends up getting thrown into a box and jammed into my sedan—so it WILL find its way back to Sun Prairie.  But boy, do I dislike being their free UPS driver.  😊

Weekend Schedule

This Saturday, Sun Prairie East girls will be hosting an invitational.  We anticipate them not staffing two pools, so we’ll go outside and enjoy the hot September days.
Senior/Performance/Typhoon 8:00-9:20A at TPC Wisconsin
Tsunami/Cyclone 9:20-10:20A at TPC Wisconsin
Tropical Storm 10:20-11:15A at TPC Wisconsin
Thunderstorm/Hurricane: OFF

Meet Schedule & Signups

Details are up for our first meet of the season, a home meet October 5^th at SP West.  It is open to ALL of our swimmers, with a deadline of 9/22.  Find details and sign up here.  For those of you that haven’t signed up for a Storm meet before, in most cases you’ll pick what session your swimmer is attending and the coaches will select their events.  Some FAQs on the signup process can be found here.

The away meet details will pop up at varying times.  Teams cannot share their meet information and event files until their meet is fully sanctioned, and most teams haven’t done that work yet.  So, we’ll check the host sites regularly and when the data is uploaded we’ll add it to our page.

Time Standards

Time standards for the Wisconsin LSC Championships are still getting hammered out, so there are no new details on those meets yet.  However, we do know of one set of changes.  USA Motivational times (the B/BB/A/AA/AAA/AAAA time standards) change after each Olympic Quad.  They were released last week and they have changed dramatically.  For younger age groups, the standards got slower.  For older age groups, many got faster.  That means several swimmers will be getting some new bag tags for swims that have already happened!  Expect to see those in mailboxes in about 2 weeks.  I’ll go into more details about time standards in a later email.

Mailboxes

Speaking of mailboxes, we’ll be updating family mailboxes in the coming days.  The mailboxes will be where the oldest swimmer in each family calls “home.”  If the oldest swimmer regularly swims at West, that’s where that entire family will find their ribbons, awards, team shirts (in October).  If the oldest swimmer is with me, they’ll be at TPC Wisconsin and then at East.

Blood Drive

On September 28^th from 8:30-1:30P at the Westside Community Building, Storm Aquatics will host a blood drive.  All donors will receive a $15 eGift Card.  Register here to help save a life.

On Deck App

A final note for this long first newsletter.  Don’t use the On Deck app.  It’s buggy, we as a club don’t put much data into it—and it oftentimes will mess up swim meet entries.  Avoid it.  Delete it.  DON’T USE IT.  Optimal: Sit down at your computer.  Nearly as good: a wonderful Samsung tablet.  Also works: stormaquatics.com on your mobile device.