Storm Forecast for September 24th, 2025
The First Sermon - Meet Selection
Those of you who have been on the team a while have seen their share of my long form writings on random topics from siblings to the car ride home to intrinsic motivation. Rest assured, they don’t occur every week and not every one of them is applicable to all families. This week: the meet schedule.
To start, a "History of Michael" tale. Young Michael, at the 11-12 age group, had just started swimming summer league in West Virginia. The relay team of himself, Ben, Ryan, and Glenn went an entire summer undefeated and named themselves “The Dream Team.” Fantastic by Marshall County West Virginia standards. We were COCKY. Had we simply crossed state lines to Pennsylvania though, we’d have quickly realized that Marshall County good isn’t a universal standard. It wasn’t until many years later, at my first YMCA Cluster Champs (all of West Virginia and a part of Ohio) that I realized we still had so far to climb. Then at my first Ohio State swim camp, I found myself in the back of the lane. By the time I realized how low I was on the totem, not much could change my ranking. Long story short: trying to dominate our rural summer league kept me from realizing how much more there was to accomplish in the sport.
How does this relate to your child? I believe it was the great Eddie Reese (legend and former Univ of Texas coach) who said when designing a schedule, there should be a few meets you know you’ll win, a few meets you know you’ll lose, and the rest toss-ups. Keeping that in mind, we’ve put meets on the schedule where we know we’ll be one of the stronger teams, meets where we won’t, and meets where we’ll fit in nicely. This balance allows everyone to get ribbons and validation when they need it, as well as a few doses of the humble medicine to refocus. We do factor in drive time, cost, splitting families, and all of that in our decisions as well…but ultimately, we want to keep gently, steadily pushing our swimmers forward and upward. It’s why we keep our state swimmers out of Badger Central meets, and why we have some meets set specifically as time standard meets. A key example: mid-November, for the longest time meant our novice kids going to Oshkosh for the fun but exhausting Champion meet while our BB swimmers would go to Beloit for a prelims/finals meet. That later turned into B- at McFarland and BB+ at Highland Park IL. Now, we’re trying a prelims/finals meet just across the Iowa border for those experienced kids at a brand new pool in Dubuque. These meets are all carefully selected from our full time coaching staff to give *all* of our swimmers the best possible experience to allow both long term growth and validation along the way.
If you have questions about the meet schedule, how it’s designed, or our opinion on what your swimmer should do for meets, please don’t hesitate to ask. And remember: these competitions aren’t mandatory. Do what works best for your family within the structure of the system.
Elite Clothing Order
Elite Embroidery’s fall order closes next week! It’s got a lot of clothes, including a lovely blue hoodie (our official color for the year’s clothing).
Fall Kickoff Details
Other teams have until Friday to send us their entry files for the Storm Aquatics Fall Kickoff. After that, we’ll have detailed timelines and event selections for your swimmer. So hang tight if you’re waiting to see session reports!
Practice Changes & Schedule
If a day isn’t listed below, assume that the schedule is as expected without change. When in doubt, you can always check the Google Calendar. Each group is synced to their own calendar.
Meet Signup & Details
Once a meet signup is open & connected, there’s a quick and easy way to learn more about the meet. Things like what meets are for who, where they are, what time to arrive, what sessions to attend—all that can be found by going to the Events tab of the website and simply clicking on the title of the meet.
JJ’s Dryland Signup
Use promo code: SWIMFAST25
Instructions on signing up here
