Spring Session Numbers Boy, this spring turned into a *very* pleasant surprise. It looks like our final number will be 187 for this session, SMASHING our previous spring record. Thank you so much for joining us for a spring that’s packed with opportunities and adventures. Parent Practice Tomorrow morning is our second Parent Practice. The event will run from 9:00-9:45A at Sun Prairie EAST. No signup for this one, just come join--bring goggles, a suit, and towel. You don’t need to be a great swimmer or even a very good...

Fish Fry Thank You’s Looking at the pre-event volunteer list for Friday, we were super concerned that we might not be able to properly staff the fish fry. Lo and behold, we had swimmers, we had parents, we had siblings, we had coach’s husbands…you name it, we had it. We filled the roles as they came, and an event that looked ominous during presale ended up with over 400 meals sold. Thanks to each and every one of you that made something, took a to-go order, made an order, filled...

A SUPER Busy Newsletter We’ve got our last championship meet happening right now followed by a break from action, but you’d never know from all the events coming up. There’s a lot of content in this one, so break it into pieces! Capital Campaign In the decade I’ve been here, we’ve only done two fundraisers where we just flat out…ask, for money. The first happened in 2017--we were working on ways to make Fall River’s pool more practice-friendly with lane ropes, acoustic paneling, backstroke flags, and a pace clock. The...

The Importance of the Offseason Erin & I were talking about sermon content for this week and landed on the need for breaks in swimming. There is a LOT of content focused on the benefits of getting out of the pool for a bit. A scientific report here. A great Swimswam piece here. A great mix of expert and opinion here. And several SwimmingWorld articles on a quick search. But the short version of all of these: yes, swimmers will take a step or two back in conditioning. But, that’s...

Meet Hosting A quick personal thing: I was talking to the Head Coach of BAC yesterday. They’re in the middle of hosting meets on two straight weekends, much like we did the last two weeks. The poor guy sounds as though he’s going THROUGH it. Contrast that to our experience…where many, many hands made lighter work. I just wanted to thank all the parents who step in to do so many roles, for so many hours, for the betterment of our swimmers and our club. The way you handle yourselves...

Siblings in Swimming Since 2014, we’ve had no less than 111 sets of siblings on Storm (not counting twins, including the FOUR sets of twins we currently have on the roster). In those 111 sets, there have been some general themes: in 90% of cases, the younger sibling was the better athlete. There have been studies done about this phenomenon, because it’s seen across many sports. The TL;DR version of this: every day that the little sibling is working to keep up with their big brother or sister, they’re getting...

No Practice Tonight With Sun Prairie Schools cancelling all evening activities, we will have no practices at any pool tonight. End of Dryland for Session As we begin to make preparations for the championship season, we’re taking a break from our days at JJ’s Boxing. We’ll have no dryland for the rest of the winter session. Last Day of Practice The last day of practice varies for just about every group: If your swimmer isn’t competing in Regionals or beyond, their last day is this Friday. If your swimmer is...

Shorter Parent Education Session This Week! In lieu of another long, weekly sermon I wanted to share a resource I found to be pretty helpful: the Sports Parent Handbook. It’s very general (not swim specific) but contains some really valuable lessons. Team Pictures on Monday This year’s Team Picture session has snuck right up on us! Gretchen Willis Photography did a wonderful job last year and will be back again this year. Swimmers will be an individual photo and a large group photo. Pictures will take place at Sun Prairie...

Prepping for The End of Season, Pt 2 -- The Chase for State As we get to the final stretch of meets, we see a lot of swimmers and their parents stressing more and more about achieving a state cut. Some because they had a cut last year, and expect to be back again this year. Others because their friends or siblings have achieved the cuts and they’re actively comparing. We’ve touched on this before, but I want to be very clear on the topic: state cuts, especially those for...

Training Trip Details Last week, we broke news about our two training trips for the summer. We’ve now got information out on both trips, as well as a way to sign up. The Mini-Camp, led by Coach White, will be June 20-23 in Indianapolis. We’ll meet up at the high school, jump into some 12 passenger vans, and head to Indianapolis to train long course and make some memories. Learning how to not be afraid of long course will be a big portion of the trip, but it will also...