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...

A Sermon on WHY – Building a House On Rock Building A House on the Rock I’ve made a habit of some long sermons in the past, this one is probably past preachy, but please note that I’m not passing an offering plate afterwards. Sorry if this gets a bit too on-the-nose. It’s also 800+ words, so if you’re not in the mood—skip forward. I grew up a Methodist boy in rural West Virginia, with close relationships with my Sunday School Teacher (my father, who made us all memorize the...

A Brief One This Week… We’re knee-deep in preparation for the TYR Winter Classic this weekend at Sun Prairie West. Over 500 swimmers are signed up over the two days, but fear not—no crazy timelines. This meet is massive for Storm as a club. As a fundraiser, as a volunteer & official development system, and as a prelims/finals experience for our swimmers—this meet accomplishes a lot for many. I’ll touch more on the prelims/finals aspect in a separate email for those it applies to, tomorrow. For all of you spending...

Holiday Special – No Sermon! Just a quick thank you to this week to the kids (and the supportive parents) who were so kind as to put us coaches on their Christmas lists. It certainly feels like we’re the assistant parents of 200+ kids, so when we get a nice card, a gift, a custom snow globe (!!)—it feels very validating and humbling. Thanks to everyone who thought of us. Meet Odds & Ends Distance Challenge Between our swimmers and those coming in from Watertown, we’re looking at over 70...

Keeping Up With the Jones’ Kids For as long as there has been sport, there’s been a spirit of one-upmanship. Auburn football might practice for 2 hours, so Alabama would practice for 3. Jimmy sees Sammy bench press 200lb, so he tries 215. Some dumb coach does a set of 100x100, and another has to prove he’s better by doing the same awful set plus another 100 for good measure. By looking at what your neighbor is doing with their lawn, you begin to obsess over your own. There is...

Sermon Recap For those of you who stuck through my time standard talk – thank you! I’m trying to keep those lecture circuit posts as separate items, keeping the newsletter more newsy. I had a request for the full set of time standards, see the two links below. A full list of all the USA Motivational Times for the 2024-2028 Quad Search your swimmer’s times here East vs West Meet SP East and SP West Boys Booster Clubs are hosting a Swim Community Youth Night this Friday at SP West...

Bringing Boys Back to the Sport Back a decade ago, we were extremely lucky to have an almost even 50/50 split girls to boys on the team. While Wisconsin Swimming was 65/35 boys, we were split evenly. The seeds of that were planted in 2014, and sprouted with huge team success at all levels with boys from 2019-2023. However, for whatever reason our team has now dipped below the national average with boys swimming. Sun Prairie East, having claimed a State Championship just a few years ago, now faces the...