Saturday’s Total Team Practice One of the highlights of our season is the Total Team Practice. It allows our younger swimmers to find role models in the older swimmers, it forces our older swimmers to figure out how to break down and teach strokes, and it shows how something as small as an “attaboy” on the pool deck from a teenager to an 8-year-old will change that child’s trajectory. All that to say: we need everyone available for Saturday. We need our oldest swimmers, we need our 11-14 swimmers, we...

Our Busy Spring Continues After 3 events scheduled for last weekend, sane coaches would go a bit lighter in the next few weeks. Well, we’re not those sane coaches. This Saturday, we’ve got two different events happening—an away meet at New Berlin and a Red Cross Blood Drive. Next Saturday, even more festivities! Thank You From the meet itself, which ran clean as a whistle…to the Swim School Challenge, one of the coolest things we’ve done…to the Golf Scramble, which grew in every way from last year….it was a big...

The Opening of the Season The first meet of the season marks the “real” start of things, and that happens Saturday. Just under 100 of our swimmers will going another 260 swimmers from around the Madison area for the Spring Scramble. We had our last preparatory Meet Committee meeting tonight and I’m aware of a number of you going above and beyond in terms of volunteering. THANK YOU. It’s definitely trickier to pull off a meet in the spring when we’ve got 50 less swimmers than usual, but many families...

Busy Weekends Ahead We’ve got a LOT going on over the next couple weekends… Saturday—Open Water Training at the Kalahari, a play day for everyone at the Kalahari to follow, and several of our coaches are heading down to Chicago to further their educations with a Coaching Clinic. Sunday—We’re hosting a dozen swimmers from the Dolphin Swim Academy that are getting ready for their first ever swim meets. I could use 1 or 2 Senior swimmers that would be up for volunteering at SP West, from 1-3pm. Email me if...

A Day Late… Apologies on being late this week. Several major things going on in the swim world as we speak, including packing to head to work with USA Swimming folks in Colorado Springs this weekend. USA Swimming accepted me as one of a dozen coaches from around the US to take part in a Leadership Summit, with the topic being “Leadership Through Change.” I’m hopeful that I’ll pick up a few skills to help the club as we continue to move forward. Practice Changes Saturday, April 20th (all at...

About Last Weekend 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...

Registration Details With 13 more 12&U swimmers signed up for this spring than last spring, it’s a relief to see us building back our youth post-COVID. Two spring sessions ago, we had sixty one 12&U swimmers. This year, 101. With a growing age group program backed by one of the highest retention averages in Wisconsin, we’re excited about building back bigger! Practice Changes Saturday, April 6th (all at SP West) Performance & Senior 7:30-9:00A Typhoon 7:30-8:45A Cyclone & Tsunami 8:50-10:00A Tropical Storm 9:00-10:00A Hurricane/Thunderstorm: OFF Parent Practice 10:00-11:00A Tuesday, April...

Happy Halfway One of our now-graduated swimmers used to yell “Happy Halfway!” at the midpoint of some of our worst sets, to encourage everyone to push through to the end. In that spirit, Happy Halfway to your Spring Break. Registration Open Registration is open for the spring session. We’re very pleased with how the schedule sets up for this spring, and we’re looking forward to some very strong registration numbers. Thanks to everyone who is taking the journey with us! Practice Starts Monday For most groups, practice will get underway...

A quick reminder that Monday will kick off 4 days of stroke clinics at SP West. These are open to Storm swimmers planning to swim this spring, Storm swimmers taking the spring off, swimmers from other club teams, swimmers from rec teams, whoever! Find details on our event page. Here's a recording of yesterday's State of the Team for those that missed it. One last note: all families affected by group changes have been notified. If you think there was an error, reach out to the lead coach for that...

Regional Note We’ll be waiting until uncomfortably late to do entry lists and heat sheets for this weekend to try and make the sessions themselves run a little more quickly. Friday night, a heat sheet won’t be printed in advance because of the positive check-in events. Friday night, we’ll post the heat sheets and entry lists for Saturday. Saturday night, we’ll post the heat sheets and entry lists for Sunday. So when you don’t see documents on the website as early as usual, that’s why. Arrival times and details are...