Group Restructuring Some of you have already noticed hints of it, but we’re doing a bit of work to restructure groups to fit the needs of all of our swimmers a bit better. Things you’ll see different this spring: Thunderstorm: 1 group instead of 2 (We’ll be back to 2 groups in the fall/winter sessions) Tsunami: Some of you might remember the group name, but it’s a bit different now. This group will slot between the Hurricane & Cyclone groups. Hurricane will work more as a bridge group, helping transition...

Golf Scramble Committee Last year, we hosted our inaugural Spring Golf Scramble at the Oaks. Our 2024 date is Sunday, May 5th at The Oaks in Cottage Grove. We’d love to make this one bigger and better, starting with the formation of a committee to help plan the event. We’ll have a few meetings over the course of the next few weeks/months. If you’d be interested in helping out, email Erin at [email protected] . Note for High School Boys Historically, our high school boys have begun to trickle back into...

Portillo’s Share Night From 4-8pm this Tuesday night, head to Portillo’s and mention you’re with Storm for a great meal and a Storm kickback. End of Season Planning We’re now under a month until Regionals, so the vast majority of the team just has a few weeks left in the season—it has FLOWN by. If you haven’t already done so, start planning now for a quality end-of-season culminating event. BCSC Champs (2/10)—This is the final Rising Stars meet of the season. Held in Cambridge, this one session event is a...

MACs Share Night From 4-8pm tonight, mention you’re with Storm at MACs for dinner and the team will get a portion of the sales. Winter Wonderland After a very quiet December, we’re about to be knee-deep in it after this weekend. For in-water practice, things are pretty self-explanatory: If there’s a Winter Storm Warning, school is closed. If school is closed, they cancel outside rentals. Things get a little fuzzier with dryland, as that’s an outside group. The pool staff at SP was kind enough to set up a makeup...

The Home Stretch This season is flying by. 3 weeks until the 12U Travel Meet, 5 until Badger Central Champs, 6 until Regionals (where most of our swimmers wrap up), and champs meets shortly thereafter. As things have been going by quickly, we find a lot of parents don’t want to ask what they don’t know much about or don’t know what they don’t know. To that end, if you’ve got some topic you’d like us to cover---let us know. It’s 2 questions, give us an idea. 2024 Registration Now...

Winter Classic Recap We’ve been running a version of the Winter Classic since 2016, only interrupted by terrible snowstorm and global pandemic. This, by far, was the easiest to plan and smoothest to run version of the meet. We swam really well as a team, but there were so many people helping to make it work so that no one person had to do all the heavy lifting. Thank you to all the people who helped in the setup, recruiting, meet labor, cleanup—all the pieces that made our meet run...

Why Are You Doing This to My Child? Yesterday after Tropical Storm practice wrapped up, we had more than one concerned parent say, “Is my child really in the 200 freestyle? They’ve never done that much before.” Short answer: yes. Long answer: it’s extremely important for a swimmer to feel OK getting out of their comfort zone. If they don’t, they’ll never truly be satisfied with how they do. It’s a lesson that translates to life really well. One of my primary goals with our younger swimmers is to encourage...

Winter Juniors Some of the fastest swimmers in the nation are headed to Westmont, IL this week to participate in the USA Swimming Winter Junior Nationals meet. 28 Wisconsin swimmers (about 0.4% of all Wisconsin Swimmers) are joining the meet, including our own Trevor Nicodemus. Trevor will participate in the 100 & 200 yard breaststroke events. Good luck! Single Age Sprint Champs Elsewhere, we’ll be sending a team of 30 to Verona this weekend to participate in the Wisconsin LSC Single Age Championships. We’ve got some seasoned swimmers attending and...

The Busy Season December marks the toughest part of the season for swimmers, parents, and coaches alike. Meets on the next three weekends means no “breather” days, capped off with the massive volunteer commitment of the Winter Classic, our largest event of the year. For our older swimmers, the Christmas break that follows is the time when coaches hope for more practice attendance than usual, too. It’s a slog--take a deep breath, January will be much more calm. Time Standards Last year, I made a lovely piece on time standards,...

Sun Prairie Storm is proud to welcome Michael White as its New Full-Time Head Coach.  “As we enter this next chapter of our team's development, as a board we knew that the depth of experience that Michael brought to the table was needed to help the Storm achieve an even greater level of excellence!” Brad Gunnink, SPS Board President. “The foundation for the Sun Prairie Storm is strong, supported by a large group of swimmers and an excited and passionate base of involved parents.  I’m looking forward to the challenge...