Parents and athletes,

First, let me thank and congratulate everyone who participated in our first swim meet this past Friday against Lenoir City. As many of you are aware, this was the first meet that I have missed since joining the program as a coach a decade ago. However, Stetson was born healthy at 6:19 pm and I hope you understand my absence to stay with my wife and newborn son. 

While the final meet result was not one that I love to see, the loss is a great learning opportunity for our program. For anyone who has been on the team before, we are not a program that stresses meet results as much as we do with team and individual progress. With that in mind, Friday was successful in nearly all spectrums of swimming. As a team, everything that I am seeing and hearing leads me to believe that this meet could have honestly gone either way with a few swims being slightly better, a couple of smarter choices for swim finishes, and a dusting off of first meet hiccups. As a program, we honestly out swam the other team, but due to some circumstances outside of my control the final results didn't show this. 

Swimmers, y'all were great and I heard very few concerning issues. Please remember to do your best to listen to any coaches or volunteers. I prefer you to stay in the team area when we are at a meet unless you are cheering for teammates. I loved getting videos of your spirit, but please remember to not be in the block (starting) area until it is your time to swim. There should only be timers, coaches, or swimmers competing in that event behind the blocks. The more crowded this area is, the harder it is to run the meet. Other than these reminders, you all are doing great and learning quickly!

Looking ahead...

We have two meets coming up in the next 10 days! You may notice that practices this week will appear slightly different this week as we work to correct some of the smaller mistakes from last Friday. For those concerned, our younger swimmers have now become comfortable enough in the water for us to now limit the use of fins as a training tool over a full time practice tool. Now that all swimmers have shown higher confidence and comfort in the water, we can focus on translating this to the real swimming needed at a meet!

Our first will be agains Maryville-Alcoa on Friday at UT. I would prefer to de entries for this Wednesday night, so please please sign your swimmer(s) up by then! Looking at early registration, we are low in some age groups and in parent volunteers. Without parent volunteers, we cannot run a meet of quality or, sometimes at all. Remember our theme for this meet is a Toga theme!

Next Tuesday, swimmers will travel to West Side YMCA to compete away. I would like to start entries for this Saturday morning (potentially Friday after the meet since I am not sleeping much any way). Please sign up your swimmer(s) sooner rather than later. We will not have a theme for this away meet.

I know that was a lot, but I wanted to cover all my bases if I could.

All the best,

Coach Joe