Swim Families,

First off, I want to express my appreciation and joy I’ve had being back involved with University Club. My family started on the team in 1984 and my mom was the president for three years in the late 80s early 90s. I have found a renewed since of love and vigor for the sport. I have been joking with my coaching friends that I went from being a US national Junior coach to a volunteer summer league coach….which is progress? However, it really is. The ability to get back to the root of the fun of the sport and just to the pure teaching of the sport has been incredible and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. The ability to also have my daughter in the pool that I learned in with me has been an experience I will treasure forever.

One of the things that has brought joy to me is realizing the amount of people on the team that are like me, second generation University club swimmers(or faculty club as we called it). It seems like almost every meet I find more people that are on the team with their children and the general connection and growth of the family is amazing. I have also enjoyed tremendously getting to work with kids of swimmers I used to work with(including when I was a Junior coach for coach Joe and his first race at KRC where someone had to dive in and “save” him because he wouldn’t let go of the lane rope).

With all of this, I wanted to start to bring back some old traditions of ours. A big one would be the Junkfest meet. You may have noticed that we added another meet to the schedule for July 18^th at 6 PM. That meet will be held at the Allan Jones Aquatic Center. Back in 1991, when my mom was president she came up with the idea of an extra meet that would purely be about the fun of the sport. That year we did it with KRC.

Scores were not kept at the meet and ribbons were not given. At the end of every race, you'd be given poker chips. If you got first, you got a blue poker chip. Second got a red one and every other place got a white poker chip. With those chips you could take them to a table where small toys and candy were located and you could buy them with the chips. It is one of my fondest memories.

We did it all the way through my senior year in 1999. Then when I began coaching for the AJCC in 2000, I called Joe Hendee up and asked if we could reinstate the meet as I felt it embodied the fun that summer league is supposed to be about. He and I started the meet back up and competed in it until 2007. This year I have invited West Side YMCA, AJCC and Bennington to join us in putting the Junkfest meet back on.

The meet will be an opportunity for kids to race in the pool that city meet will be competed in and a time for them to just enjoy the sport. We will do regular events but will also have relays that involve all ages. Best of all, there will be parent relays!!!! So you can show off your skills to your swimmers, so start practicing!! We would invite anyone that wants to compete to compete in it. We will have noodles for kids so the ones that have been in learn to swim will be able to leave feeling like they made it a whole lap. I know the pride on my three year old's face when she “swam” a whole lap was priceless and she watched the video probably 1 million times.

That is what we aim to build on the team. A team of fun. A team of tradition. A team of learning. A team that is a family. If we accomplish all of those goals, then we will also be a team that succeeds.

Finally, the meet will be decided by a coaches relay at the end of the meet. Whatever team wins the coaches relay, wins the vaunted Candy trophy to proudly display for years to come.

I’ll be away on vacation for a week, but thank you for the opportunity to come back to the family.

Coach Marshall