Howdy Sea Lions!

 

      Happy Sunday! Hope everyone has recovered from yesterdays meet at Bear Branch. It was soooooo close to the very end! Our Sea Lions are super!  Remember that we compete in the top NWAL division in our area White 1, so we are going up against the best of the best!

Please read the following concerning RSVP, meet entries and a timeline of how your swimmer gets registered and assigned strokes and relay teams. We had some issues on Saturday that could have been avoided all together and/or handled differently. Every season we learn better ways to do things (watch your email this week concerning check-in procedures!) and we hope this helps everyone to understand why things are done a certain way.

 

RSVPing -- we still have 75 families who have not rsvp'd for the upcoming meet at Eagle Springs. Please, let us know if you will be there. NOTE - only rsvp NO if you plan on being out of town. Baseball games, recitals, soccer schedules can always change or be impacted because of weather. We can always scratch the swimmer from events the day of the meet but swimmers can not be added INTO the meet after we have merged our entries with the other team (which happens on Thursday AM). 

Meet Entries -- If you have certain strokes you would like your child to swim then after you RSVP you will be taken to a Meet Entry screen. From there you can select your swimmers from the drop down menu. Next -- look on the right side of the screen around the middle of the page. You will see in blue letters "add entry". Click on that. Then you can select the events you would like your swimmer to swim. Swimmers can ONLY swim 3 individual events per meet. Click on the save button when you are done. NOTE -- you do not have to select strokes for your kiddos. If you would like the coaches to select their events then just exit out of that screen and the coaches will select events for them. The coaches LOVE doing that! 2nd NOTE -- The coaches have a print out they run that shows them what kids have swam certain events and have "official times". An "official time" is when the swimmer has swum that stroke at a NWAL sanctioned DUAL meet. We cannot use seed times  (what we got at the Red vs Black meet) for entries at Divisionals. If your swimmer does not have an official time in an event then the coach will be contacting you. Why you ask? When we get to Divisionals (the last meet official meet of the season) you can not swim an event if you don't have an official time. No seed times allowed. Also, if there is a certain reason for your swimmer to not swim fly ie: they broke their arm a few months ago and it's not healed properly etc then please tell us. Coaches do have the discretion to change your swimmer to a different event if needed (we have asked the coaches to contact you though if they need to do that). 

 

Now......I'm sure your thinking "My kid is never going to swim fly/back etc so it doesn't matter". Let me tell you a story of a little boy I know named Joshua. His first year he could barely do freestyle in under a minute and had a habit of waving to people down the lane while they cheered. Oh goodness his mom thought! I'm not going to have him suffer through backstroke (not to mention he cried and cried when it was time to swim backstroke) but she continued to enter him in event #42 and he continued to cry and not swim it. By the last meet he decided to try it and then promptly changed his mind when it was time. Oh well, his mom thought. So much for that. The next weekend is Divisionals. Another little boy got sick and Joshua got to swim a relay and then Joshua swims freestyle and gets his best time ever! He's so pumped and excited and his friends all cheered him on and he couldn't wait to backstroke. Guess what. His mom had to tell Joshua that he couldn't swim it because he never got an official time. Cue the tears again. So..........my (experienced) advice would be to keep talking to your kids and pumping them up to try the strokes they don't really like. At least once in the season just to get the time. Just in case....Don't be like Joshua's mom. 

 

RELAYS - Relays are put together by the coaches. Relays are done by the fastest times and fastest times only.  We know kids get sick, we know stuff comes up and sometimes you have to leave. That's all ok. The problem we run into is when kids don't show up at 7:00am like requested and then leave the meet early without telling their coach. Our relay changes have to be in to the computer room by 7:45am. If your swimmer shows up at 8am I can guarantee you he will have been moved out of the relay and probably scratched from the whole meet. If you know your running late but will be there then please text or call someone so they can let the coaches or Elizabeth Green know. I know its hectic getting kids up and out the door that early (I have 3 of them to get ready myself!). If you do not RSVP for the meet then your swimmer will not be picked for a relay. When the computer gal asks you to check your meet entries on Tuesday or Wednesday then please check them then. She can fix things if she knows before Thursday and she's more than happy to do it. Promise! 

 

TIMELINE:

Sunday - Parents RSVP by midnight. Coaches will do their weekly write up. 

Monday - Coaches start running RSVP reports/reports showing kids who don't have "official times"/ stroke requests etc. They start putting together relays. 

Tuesday pm/Wednesday - Elizabeth asks that parents check their swimmers meet entries and let her know if there's a problem

Thursday - Our meet entries are merged with the other teams (doesn't matter who is the home team or away team)

Friday - Reports are run for the meet the next day and Pep Rally time!

Saturday - Swimmers check-in at 7:00am and then make their way over to their age group parent. Coaches are double checking to see if anyone got sick etc. Elizabeth has to collect the check-in sheets by 7:45 and get the changes into the computer (we do this so we can re-seed the meet and adjust for swimmers who have gotten sick. That way we don't have holes on the ready bench (think shorter meets) and in heats. By 7:40 coaches will be finalizing the relays. They have to turn in the adjusted relays by 7:45am. At 8:00am the computer people will start running all the paperwork to get the meet started. Swimmers will be called to the ready bench and the meet can get started by 8:30am. If you need to leave the meet before your swimmers events are finished then please let a coach know so if they need to adjust the end of the meet freestyle relays they can. 

 

​Then we are back to Sunday! I like to say it's organized chaos for 8 weeks of our lives. Hopefully, this will help straighten out some of the confusion for some parents and help you guys to understand why we do things on the timeline that we do. Feel free to send any follow-up questions you may have to Elizabeth Green ([email protected] or you can text her at 713-819-8394). 

If you still feel the need to express grievances after reading all of this, please understand the Sand Creek Sea Lions are run by an all volunteer team and young coaches.  We want your constructive feedback and we really want to do the best for your kids.  Yelling at us hurts our feelings and it really doesn't seem fair.  We want to teach our kids good sportsmanship all around.

Eagle Springs here we come!!!

Arf! Arf! Arf!