This Saturday was the most exciting meet yet! The close relays kept me on my toes from the start to the end. I am so proud of everyone for swimming their fastest, dropping time, reaching goals, showing team spirit and being good sports against the Waves. 

A couple highlights stuck out to me from this meet: sportsmanship, competition and positivity. I love when the kids win and drop time, but nothing makes me happier than seeing good sportsmanship. For instance, during 7/8s warmup, we were all quickly running through our strokes and getting ready for our races. Despite the rush of warming up, I saw Warren Lee wait in the pool until his teammates finished. Way to go. Furthermore, like I mentioned, there were both close races between teams, but also between teammates. It was so exciting to watch Max McCall and Jacob Conway race each other the entire 100 IM and tie exactly! ARF ARF! Thirdly, the coaches tent was constantly buzzing with excited swimmers telling us about their new accomplishments! Whether it was a best time, a qualification or a great race, the kids were getting extra excited about swimming and that excitement was contagious! 

I see the team as a whole developing into great swimmers and friends and it makes me eager to see what Summer Champs will bring! Summer Champs is a bigger meet than usual but the atmosphere brings out the best in the Sea Lions. Just remind your kids that it doesn’t matter which pool they swim in nor which team is beside them, the goal is the same: swim as fast as you can! If we can do that, I think the Sea Lions have a good chance of winning the meet!

It is obvious in practice that all the swimmers are excited about the pleasant weather and the approaching summertime. This week especially, though, we need to remember to be respectful of our coaches and teammates. Everyone is there to swim and improve and to do that everyone needs to be listening and learning. The coaches love to incorporate fun things into practice but when it’s time to learn, we need everyone to settle down and focus. 

Finally, all of the Lost and Found items have been cleaned and will be laid out on a table inside or outside the pool area everyday this week. Please come by and recover any lost items. The container is overflowing already so if any of the current lost and found items go unclaimed all week, they will be donated in order to make room for the everyday collection of odds and ends. 

Coach Sarah

 

This weekend was another great example of Sea Lion spirit! We had a great team win against the waves that was the combination of many great individual performances. Our relays were much improved over the past meets as a result of very productive practices in the pool. The kid’s starts are also getting better. Also, I noticed that many of the kiddos are now only holding onto the lane rope only once or twice, or not at all! In just the few weeks we’ve had (when it’s not raining) such improvement and I’m so proud to coach such a great group of determined swimmers.  I look forward to a bright week of sun shine so we can start focusing on floating better and being more efficient during back stroke. Congratulations on the win Sea Lions and keep up the good work! Summer Champs is next week and while the atmosphere in the high school pool will be a little different than they’re used to, I remember always dropping tons of time at this meet, and hopefully they will too! Make sure they come to practice as much as possible this week, we have some super fun things planned as the school year comes to an end!

Coach Jane and Coach Drew

 

Home “pool” advantage must exist because the 7/8s were on FIRE this weekend. We had some tough competition but all of the swimmers brought their A game. Many swimmers had massive time drops and the number of DQs has gone down drastically. This past week we worked on fast finishes and I watched so many of the swimmers successful incorporate that into their races. This week we are working on breathing on our strokes and our stroke count on backstroke. Let’s keep on getting better!

ARF

Coach Sarah

 

First of all, to all the 9/10 swimmers: GREAT JOB THIS WEEKEND. I could not be prouder of the effort that everybody gave to get their summer champs or invitational meet cuts. We had swimmers dropping 10 seconds total in their races and even a swimmer drop 10 seconds in a 25! I let the kids know if they were close to getting a summer champs time and they gave it their best effort to go out there and get the times. We have over 25 new summer champs cuts after yesterday so fantastic job. As always we showed great sportsmanship and it paid off. I hope the kids got some good rest today and are ready to get after it this week in practice to get ready for Sunday! Can't wait to see what we can do. Once again great job and a big thank you to all the support and help from the parents. 

Coach Andrew

 

Our swimmers had an awesome meet this weekend. Not only did we score a lot of points for Sand Creek to help win the meet, but all of the swimmers brought a new level of spirit and sportsmanship to the pool Saturday. For every event there were always several Sea Lions on the side of the pool cheering for their teammates. A lot of our swimmers even encouraged some of the Waves swimmers to do their best. It's small things like that which promote our Sea Lion reputation as a team with great sportsmanship. Most importantly however, so many swimmers improved this week, and several swimmers swam in events even when I had given them permission not to. I love when Sea Lions show that kind of spirit. Let's keep it up until the end of the season y'all!

Coach Aaron

 

I'm super excited after our amazing victory over the Waves. That being said, we do need to start being a little more aggressive in our races (cough 15-18's cough), and I hope to see some great racing at Summer Champs! We are seeing alot of big time drops and All Star/Ponderosa qualifying times, which is always good news. This week at practice, we are going to work on the smaller racing techniques (i.e. underwaters and finishes) that are often overlooked with the older swimmers in order to help shave off that little extra needed for the Ponderosa/All Stars times. All around great job this past week! Swim Fast!

Coach Brent