Parents, 

Here are some important details as we get ready for our season (First practice scheduled for May 9!). I am sorry for the length. Please get through it. 

A. Our pool is not heated. We have solar covers on it now, but it may be cold the first couple of weeks. I will take the temperature of the water and send it via email to everyone every day until it is sufficiently warm. 

A few important things about this. 1) If a kid is too cold in our pool, I will have them sit out. Hypothermia can happen in summer pools. 2) Every kid can tolerate a different level of temperature for different amounts of time. Please do not compare your child to another. 3) If the pool is too cold for everyone (usually below 76), I will cancel practice. 4) A NCAA pool must be maintained between 78-80 for competition. (YMCA pools are usually kept around 84.) If it is colder than this, a team has the right to not swim in the water. Until we install a heater in our pool, this is our reality. 5) We will not run workouts on land if it's too cold. We are a recreational swim team; not a competitive swim club. 

B. I have opened signups for all of our meets. Included with the swimmer signup is the option to volunteer. More on volunteering in next paragraph. I strongly encourage you to attend as many meets as possible. The point of the meet is to have fun and build community. If you are unsure about competing, please talk to me. There is no pressure around our meets, and I am happy to have a conversation with you and your child about the meet experience. 

C. Volunteering. A swim meet runs on volunteers from each team. Please sign up to volunteer at a meet when you sign your child up to swim. Not every family has the ability to volunteer (work, sick, etc.); therefore, if you do have the ability (above the desire), please sign up and help our team out. (We may have a gift for those families that volunteer at every meet). Specific jobs will be assigned at the meet, but if you have a specialty like announcing please let me know. 

D. We will have a few social events sprinkled throughout the season. Please keep an eye out for those emails. Our first one will be Friday May 20th. We will grill up some hot dogs for the swim team family after practice. More details forthcoming, but we will need an RSVP for these events in order to plan food, etc. 

E. I will also be pairing our older swimmers with younger swimmers to create a buddy system for the meets. More on this later. 

F. Finally, the end! almost. We have hired Evelyn Hedrick as one of our coaches this summer. I am happy to have her working with our children. We are still working on finalizing the other coaches. Evelyn doesn't return from college until May 19th; therefore, we will have a couple of weeks without her to start. 

and... that's all folks... for now. 

Thank you for your help and support, 
Mark