Hi Seals Families!

The coaches and I are looking forward to our Orange Hawaiian-themed home meet against Belterra on Saturday! Our swimmers have been working hard on their butterfly and continuing to build skills in freestyle and backstroke. Here are some important notes leading up to our meet. For the bulk of information for the meet, please see Joel’s email from yesterday morning. 

Warm-up: Warm-up is an important opportunity for swimmers to get ready for the swim meet, shake out nerves, and receive some last minute feedback and coaching. Please bring your swimmers on time to warm-up. At this meet, our 8 and under swimmers will warm-up first, with our 9+ swimmers getting in right afterward (less than 10 minutes later). Warm-up also helps us know if any of our relay swimmers are missing from the meet. Warm-up for Saturday’s meet is at 7 AM!

If your swimmer is sick: Or has to miss the meet for any reason after signing up, please email me, the head parent, and the meet director asap. This will help us alert the tent parent that your swimmer will not be checking in, and will help us re-establish relays if your swimmer is entered. Thank you so much in advance

Entries for this meet: This week's focus is primarily butterfly, which makes it a great weekend to try butterfly at the meet if your swimmer feels ready! For new Seals, I would recommend holding off on entering butterfly unless your swimmer has previous experience swimming fly, as they will only have 2-3 days of practice with the stroke. 

We will introduce breaststroke at next week's practice and will circulate all four strokes (and IM) at practices from there. If your swimmer is new to Seals, please do not sign them up for breaststroke at this meet, unless they have breaststroke experience with another team or swim program. 

Freestyle and backstroke are a great choice for any swimmer to enter, especially if they are not feeling confident about trying butterfly or breaststroke yet. Many of our 6 and unders will not try these strokes until much later in the season. Please reach out to me with any questions! 

100 IM: The 100 IM ("Individual Medley") is a race option for swimmers aged 9 and older. The IM consists of one 25 of each stroke in this order: Butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle. Since IM has every stroke in it, we practice IM at every practice! We will work on turns and specific training for IM later in the season.

Coaches in the water with younger swimmers: At this meet, coaches will not be in the water with younger swimmers while they race. Swimmers are becoming more independent in the water with each practice they swim, and will continue to build confidence as the season goes on. We will be there to encourage and coach your swimmers leading up to the start of their races, and to cheer them on as they swim! We will always be ready to get in the water for any matters related to safety. For swimmers who are still learning their backstroke stroke count, the timers will be ready to stop heads at the end of the swimmers' races. 

GO SEALS! For all questions, comments, and concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out. 

Thank you,

Coach Ivy