 Hope all of you are enjoying your break! Don't get too sunburn! Keep drinking  SPRING BLAST MEET WRAP UP: As a group we had an awesome meet with a lot of you all coming back to finals, and with a lot of best times. We had 170 splashes  and 121 best times posted. We had 31 times that were within .75 of best times and 18 swims that were off by over 1 second. one of our teammates (ALEX HUNTER) swim her first 500 free and had an awesome swim. The following swimmers made it back to finals;
 100 BACK: MATT J., ABBY M., LAUREN Y., 200 FREE: KATIE S., TYLER B., CHRISTINA G., 200IM: LAUREN Y., REBECCA W., RACHEL A., ABBY M., CHRISTIE D., RUTHANN F., MATT J., JAMES C., TYLER B., 50 BREAST LUKE G., TYLER B., 50 FREE: MILES O., RUTHANN F., GILLIAN C., SARAH G., CHRISTINA G., 50 FLY: MILES O.(ALSO HAD A SWIM OFF AT THE START OF MEET), JAMES C., MATT J., RUTHANN F., REBECCA W., RACHEL A., CHRISTINA G.,
 100 FLY: EMILY D., JAMES C., MILES O., MATT J., 100 IM: CHRISTIE D., STEPHANIE W., REBECCA W., JAMES C., MILES O., 50 BACK: ABBY M., MATT J., JAMES C., SAM O., 100 FREE: CHRISTINA G., ABBY M., MATT J., TYLER B., 100 BREAST: SHANNON C., REBECCA W., RYAN M., TYLER B., 500 FREE: CHRISTINA G., KATIE S., We learned some valuable lessons swimming in these finals. The ability to swim and swim well when tired, and the ability to pace yourself through a long meet. We had 53 swims during finals (36 kids) and 33 best times posted in the evening, a tremendous achievement. I am very proud of all you swimmers who not only showed up at the meet, but also showed up to RACE! Now that we have finished our championship season, we can look back and take great pride in the way our little village performed and how all of you rose to the challenge  . we had a tremendous number of personal best during the last few weeks. We had the most swimmers from this group in finals at the two meets than ever before. However we also had a few swims that left some of you and myself a little frustrated, as a few of you just swam and forgot to race. There is a BIG difference between the two especially during championship season.It's now time to look back and reflect on OUR success, disappointments, and where we can improve with our focus and preparation during this time next year and through the following years. I have notice that a few perform better under pressure better than others, and the ones that do I believe have learned several things and the first and most important is WHY NOT  ? They want to race and they want to beat people and they don't care who it is.This sport is always going to involve bad swims, but what several of you have also learned is how to bounce back from one and not allow it to dictate the rest of the meet. Accept it, learn from it, and move on to the next event with confidence.  Being nervous was a comment that I heard a lot during the meets. Some of you handled this better than others. Being nervous is a natural state that should be embraced. It's all in how you deal with it. Do you waste a lot of energy with it, that you are mentally exhausted by the time you race, or do you handle it so that you can place the right focus at the right time. A lot of this has to do with how you prepared and practice from DAY 1.  practice is different from just coming to practice. During races you don't have time to think about little thing, it has to be your body reacting and doing the little things right. If you haven't taught your body to do this in practice than it's hard to expect it to react correctly in meets. If you haven't practiced racing during the middle part of your swims (A1-A5) you won't be able to do it in races. Will you have a great swim or two during a meet, YES, but don't let that fool you, you may have just been lucky. To be CONSISTENT IN YOUR RACING, you need to BE CONSISTENT WITH COMING TO PRACTICE AND DOING THINGS RIGHT ALL THE TIME.A lot of swimmers will wait until something they like comes up in practice than they start to focus on what they are doing. They blow off the rest of the practice. They don't push they get lazy and the results are bad habits and lost OPPORTUNITIES TO DO THINGS THE RIGHT WAY! When it comes to meets and they have a bad swim, it's not a surprise to myself as they blow off drills and they don't focus. The body breaks down, and it's lost, just searching for what to do and we haven't taught it so  it becomes like looking at a map without learning to read.THREE AREAS FOR OUR FOCUS GOING INTO SUMMER FLAGS AND WALLS: This area is very underrated, and I know I have said this before, but this area is critical for turns and finishes. I really believe a lot of races are lost in this area. TURNS AND FINISHES: We have a tendency to take our turns for granted during practice. You know what I mean hear comes the wall turn swim to next wall. Our turns and finishes are very average. During finals two of our swimmers had outstanding turns and finishes (Sarah Graham 50 Free and Christina Gonzales 50 Fly) and it really showed in the results. Use best turns and finishes in practices, BECOME GOOD, which will make you BETTER, so that you become GREAT, and than you will be an OUTSTANDING swimmer. WILLING TO CHANGE: Be willing to change and try something new to get better. I have already made a couple of changes in practice (have you noticed), in order to help all of you. EMBRACE THIS THOUGHT: WE WILL BECOME BETTER SWIMMERS AND FASTER SWIMMERS BY PRACTICING PERFECTLY! I improve = you improve = group improves = team improves |
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