Good evening,

First off, I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you to all of our amazing parent volunteers that worked at our meet this past Thursday. We couldn’t have done it without you! In my 3 years on our parent board, this was the smoothest first home meet we’ve had. We may not have come out on top score wise, but we swam against a super friendly team and learned lots. We are looking forward to our 1^st away meet on Thursday at Windermere (more information to come.)

Here are a few reminders for this week:

1.Please make sure you declare your swimmer as “attending” or “not attending” if you haven’t already.

2.If you plan to swim for our county meet at Georgia Tech, please let me know by the end of this week. This doesn’t commit you 100%, but it places you on our preliminary roster. I will contact you later with more details and confirm your swimmers participation. This meet is so much fun and such a neat experience for all swimmers.

3.PRACTICE REMINDER: Please make sure you refrain from interrupting a coach’s practice. If you have something you need to discuss with your swimmer’s age group coach, please wait until the practice concludes. We have a short amount of time with these swimmers each day, and our coaches need to be able to do their jobs and complete their practices without interruptions. Also, if you do not have a swimmer in Sparks or 6 and under, please do not sit on the block side of the pool past the shallow end. If you need immediate attention during practice, please find a board member. There is always at least one board member at all practices.

After our home meet, we have some things we wanted to pass along that coaches and other parents shared with us that we think would be beneficial for all to know.

1.Can you please talk with your swimmers about behavior in the bullpen? As you know, meets are crazy, and kids are in and out of bullpens for their events all the time. We can’t have any hitting, kicking, biting(!). Please remind your swimmers of all ages to keep their hands to themselves.

2.Please remind your swimmer that if they leave their bullpen to let one of the bullpen parents know where they are going. We had to hunt for several swimmers last week. Please remind them that if they don’t stay in their bullpen, it could affect multiple swimmers if they miss a relay. We never want to scratch a relay if we can help it.

3.Lastly, we heard lots of colorful language at the meet on Thursday from kids, even some young ones. Please remind your swimmer, young and old, that we need to have a positive environment for the little swimmers free from inappropriate language.

As I stated above, we have an away meet at Windermere on Thursday afternoon. I will send more information about that meet on Wednesday, but for now, I wanted to go ahead and send out our report time so you can plan ahead. Please arrive for our meet at 4:15, no later than 4:30. Our warm-up time will be at 4:45 sharp.

As always, please let us know if you have any questions!

Go LIGHTNING!

Sincerely,

Heather Otwell