Ahoy Pirates!

Coach Dylan here! Welcome back to another great season with the Poinsettia Swim Team! To our new families, welcome! I'm glad to have you all with us for our unconventional season this year. 

With an unconventional season comes change to the way that practices will work. As I spoke to in our meeting this evening, the practices will not be sorted by age group this year. In an effort to minimize the degree to which swimmers from different households are exposed to each other, we will be running practices with groups based on families. This means that all of your children, regardless of age, will be in the same practice. I could not do something as simple as alphabetically splitting the families into practices, as there would be disproportionate numbers of swimmers of different ages and skill levels in each practice, keeping swimmers from their friends and training partners. In an effort to solve this issue, I created two groups by hand to make sure that every swimmer has at least one friend and someone similar in skill in their practice (to my best knowledge). For the brand new swimmers, I assumed that all children coming to the program for the first time are 100% new to the sport of swimming. If I'm wrong in that assumption, please send me an email at [email protected] and we can move them around as necessary. Unfortunately, I know that I was unable to get all swimmers and their entire friend groups into the same practices, but I hope you all can understand that I have done the best I can with our situation. The practice groups are as follows: 

Group 1:

• Owen Byrd
• Palin Byrd
• Rhyan Byrd
• Brooke Carson
• Colton Carson
• Haley Carson
• Reese Carson
• Sawyer Carson
• Savannah Garrison
• Millie Gauthier
• Robert Gauthier
• Jacob Groome
• Alex Lynes
• Ansley Lynes
• Ben Lynes
• Luke McCourry
• Camryn McGeachie
• Harper Morrison
• Stella Morrison
• Josie Nance
• Kadin Nance
• Madison Nance
• Addy Stoeber
• Nora Stoeber
• Will Stoeber
• Anna Williams
• Caroline Williams
• Harley Williams

Group 2:

• Emmy Adams
• Tallulah Crabtree
• Brooklynn Devlin
• Elliot Dotson
• Julianna Dotson
• Stephen Dotson
• Julia Ellis
• Elias Freeman
• Ephraim Freeman
• Kate Harmon
• Owen Harmon
• Sam Harmon
• Coker Holliday
• Emory Jennings
• Kennedy Jennings
• Charleston Lane
• Cassie Loeven
• Carter Mogle
• Toby Needham
• Kendall Rossignol
• Landon Vessell
• Tyler Vessell
• Hannah Watts
• Noah Watts
• Evan Young
• Lauren Young

If you have recently joined the team, and your swimmers are not listed, please contact me in order to have them added to a practice. In creating these groups, I prioritized beginner swimmers. I tried to ensure that all the young ones who need the most stroke work were in one practice, and I used the other groups to balance the numbers of advanced and intermediate swimmers. My hope is that every Pirate has a friend and a training partner in the new groups. And as always comes with a summer at Poinsettia, I hope you all make some new friends along the way!

As for practice times, I will be assigning Group 1 to the earlier practices in both the morning and afternoon. Group 2 will be assigned to the later practices. I will not be rotating the times your swimmers practice at in order to provide some stability for the older swimmers who need to schedule work around their practice schedules. The morning practice times will be 8:00-9:00 AM for Group 1 and 9:00-10:00 AM for Group 2. These times are unchanged from last year. In the afternoon, our practices have been pushed back by a substantial amount in order to minimize the number of people on the pool deck at once and allow the team to have the most lane space possible. Group 1 will have afternoon practice from 7:00-7:45 PM, and Group 2 will practice from 7:45-8:00 PM. In order to accommodate swimmers who may have earlier bed times, our pre-team session (for younger swimmers to learn fundamentals, water safety, and basic stroke technique) will be attached to the end of the morning practices, from 10-10:30 AM. Please note that this is a change from last year's time before the afternoon practices. 

Training-wise, the morning practices are by far the most important for the swimmers to attend. If you can only make one practice each day, please come in the morning. We will be training yardage to build the aerobic base that swimmers need in order to find success in their races during the AM practices. The PM practices are shorter, and will focus more on stroke technique and race pace work. Quarantine has been rough on everyone's fitness (mine included), so building that cardiovascular base back up through the morning practices should be priority #1. Additionally, due to the shortened season, I will not be reducing yardage in the practices for our first meet against Foxcroft on June 11th. This is 100% intentional in order to build the aerobic base, and set the swimmers up for success later in the season. It is likely that your kids will complain about being tired before the Foxcroft meet. Please do not allow them to skip practice to "save up" for the meet! Trust in the training, and know that the speed will come as the season progresses, but expect to be a little beat up and sore for the first virtual competition.

One final note regarding private lessons with me for this season. Because of the financial stress on me from the coronavirus situation (I "graduated" from college last week), I will have to go up by a little bit on my rates for private lessons. For those who are new, my private lessons are hour-long sessions where I can be in the water with your swimmers, focused on their specific goals and technique development. These lessons are not additional workouts and are not meant to be stressful for the kids. I can teach anything in these lessons, from basic water safety to advanced swimming technique. I am doing everything I can to ensure that I still give all Poinsettia-registered swimmers the best deal possible, as my intention with providing privates is more about making our program as successful as it can be instead of making money. For the 2020 season, I will charge $15 for one hour with one Poinsettia swimmer, and $20 for one hour with Poinsettia-registered siblings. I believe that these are fair prices because coaches with similar qualifications to myself typically charge anywhere between $15 and $25 for half an hour. For lessons with children who are not on the team, the rates will be doubled to $30 for one hour, and $40 for one hour with siblings. I am sorry if this causes any inconvenience to you all, and thank you for understanding.

This season is definitely abnormal compared to the 12 others I have spent with our program, but I believe we're going to have a great time! Stay safe out there, and let's have a good time this summer!

-Coach Dylan