Hi Dolphins,

Our first swim meet is Tuesday - we are hosting Toppenish! First meet of the season can be a bit crazy and we're really going to mix it up for you this year. The Toppenish team and some of our swimmers, parents and coaches still be in school this week, making Tuesday a school night swim meet for lots of people. We have talked with the Toppenish team and are going to shorten this meet and flip the event order so young swimmers can get home to bed early and everyone can get out at a reasonable school night time. This is the only meet we expect to run this way and we're hoping to have swimming wrapped up by 9:30.

Here goes: Regular meet event order is Medley Relay, butterfly, breaststroke, backstroke, freestyle, free relay, IM. This is how events are shown in the computer sign up and we won't change how things appear in the computer - way too much hassle and computer confusion.

What we're actually going to do:

We are skipping free relay and IMs completely - not swimming them Tuesday. We will start with Freestyle and go backwards through remaining events. Event order will be freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, medley relay. We will swim the regular youngest-to-oldest order within events - 8U girls then boys, then 9/10, then 11/12 etc. We will run full number of heats of individual strokes so everyone can swim the 4 main strokes. We will run one combined heat per age group for the medley relay. Each team will get two girls teams and two boys teams in each age group - 9/10, 11/12, 13/14 & 15/18. This will be the last event of the evening.

Swimmers can leave when their events are done (check with coaches about relay entries before you go), so this plan will get the younger swimmers out early. We'll call events carefully and coaches will explain and remind swimmers of upcoming events. Please explain the plan to your swimmers and help encourage them to pay extra attention to announcements and event order.

Swimmer sign up and volunteer sign up are open in swimtopia for this meet. If you are planning to attend the meet on Tuesday, please sign up by Monday evening. Events are shown in the normal order, not in this backwards order. Don't worry about it, just sign up for the events they want to swim with the relay being last in the evening. If you're not sure what your new/young swimmers should swim, please talk with your coaches.

Reminder on signing up swimmers: login to your swimtopia account. New swimmers, you should have received an email from swimtopia when you registered. Go back to that email and follow instructions to set up your account and log in. When you're logged in, click on the Toppenish at Selah meet from upcoming events or under the Swim Meets tab. You should see your swimmers listed. Edit your swimmer, choose that they are attending, then pick the events they want to swim and select if they are available for relays. Remember, coaches select relay swimmers from those who are available and not every swimmer gets to swim in a relay in every meet. If your swimmer is not in the right age group or something doesn't look right when you sign up, please let me know. I already corrected a birthdate. I can fix spelling and most other issues, and am happy to fix now at start of the season.

Volunteer sign up is the same process as swimmer sign up - just pick the job sign up button. Shift 1 will be for freestyle and backstroke. Shift 2 will be breaststroke, butterfly and medley relay. You do need to complete your shift before you leave the meet, even if your swimmers finish before you do. We need all our volunteers on deck to run the meet. Please sign up to volunteer but select your shifts carefully. Amie Richardson is our volunteer coordinator and she can help answer questions at practices and before the meet. I will also do my best to answer questions.

First meet - please plan to have swimmers at the pool by 5:45. In the past coaches have had a short walk through for new swimmers and we've had short walk through for new volunteers. We haven't discussed this, but probably will do this again. Volunteers, shift 1 and shift 2 if you can make, please be ready for informational meeting shortly after 6:00 on deck by the starter.

As always, please help get your swimmers settled in "camp" then if you're not volunteering please leave the deck. The gate in the corner should be open for access. The main pool house doors usually are not open, so access the deck and restrooms through the gate. Remind your swimmers not to leave any of their belongings in the locker rooms - keep everything in their bags and with their stuff in camp. Both teams and any other groups using the park/fields have access to locker rooms and things have disappeared in the past.

Schedule for this week:

Monday - afternoon practice at regular time.

Tuesday - first morning practice! 12 & younger 7:00-8:00am, 13 and older 8:00-9:30am.

no afternoon practice. Swim meet at home - warm up 6:00, racing at 6:30.

Wednesday - morning and afternoon practice.

Thursday - morning practice, no afternoon practice, meet in Prosser. More info to come.

Friday - morning practice only!

Other tidbits -

Old email - I've added an old email tab to team website. You can find copies of past emails there so you don't have to dig.

Amazon Smile - The Selah Dolphins are listed as an approved organization with Amazon Smile. Any of you amazon shoppers can go to smile.amazon.com and log in to your regular amazon accounts - it all looks and works the same. If you go through smile, you can select an organization off their list (Selah Dolphins or any other local, national, or international org listed) and a small percentage of your purchase price will go to the organization at no extra cost to you.

I promise the email barrage will slow down for the rest of the season!

Thanks

Heidi