Hi all!

1st meet in the books!  It is always tough hosting the first meet of the season when we are all trying to recover from the end of school, Memorial Day, and only having a couple weeks to organize.  Overall, I saw a lot of kids having fun and competing, which is what this is all about.  Here is the recap:

1.  The good:  

• Our volunteers were amazing tonight.  We have ALOT of kids (to say the least), and I felt this was the most oranized that the meet itself has run.  Great job especially to the bullpen and deck managers for organizing the kids and getting them to the right spot.  We had very few kids miss their races and with 138 Barracudas, that is a big deal.  We can't run a home meet without ALL hands on deck.
• We  had a 39% improved times percentage!  That is only based on swimmers with a listed time going into the meet.  Any new swimmer to the Barracudas is not included in that %.  Congrats to Matteo Brogi, Abigail Barnes, Frances Halpin, Abby Holcomb, Levi Meuris, and Finley Schoenberg.  All of these swimmers scored 10 points or more tonight against a very experienced opponent.  
• Kudos to the coaches for all the hard work leading up to the meet and at the meet.  Trust me when I say that the meet day for a head coaches is not all that fun.  They are typically working their real jobs and trying to manage all the cancellations and scratches we get at the last minute.  They shuffle and reorganize the meet over and over to try to provide a fun, competative enviroment for our kids.  And they did an amazing job!!!

The bad:

• We lost the meet 448-302.  We still struggle against teams with quality older swimmers.  I also heard from the lady helping me at the computer that they have a few swimmers who will likely be swimming for D1 colleges.  
• Scoring is kind of weird in ASA and it is meant to neutralize big and small teams.  The 1st heat is the only heat that can "score points."  All the rest are exhibition.  We give ribbons for every heat so every kid who swims will get a ribbon as long as they did not get disqualified.  Please note that our timing and placement system is run by humans and we make mistakes.  If you watched your child get 2nd and the place judges saw them get 3rd or wrote it down as 3rd, when it gets to the scoring table, we will place it as 3rd and your child will get a 3rd place ribbon.  
• That said, if you have a kid who 10 or older, is competitive, and wants to swim more races, send an email to [email protected] and let us know.  The coaches will try to be strategic about how they work the meet and will swim kids up an age group or 2 as needed in events where we don't have swimmers.  They might end up getting 5 races in and swimming a 15-18 year old relay, but they will be earning us some extra points and not delaying the meet because the other team will likely have swimmers in those events anyways.  

The ugly:

• We messed up.  Some of the things we do are like 2nd nature now but we made a mistake and it caused some kids to think they had another relay when the master heat sheet had changed.  As I mentioned above, the coaches are moving kids all around trying to get as many races in as possible as they get waves of kids being sick or canceling at the last minute.  When that happens, we typically will send out a final heat sheet.  We did not do that today and so the heat sheet that was sent out was the old one.  The one that we used for the meet was finalized about 30 minutes prior to the meet starting.  We did not realize it until it was too late.  I want to personally appologize to any kid who hung around for a relay only to find out that it had been scratched.  We have worked on and tried so many things to make sure that this does not happen as it is always a huge dissappointment.  This time it was on us and we will make sure it doesn't happen again.  
• I did find out one cool thing from Huntcliff tonight.  The mobile app for swimtopia will have the most up to date heat sheet and events for your kids.  I am attaching a flyer to download the app.  There is a pro version that is like $7 for the season that will give you heat sheets and live results.

Please feel free to email [email protected] with any questions.  Go Barracudas!

Michael