Week of 10-5

Hello everyone!

A big thanks to everyone who partook in the Swim-a-thon this past Saturday! I had a great time and it was good to see all of you there. Congrats to all who made the 200 lengths. I know Colin Martin made all 200 and that is definately the most he has done in that short of a time period by at least 80 lengths. Good work!

This week is a normal week of practice. For the advanced group, we are going to have a slightly less intense week than last week. That doesn't mean that it will be easy, but it will not be quite as hard as last week. For the intro group, I want to keep working on both flip turns and open turn which we started concentrating on last week. We looked pretty good for the limited work we did on them, but there is still much room for improvement! Meets start this coming weekend, so I also want to work some dives and starts with both groups so we can look good and swim fast at our first meet.

As you may have noticed, we have a new coach on deck! I completely forgot to introduce him on here last Thursday when I last posted, but I would like to officially welcome John Sommerville to USC! John is a native of the metro-Detroit Area, much like myself, and just graduated last May from Case Western. He is currently searching for a job in marketing (I think!) and will be with us at least through the end of 2009. He will actually not be at practice all week because he is in Chicago for some interviews and networking. An interesting fact: John and I coached for the same team in Michigan! I coached at the Beverly Hills Athletic Club (BHAC) for 5 summers between 2002 and 2006. After I left, John filled my void for the summer of 2007. That just goes to show how small of a world it actually is.

Two last bits of information...
1) Don't forget to collect all of your pledges and donations for the Swim-a-thon and turn them in. You can bring them to practice and I will lock them up until Brian Mann picks them up (or I deliver them to him).
2) Apparel order forms should be out this week. Michelle Delgross told me on Saturday that she hoped to have them at practice by today, so hopefully we have those soon.

That's all for now, see you at the pool!

Coach Matt