The Nitros 4/13/13 and SoW

Quick Note – only 1 point, then Swimmers of the Week:

1.       Our end of season get –together / awards ceremony / Coaches Season Recap (affectionately known as the Nitros) got moved to a new date two weeks earlier than I previously communicated.

The 2012-2013 Nitros will be Saturday, April 13^th. Tentative time: 5:00-7:30PM. We have secured Gateway Community Church on McNeil about ½ mile east of 183 as the venue. Outstanding seating, great video/audio – we’re looking forward to it. Every one of our Nitro team families are welcomed to attend. More details will be communicated as we get closer. Stay tuned!!

Swimmer of the Week for January 21^st – 26^th, 2013:

Intro to Nitro

Cedar Park:Jordan Phillips – Jordan loves a good challenge during practice and always rises to the occasion.  Often being called on to demonstrate for the group she is happy to help.  She pushes herself to get better each practice which in turn pushes the swimmers around her to swim to the best of their ability all the while having fun and learning about each other.  Don’t stop being Awesome Jordan!!

Bee Cave:Sofia Wesbecher– The last two weeks the Intro’s have really been working hard to tackle the timing of the breaststroke. Sofia did an excellent job of listening to the instructions and using those drills to her advantage. Great Job Sofia! Keep that smile on!

Bronze

Cedar Park: Julia Rautaneva – Julia joined the Bronze group just a few months ago and she has already taken full advantage of all the technique drills and hard work we put in. Julia has some of the best under waters in the group and she always tries to work on exactly what the coaches are asking of her no matter how hard it is. She is a great swimmer to have in practice because she is always smiling and never down about anything. Keep up the great work Julia!

Bee Cave:Autumn Forgey– Autumn is always excited about being at practice and that energy and a positive attitude have been paying off.  She has been improving both in terms of her conditioning and her technique.  This past week I saw her really focus and make a breakthrough with her butterfly incorporating a back-kick during her breath.  This is such a fundamental part of the stroke and yet so difficult to grasp.  Keep up the great work Autumn!  It is always a pleasure to see your smiling face!

Technique and Fitness

Cedar Park:Audrey Wu & Tijim Fauver – Audrey has a quite nature about herself and her concentration and focus shows in the pool.  Her technique has improved over the past few months and last week she showed improvement in her breaststroke.  Tijim has really come along.  Even though he still has hesitation about entering the pool at the beginning of practice his positive attitude brings great energy to the group.  Great job you two thanks for being a part of NITRO and we’ll see you at the pool.

Bee Cave:Connor Hawkins– Connor has been making huge strides of improvement. His breast stroke looked completely different last week than it is now. His constant want of feedback has my attention. Connor has improved his timing, technique, pull outs, and turns all in a weeks work. I am very proud of you Connor. Keep up the great work.

Silver

Cedar Park:Reagan Price– Recently Reagan has begun to realize her potential and has learned you can push your limits, become exhausted, and still have fun. She is leading her lane and now knows what we mean when we say “earn your rest” (Push so hard through the pain that those extra seconds of rest count for so much more in relation to resting and lowering the heart rate). Great job Reagan. We can’t wait to see what you do next week!

Bee Cave:Alec Meyer– Alec has just stepped up his training this past week, not only do you find him leading his lane but you also find him setting a new standard for the Silver #2 group at Bee Cave. I can’t think of a time when I didn’t see him body wave out past the flags, or ever find the need to remind him about “no breath first stroke up”. not to mention the intensity he is showing on his red zone finishes. Great job Alec keep raising the bar for your team mates.

Advanced Silver

Cedar Park:Adam Micek– Not only has he been swimming really well at the BB meet in San Antonio, he’s been a model teammate. Keep up the great cheering and team spirit Adam! Great job to all of the Advanced Silver swimmers at the meet. Lots of new best times as well as A times!

Bee Cave:Olivia Mazzei– After being out sick for about a week Olivia came back to us as strong–and focused–as ever.  Despite her statements that she was “getting back in shape” Olivia really showed us what she could do.  This intensity and determination is what I have come to expect from her.  The wisdom she showed, however, had more to do with her attitude about recovery. Olivia is a very competitive swimmer but she doesn’t let setbacks get in her way.  I’ve seen swimmers much older than she get upset with themselves and beat themselves up when they were having trouble with a set or a workout the way Olivia did earlier in the week. At age 10 Olivia has figured out how to let a less-than-stellar practice(I’ve never seen Olivia have a “bad” practice) go and get back to the business of making herself better the next time.  By the end of the week Olivia had reclaimed her usual intensity and was helping to lead the group together with Mason Wong on a Saturday Challenge set.  Keep up the great work Olivia!

Gold

Cedar Park: Caitlin Murphy– Caitlin had an amazing BB Championship meet, she went 6 for 6 in making A times, and she did not just barely make the A times she blew every A time out of the water and put herself in prime position to have a great meet three weeks from now. Very proud of Caitlin and all of the other GOLD group swimmers, they cheered for everyone, and all around were just having a blast the entire meet.

Bee Cave:Ethan Hammond– Ethan had a very good week, finding his pain threshold then pushing through it while challenging himself to maintain his stroke mechanics, a broken set of sprints that simulated the pain of a 200 freestyle in particular made Ethan a group leader as well as increasing his confidence to race at a higher level, which he displayed at the BB Championships, making the A finals several times while achieving a handful of A times in doing so. I look forward to seeing him swim at A Championships.

 

Thanks for being a part of Nitro Swimming. See you at the pool! Coach Mike.

Coach’s Note: Weekend recap

Re-cap of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday – whew!  What a weekend!

Friday night pool party – so much fun, for the coaches who were in the water getting shot at by the water blasters, riding on the rafts/boats, doing cannonballs and can-openers off of the starting blocks seeing who could make the biggest splash, they had a ball. It looked like the 200 or so Silver, TF, Bronze, and Intro kiddos all did as well. I was standing for a while near the front desk, and hearing swimmer after swimmer walk in, see the pool full of water toys, as they exclaimed: “AWESOME!” with smiles as wide as could be. We hope that several of the parents had a chance to enjoy a night out while we entertained the kids. Look for another one of these at end of summer season.

Visitors: Saturday morning brought NCAA National champion Dave Denniston to our pool deck to hang out with some of our swim groups. He met with several outside and shared some innovative dryland exercises we will soon be incorporating. Also – you may have seen a guy in the swim center video-taping a little. That was Mel Stewart – also known as “Gold Medal Mel” shooting a special story for USA Swimming.

Long Course Pool: Saturday we went with the pool being in Long Course configuration for all of the training groups. We will continue Sat AM Long Course for the rest of this month, and the entire month of May. It was great to see the eyeballs open up a little – especially for our younger groups when they looked at the 50 meter distance and swallowed hard with a gulp. But they all did great, and should have gone home with a pretty good sense of accomplishment.

Nitro at the Races: Sat afternoon at 1:45PM the coaching staff did the quick switch on the pool and made it “short course” (back to the 25 yard distance), and we hosted a Nitro at the Races meet. We coaches love these meets as they give us a chance to slow things down, gear a meet specifically for our developing swimmers, and do a lot of racing corrections. The 90+ kids who competed received a lot of hands on help, boosted their meet confidence, and looked great in the water. We had Coach Todd, Coach Greg G, and Coach Florian (Flo) manning the end of the pool where the kids were climbing out, giving countless corrections and tips to the swimmers after their races. The rest of the staff (Rebecca, Anna, Meghan, Todd, Parker, Steve W, and Jordan) were split between the girls side and the boys side getting to know them better, and keeping things organized, relaxed, and fun, making sure the kids got to their races in time in the proper heats and lanes. Kristyn manned the timing console and kept things running smoothly. Great meet for everyone there.

End of Season Banquet: The coaches then cleaned up the swim center, headed out for quick showers, and then straight to the end of season banquet/event for the Adv Silver, Gold, Tags 2, Tags 1, Sr 2, Sr 1, and National. Several awards were presented to our athletes, including some special recognitions. I had the chance to introduce one of our new coaches who will be helping us at the Bee Cave Nitro once we open in 2 weeks — Hans Dersch – ’92 Olympic Gold Medalist – who has already gotten a chance to know several of our swimmers.

One area that we forgot to cover/present were our USA top 10 award winners. We will send out a special, dedicated team note and also post on our website the USA Swimming top 10 award winners by mid week. Sorry!!

One special presentation was the awarding of our first ever Nitro Varsity jacket – presented to Zach Gunn, our first ever Junior National Champion. We are launching the Nitro Varsity Club, and will present criteria for our 9^th-12^th graders on how they can earn their Nitro Varsity “N” and receive the custom made Nitro Varsity Jacket. There were a lot of “oohs” and “ahhs” when Zach opened up the gift wrapped box and unveiled the jacket for the first time. Let’s get a photo of the front and back of it and we’ll post it.

Dave Denniston then gave a tremendous talk that touched everyone in the room. To hear how his lifelong dream was realized, but in not the way you would have expected, was both entertaining as well as moving. His personal journey, filled with examples from his youth years, his accomplishments as an athlete who initially wanted to be a pro basketball player so he could get the free shoes, to the specific details of how his accident occurred that took away the use of his legs was at times laugh out loud hilarious one moment, then bringing me and several others to tears the next. Dave definitely helped me bring things into perspective, and one if his themes of his talk was take care of the things that are within your control, and conversely, do your best when there are things you cannot. He resonated with every aged person last night, and I will never forget the lessons taught – now as long as I can apply them, that’s another thing altogether.

We wrapped up the night with Coach Steve Gluck’s slideshow (it blew me away) and we had several families raving about the night and how impacting it was. Today the coaches are getting some well deserved rest, and we will be back at it tomorrow on the pool deck! Special thanks to both Coach Gregs for their work on the slides for the night. Well done.

 

Thanks for being part of Nitro Swimming. See you at the pool! Coach Mike.