ELITE NEWS BULLETIN               10-18-10

 

    “Cultivating Excellence in Academics, Character and Swimming”

 

2nd PARENT WORKSHOP THIS TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19 AT NA; TOPIC: NUTRITION:    

            Head Coach Bill Deatly will hold the season’s 2nd Parent Workshop on Tuesday, October 19 from 6:45 pm to 8:15 pm at Newark Academy. The main topic of discussion will be nutrition for athletes. Bill will also discuss his recent fact finding trip to SwimMAC in North Carolina.

            All Elite parents are welcome (and highly encouraged!) to attend.

AGE GROUPERS TO COMPETE AT FALL CHALLENGE THIS SUNDAY; GO ELITE!!!; MEET INFORMATION POSTED; PLEASE RESPOND TO TIMER COORDINATORS EMAILS:

 

            Elite’s next competition will be at Fall Challenge. Information regarding this meet is posted on the team website at:

http://www.eliteswimclub.org/Meet%20Schedule/homepage.htm. Please have your swimmer get in the habit of checking this page on a regular basis (and report back to you about details such as warm-up times, entries, meet locations!

 

HEAD COACH BILL RETURNS FROM VISIT TO SWIMMAC; LEARNED FROM THE STAFF OF THE 3RD BEST TEAM IN THE US; SPENT TIME WITH COACHING LEGEND DAVE MARSH & HIS OLYMPIANS;

 

          Head Coach Bill Deatly has returned from North Carolina where he spent 3 days observing and asking questions about how SwimMAC, the 3rd best team in the country (based upon the objective ranking by USA Swimming thru the “virtual club championship program.” Based upon the summer long course season, Elite was 139th in the country last summer-out of 2500 clubs-top 5%!!). Bill feels the trip was invaluable for the continued development of Elite.

 

            While visiting SwimMAC (the team has 750 competitive swim members which does NOT include an additional instructional swim league-sort of like a summer league that competes in the fall and the spring NOR the learn to swim program that gives about 6000 lessons a winter), Bill attended a team sponsored turn clinic, practices for swimmers at the Olympic level, the Senior Level and the Wavebuster Level, met with 5 different coaches (who coach different levels), a sports psychologist, an affiliated college coach and their full-time business manager. Bill attended two practice for Team Elite, a training group that consists of 10 Olympic hopefuls (including Cullen Jones, Davis Tarwater and Nick Brunelli) and even had a one on one breakfast with Dave Marsh.   

 

            Coupled with the previous visit by Elite Coaches Michael Turkot and Patty Martin, who visited SwimMAC two weeks ago, Bill is now flushed with ideas as to how to develop Elite into an even better program. Many of these ideas will be implemented after discussion with the Age Group coaches Ashley Johnston, Patty Martin and Michelle DuCharme.

 

            Possibly the most important piece of information Coaches Michael, Patty and Bill brought back is that Elite is ALREADY doing a lot of things correctly to be a highly successful swim program. The confidence that this knowledge will give the coaching staff will help propel them to inspire our swimmers to even higher heights!!

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TIMING COORDINATORS ASK FOR YOUR HELP IN RESPONDING TO EMAILS:

 

            Parents of Elite swimmers are asked to add the following four email addresses to your e-mail address book to ensure you receive important information regarding Elite Hosted Meets, Timing Information for all other meets and Parent Association Information.  Adding the e-mail addresses will insure that these important e-mails do not go to your junk/spam folder. 

 

Carolyn Balbo -                     cbalbo@comcast.net

Sanjeeta Mukherjee -        sanjumukhe@gmail.com         

Sue Duren -                            sueduren@aol.com

Antone Balbo -                      abalbo@comcast.net

 

OUR OLYMPIAN FRIEND JOSH DAVIS WANTS YOUR REACTION TO HIS CLINIC:

 

            Last week, we received this request from our new Olympian Friend Josh Davis:

 

            “If your swimmers or your parents would like to share any personal examples of how the Jason Lezak/Josh Davis clinic may have helped them or just comments in general, we would love to post them on the Mutual of Omaha BREAKout! Swim Clinic Club Comments area of our website http://blogs.mutualofomaha.com/breakoutswimclinic/ as
well as any photos that you may have taken.

            Please EMAIL those COMMENTS and PHOTOS to me at usaswimclinics@yahoo.com. Please forward this survey to all the swimmers and parents that attended thanks!

            You can help us serve the swim community better by taking a few minutes to answer the below survey.

            Please Take Our Online Survey:  http://internetmailmanager.com/s/survey.asp?a=4748W997BUN79W9BPKLJKP77RRMMNJ4Z6&b=~personid~&v=

            Thank you for your support in hosting a Mutual of Omaha BREAKout Swim clinic. We hope you had a great time and spread the word.

All the Best,

Josh Davis
5-Time Olympic Medalist”

 

ESCPO HAS SCHEDULED ITS 4TH ANNUAL PARENT SOCIAL FOR THIS FRIDAY, OCT 22: PARTY TO RETURN TO CHATHAM’S FISH & GAME: PLEASE RSVP TO CAROLYN BALBO:

 

            The Elite Swim Club Parents Organization (“ESCPO”) is planning its 4th annual Parent Social for Friday, October 22nd from 7:30 to 10:30 pm at the Chatham Fish & Game Club in Chatham.  The Parent Social Invitation is now posted on the website under the Parents Organization tab and attached to this week’s memo email. The link is http://www.eliteswimclub.org/Parents%20Org/Homepage.htm.

 

            Please RSVP Carolyn Balbo at cbalbo@comcast.netif you are planning on attending.       

 

            We need people to help on the night of the Social (set-up and clean-up) as well as a few people to help with shopping. Please let us know when you RSVP if you can help. .

 

ELITE LEADING WAY WITH “SWIMMER/PARENT FRIENDLY MEETS”:

DISTANCE DERBY REFORMATTED INTO 2 HOUR SESSIONS!!!

PARENTS ARE REMINDED THEY ARE EXPECTED TO WORK THE SESSIONS THEIR SWIMMER IS COMPETING IN:

 

          The one unanimous complaint about year round swimming is the length of the meet sessions during competition. Between the need 1) to have enough swimmers/competition in the building to make the meet competitive & to pay for the pool rental 2) to have enough recovery time for the swimmers between events and 3) the USA Swimming rule discouraging sessions to last longer than 4 hours, most New Jersey Sanctioned swim meet sessions last the prescribed 4 hours.

 

            Elite is taking the lead in attempting to change these “needs” and the overall mentality within NJ Swimming. A “Swimmer/Parent Friendly Meet” is the goal of this year’s Distance Derby.

 

            Elite’s hosted meet Distance Derby (held Saturday, Nov 20 & Sunday, Nov 21) has been reformatted into more but much shorter sessions. In fact, Elite is attempting to halve the session times into 2 hour sessions (yes, you read that correct: two hour sessions!!). With any luck at all, a swimmer (and parent) will be in and out of the building in less than 3 hours (when you factor in the warm-up time). The exception will be those swimmers participating in one of the distance sessions (which have been limited to 1.5 hours). The sanctioned meet information is now posted on the team website (and more information will be posted shortly). The meet format is as follows: 

 

             Meet Schedule:

 

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Warm-up

Start

Session 1

10 & Under Day 1 Session

 12:00 p.m.

12:40 p.m.

Session 2

12 & Under 500 yd Free Session

2:40 p.m.

3:00 p.m.

Session 3

11 - 12 Day 1 Session

4:30 p.m.

5:10 p.m.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Warm-up

Start

Session 4

13 & 14 Day 2 Session

  7:00 a.m.

    7:40 a.m.

Session 5

Open 1000 Free Session

  9:40 a.m.

  10:00 a.m.

Session 6

15 & Older Day 2 Session

11:30 a.m.

 12:10 p.m.

Session 7

10 & Under Day 2 Session

  2:10 p.m.

   2:50 p.m.

Session 8

11-12 Day 2 Session

  4:50 p.m.

   5:30 p.m.

 

          This goal is for all parents and swimmers to spend less time at the pool. In order to accomplish this, Elite put a 2 event limit per session on each swimmer’s entries.

 

          Carolyn Balbo, as team meet coordinator, will shortly be reaching out to each participating family as to meet job responsibilities. Swimmers in the Seniors, Senior Preps, Wavebuster Golds, Wavebuster Blacks, Wavebuster Teals and Marlin Blacks will participate. Please respond to Carolyn as soon as you are able.

 

SWIMMING AND AUTISM; VOLUNTEERS AND DONATIONS WANTED:

 

            Somerset Hills YMCA has provided a program for swimmers to interact with children with autism called Saturdays in Motion. SHY is looking for swimmers to donate their time and money to interact with these children.

 

            Attached is a flyer with the information. For more information, swimmers can contact Art Raynes at araynes@wmands.com.

 

POOLS WILL BREAK DOWN; CHECK EMAIL AND WEBSITE FOR INFORMATION:

 

The unfortunate fact of swimming pools is that they occasionally breakdown. And usually when it is most inconvenient (like the beginning of the season).

 

Thru the email chain, a blast will be sent to all swimmers if practice is unexpected cancelled. In addition, a note will be placed prominently on the website front page announcing the cancellation of the practice. This note serves as a reminder that swimmers (not parents) should regularly check the team website and emails in case there is a last minute pool disruption.

 

            If there is a pool disruption & practice is cancelled, all Elite members are requested to reach out to their friends (phone, text, email) to let them know of the situation. Cover your friend’s back!

 

WANT TO SAVE $? LET BILL KNOW PRIOR TO ENTRIES SUBMITTED

THAT YOUR SWIMMER WILL NOT ATTEND A MEET (OR A SPECIFIC DAY OF THE MEET):

EVENTS TO DOVE-TAILE TO UPDATE WIDEST VARIETY OF TIMES:

 

            Swimmers who know they are not available for all or part of Elite meets should email Bill early early as possible. These emails will actually result in the family saving 50% of the entry fee (credit to be posted on the swimmer’s next bill).

 

            All swimmers (and parents-with the exception of the Marlin Teals) are expected to participate and work Distance Derby (Nov 20 & Nov 21) during the sessions that their swimmers are participating).

 

            Any parent who knows their child is NOT available for one or more of these meets (and if they are not available for 1 day of a 2 day meet) should email Bill NOW!!!

 

            Swimmers and parents should note that Elite’s philosophy is to dove-tail entries for several meets. This gives the swimmer the opportunity to update the widest variety of events and distances. 

 

OFFICIALS & COMPUTER VOLUNTEERS NEEDED TO RUN MEETS:

 

          To effectively run meets, Elite needs a variety of parents to volunteer their time and efforts during these meets. This season, Elite will again be strongly encouraging those parents who have an interest to become New Jersey certified officials.

 

            To run New Jersey sanctioned meets, certified officials are a necessity. Currently within New Jersey Swimming, there is a shortage of officials certified. Elite, while having more officials than most NJ Swim Club is still understaffed and thus, under represented officiating meets. In addition, Elite likes to have officials present even when we run our dual meets/intraclub meets, as the officials provide significant feed back as to areas the coaches need to focus upon.

 

            In addition, this year Elite continue to build up its volunteers with regards to the electronic running of the meets (touch pads, timing console & processing the data coming thru both into Elite’s computer). If you are computer savvy or have an interest, please let Bill know!!

 

We are always in need of developing our Parental Talent as well!!! 

 

Anyone with interest in either volunteer position should contact Bill as soon as possible.

           

WHEN IN DOUBT, CHECK THE WEBSITE:

 

            If you have questions about Elite, your first source of information is Elite’s website located at eliteswimclub.org.  When in doubt, first check the website!!!