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Registration is Closed.
Apparel Orders are Closed.
Swim Team Registration – Saturday, March 20th 2010
Registration for the Tall Grass Lightning summer swim team will be held at the clubhouse from 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, March 20th, 2010. Every year, we get about a 30% new turnout at registration which means 70% of you are a glutton for punishment (i.e. returning families). In either case, welcome to the swim team!
A Quick Read
(ideal reading for returning families & folks who may not be able to stay with us long enough to read the entire article)
· Registration Date: Saturday, March 20th, 10:00 – 2:00 p.m. at the clubhouse
· Bring with you to registration…
1. Completed registration form click here
2. Signed waiver (one needed for each swimmer) click here
3. A completed Family Commitment Letter click here
4. Your swimmer if you would like them to try on apparel items
5. A few blank checks (one for registration fees, one for refundable deposit and one for optional apparel)
6. Pepperoni Pizza and some drinks to share with the registration volunteers (only if you’re running really late though – we’ll be hungry)
· First day of practice for new swimmers: Tuesday, June 1st
· First day of practice for returning swimmers: Wednesday, June 2nd
· First meet (time trials): Saturday, June 5th
· Classic meet: Saturday / Sunday, July 17th/18th
· City meet: Friday / Saturday, July 23rd/ 24th
· Banquet: Sunday, July 25th
· 6 measly volunteer jobs per family over the entire season (new signup format, read below)
A Longer Read
(ideal for new families and clueless returning families – if you don’t know who the clueless families are, you should probably read on)
The Tall Grass Lightning swim team is part of the Naperville Park District Swim Conference and is open to kids ages 4 – 18. You must be a resident of Tall Grass to participate on our team and your family must be in good standing with the homeowners association (i.e. no deadbeats). The swim team had over 115 families with 200+ kids on it last year and we expect that number to grow again this season (gulp). We are one of 23 total teams in Naperville who participate in the city wide program. At any given meet, there is the potential to have 200+ parents and 200+ kids from our team along with 200+ parents and 200+ kids from the visiting team for a hearty 800+ people in and around the pool deck. This is a very large sport in Naperville with over 2,500 athletes participating. Its popularity has grown over the last 30 years and continues to do so in our neighborhood. There is a lot of information to share, but we’ll try to pick out the important items and include them here for your reading enjoyment….
Skill Level Needed:
The summer program is an excellent opportunity to get a taste of swim team. For the younger kids (ages 4 – 8), the only skill set needed to make the team is the ability to get from one end of the pool to the other without walking, hanging on the side of the pool or sinking (our lawyers have recommended we use the word “sinking” instead of “drowning” so we don’t scare people away). In either case, the coaches are looking for kids who have some idea on how to move their arms and legs to propel them forward for an entire length of the pool (25 yards / 75 feet / 22.8 meters / 22,860 mm). The swim team is not to be confused with swim lessons. If your swimmer shows up with arm floaties and a deathgrip on their mother who insists on getting in the pool with young captain Nemo, then swim team is probably not the right sport yet. General swim lessons are offered through the pool office.
Time Trials:
The week practice begins, we hold a time trial meet to give everyone a chance to see how a meet is run – minus the other team though. If the coaching staff feels a swimmer is not ready for the swim team from a skill set standpoint, they will speak with the parents about withdrawing their child and a full refund will be given. Please respect the coaches decision – it is generally a safety concern if a child is removed from the team (not that your kid isn’t cute with the pink water wings and Barbie mask and snorkel set).
Practices:
Practices are held every weekday (M-F), by age group, at the Tall Grass pool throughout the season (June 1st – July 22nd).
6 & Unders: 9:30 – 10:00 a.m.
7 – 8’s 8:45 – 9:30 a.m.
9 – 10’s 8:00 – 8:45 a.m.
11 - 12’s 7:00 – 8:00 a.m.
13 - 14’s 7:00 – 8:00 a.m.
15 – 18’s 7:00 – 8:00 a.m.
Swim Meets:
The schedule has been finalized by the Park District and can be found at the Events tab, above. We have swim meets on Tuesday and/or Thursday evenings (5:30 – 9:00 p.m.) and Saturday mornings (8:30 – noon). Meets last about 3 - 4 hours. This season, we will have 9 regular dual meets, 1 time trial and 2 championship meets.
Coaching Staff
Unlike other sports (i.e. baseball, softball, football, basket weaving, etc.), our swim team is coached by a full time, paid staff. As of this publication, we have not finalized our list of coaches for the 2010 season, but last year we had a head coach, and assistant head coach, three senior coaches and four junior coaches – all of whom are on deck during all practices and meets. Though parents don’t swim in the meets, they do get the high honor of volunteering their time to help the meets move along.
Volunteering
It takes about 40 – 50 people to run a swim meet. These people are not highly trained professionals with years of swim team experience. They are not former Olympians who are hanging around the pool looking for any 10 year old to race against to see if they still “got it”. They are not compensated with bribes, kick backs, slush fund money, company cars or signing bonuses. They are just moms and dads who grab stop watch to time a swimmer in a race or who hand out water to keep the timers upright on hot days. They can also be asked to stick stickers on ribbons and stuff them into the proper family folder or perhaps they help the elves setup and take down the equipment needed for a swim meet. They are just regular people who help make the program what it is for their kids.
New for 2010 - Volunteering Made Easy!
In past years, we have posted a volunteer sign up list at registration whereby each family was asked to choose 6 jobs over the course of the entire season to sign up for. This has quickly grown into a stressful situation for new families when they show up for registration at 10:00 a.m. only to see the line wrapped around the tennis courts and heading down toward Scullen. The returning families who had insider information about registration knew to show up early to sign up for the good jobs (not sure if you call handing out water a good or bad job). In order to reduce the stress on registration day, we will be making some changes this year….
1. You will sign up on the days you wish to work, not the jobs
2. You will provide us with a list of preferred jobs (optional)
3. The board will then assign jobs after registration taking into account preference of days and type of jobs (we accept bribes of any kind – if you try to bribe us, we will instantly include your name for next year’s president).
This should alleviate much of the anxiety of having to get in line early to sign up for jobs. Regardless of what time you arrive at registration, nothing will be filled up. With any change, we expect some complaining and griping, but we will take it with a grain of salt (and perhaps a shot of tequila).
Website:
In an effort to streamline our organization for future generations to mismanage, we have moved our website over to a new host. This has enabled us to integrate our team software database directly into our website. We are still working the bugs out, but it should be a much smoother operation come summertime.
Questions?
Inevitably, there should be all sorts of questions that were not answered here. Our website should eventually have plenty of answers on it (as long as you know the right question to ask). If you can’t find what you’re looking for there, please contact us by clicking on "contact",above. No question is a dumb question (but we do keep track of the truly wacky ones for our wall-of-shame to be published in our memoirs in our golden years).
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