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June Banter 2023


George BM
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35 minutes ago, mattie g said:

Lucky you guys! I have no idea why ours are being kept in until then since we also had no days off, but we persevere...

Its a global conspiracy to make our kids smarter than us so they can argue at every turn.  

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42 minutes ago, mattie g said:

Lucky you guys! I have no idea why ours are being kept in until then since we also had no days off, but we persevere...

Yeah that is weird, you would think without snow days you would be getting out sooner since you didn't have days to make up for. Sorry!

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22 hours ago, mattie g said:

We're telling everyone practice is optional (which it kind of is every day :lol:).

Our pool management company tends to the cautious side on this kind of stuff - I just hope they don't make an uninformed decision to close.

22 hours ago, H2O said:

We have an ice truck coming today so closing the pool would kinda suck.  Kids come first tho.  Closing for smoke at least is more valid than when our guards close for fake storms thats just airplanes taking off

Pool closed yesterday for afternoon practice thank god, didn't want to have to coach in that. You need to remember when making your decision that by making it "optional" it fill forces the coaches and kids that coach to show up. My morning outdoor actual swim practice didn't cancel today but elected to not go. 

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2 hours ago, SnowenOutThere said:

Pool closed yesterday for afternoon practice thank god, didn't want to have to coach in that. You need to remember when making your decision that by making it "optional" it fill forces the coaches and kids that coach to show up. My morning outdoor actual swim practice didn't cancel today but elected to not go. 

Sure...we realize that. I'm not terribly concerned about the coaches who are walking around the pool barking at the kids to stop doing flips, leaning on the lane lines, and staying in their streamlines after the start. The air quality wasn't *that* bad yesterday afternoon such that simply being outside was a danger. Our concern is with the kids who are going hard in practice and breathing hard in the process, and our intent is to let the parents make the decision they feel is best for their kids. In the end, we cancelled anyway, as the coaches outvoted my co-rep and me on holding/not holding practice.

Now...with air quality like this morning there's no way we'd have made a decision to practice - optional or not. I wore an N95 in the city this morning because it was nasty as hell, and I wouldn't ask our coaches to be outside for three hours coaching in those conditions...let alone even suggest to parents that we'd practice in it!

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So we went down to show today at Upperville Showgrounds. They had started the day as air quality levels were still ok. 
 

At 11 USEF put the show on an indefinite hold till 12:30 to do a reassessment. At 12:30 they have canceled the show for the rest of the day. And will most likely tomorrow as well. Good call as the air quality has progressively gotten worse here. 

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27 minutes ago, mattie g said:

Sure...we realize that. I'm not terribly concerned about the coaches who are walking around the pool barking at the kids to stop doing flips, leaning on the lane lines, and staying in their streamlines after the start. The air quality wasn't *that* bad yesterday afternoon such that simply being outside was a danger. Our concern is with the kids who are going hard in practice and breathing hard in the process, and our intent is to let the parents make the decision they feel is best for their kids. In the end, we cancelled anyway, as the coaches outvoted my co-rep and me on holding/not holding practice.

Now...with air quality like this morning there's no way we'd have made a decision to practice - optional or not. I wore an N95 in the city this morning because it was nasty as hell, and I wouldn't ask our coaches to be outside for three hours coaching in those conditions...let alone even suggest to parents that we'd practice in it!

Don't know about your pool but all of the 10 plus coaches in training (high school kids) are in the water for the whole practice they coach making sure the kids don't drown and yes the air quality was bad enough to be harmful for developing kids which I'm pretty sure still includes teens. I've only been going outside with a mask on since yesterday and before that I've gotten nasty headaches and congestion. I've also been tired but that may or may not be related to the smoke. Either way the right decision was definitely to cancel it. 

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6 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

Don't know about your pool but all of the 10 plus coaches in training (high school kids) are in the water for the whole practice they coach making sure the kids don't drown and yes the air quality was bad enough to be harmful for developing kids which I'm pretty sure still includes teens. I've only been going outside with a mask on since yesterday and before that I've gotten nasty headaches and congestion. I've also been tired but that may or may not be related to the smoke. Either way the right decision was definitely to cancel it. 

We have a few teenagers who help our younger swimmers, but they're mostly walking on the bottom while helping the little ones with their strokes and the like, i.e., not doing any strenuous activity. That young group is a lot of 5s and 6s who are beyond a learn-to-swim program but who still need to build stamina to get across the pool regularly. Our other 8&U kids are swimming without coaches in the pool. Our Juniors program starts the week after school is out...those are the ones who need a crew of teenage coaches there at all times to keep them safe. Sounds  similar to the kids your 10-plus coaches (really good number of coaches, by the way!) are working with.

Good on you for wearing a mask! I think there are a lot of folks who won't because they'd rather show that a little haze doesn't bother them. That may seem at odds with how I've been talking about this, but there does come a point where it's just not a good idea to be bullheaded about it and to accept that there are health hazards associated with this awful AQI.

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1 hour ago, vastateofmind said:

It's SO hard to believe that time trials are ALREADY here...and another season is ready to start! You and @mattie g have my heartfelt sympathies...  ;) 

I’m a dummy for sticking with it. But just a couple more years and that’s another job I can retire from

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17 hours ago, vastateofmind said:

It's SO hard to believe that time trials are ALREADY here...and another season is ready to start! You and @mattie g have my heartfelt sympathies...  ;) 

:lol:

I honestly love it. It's a pain in the ass and kills my ability to do much else in the summer, but I really wouldn't have it any other way. I went so far as to get S&T recertified last weekend and will be doing new Starter training this Sunday. I figure I have to keep myself involved after I retire from the Team Rep gig!

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25 minutes ago, nw baltimore wx said:

Another beautiful evening and sampling a new drink for summer. One lemon squeezed in a glass with some fresh basil and brown sugar. Muddle until the sugar is dissolved and the liquid is bright green. Add ice and two ounces (3 here) of gin. Shake and serve over ice.

:cory:

Try this one if you haven't. So good and versatile. I often add a tad to certain fruity IPAs to give some complexity. A little in RAR Nanticoke Nectar kicks it up and adds interest.

Dogfish Head Compelling Gin | Total Wine & More

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4 hours ago, mattie g said:

Turned out to be an amazing morning. A little chilly to start, but by the time we finished (about 9:45) it was really nice.

Mornings at the pool make it really feel like summer!

Wow … you are much faster than us. We didn’t wrap up until ~11:30 (though also didn’t start until 9). Great to be back in the swing of things.

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On 6/9/2023 at 2:15 PM, mattie g said:

:lol:

I honestly love it. It's a pain in the ass and kills my ability to do much else in the summer, but I really wouldn't have it any other way. I went so far as to get S&T recertified last weekend and will be doing new Starter training this Sunday. I figure I have to keep myself involved after I retire from the Team Rep gig!

GOOD on you...volunteers are SO hard to come by. My wife and I served in almost all the NVSL volunteer lead positions...with hers culminating in swim rep for two season. (UGH!)

Personally, as much a time-suck year-round club swimming could be, it was all worth it for the more "casual" summer swim season, where I could bounce back and forth between S&T judging (best seat in the house!) and serving as announcer (or more accurately, DJ Mikey Mike, when it came to playing the all-important MUSIC in between the official stuff  :) ).

NVSL can be a huge PITA sometimes...but it's offered even more rewarding perks off and on through the years, especially for developing camaraderie and friendships in your own neighborhood. In a teeny, tiny, itty-bitty way....I'm just a bit jealous of you and @H2O that you're still in the summer swim game.  ;) 

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16 hours ago, hstorm said:

Wow … you are much faster than us. We didn’t wrap up until ~11:30 (though also didn’t start until 9). Great to be back in the swing of things.

You can probably credit that quick wrap-up to two things: 1) A relatively small team with not all kids able to make it and 2) A clerk of course who takes no prisoners! We started at 8, so in all it was pretty quick.

It helps that our primary clerk of course is also the pool ops lead and wanted to make sure we were done well in advance of the pool’s 11am opening time!

It really was great to have finally had the kids in the water in the morning. Good luck to your team this year!

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50 minutes ago, vastateofmind said:

GOOD on you...volunteers are SO hard to come by. My wife and I served in almost all the NVSL volunteer lead positions...with hers culminating in swim rep for two season. (UGH!)

Personally, as much a time-suck year-round club swimming could be, it was all worth it for the more "casual" summer swim season, where I could bounce back and forth between S&T judging (best seat in the house!) and serving as announcer (or more accurately, DJ Mikey Mike, when it came to playing the all-important MUSIC in between the official stuff  :) ).

NVSL can be a huge PITA sometimes...but it's offered even more rewarding perks off and on through the years, especially for developing camaraderie and friendships in your own neighborhood. In a teeny, tiny, itty-bitty way....I'm just a bit jealous of you and @H2O that you're still in the summer swim game.  ;) 

I think having a smaller team can help in many ways in getting folks involved. We all know each other well and there’s a little bit of light peer pressure without anyone overtly putting the pressure on. What’s interesting is that I was just looking at the NVSL officials list and our team has more officials than many of the much bigger teams, which really surprised me!

Sounds like you had an amazing experience, though I totally get your feeing of it also being a drag on your summer! I can’t agree enough that it builds relationships and a true neighborhood bond that would be hard to recreate in other ways. My wife and I have developed friendships with other families that likely would never had happened had it not been for summer swim, and being the social creatures we are we’re profoundly thankful for it!

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18 hours ago, vastateofmind said:

Personally, as much a time-suck year-round club swimming could be, it was all worth it for the more "casual" summer swim season

Cannot wait for him to discover high school swim season, its honestly the highlight of both my school year and year in general. It combines the team building of summer with the competition of club and takes the best aspects of both. 

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@vastateofmind @mattie g

We had our TTs on Saturday and it went really well.  Only swam our team as we have like 150+ swimmers.  Its stupid huge.  I think we had over 20 heats of free alone.  But somehow we got that done in like 45 min and only took 3 hours to get completely done.  We even had new S&Ts doing it with plenty of DQs so not like it went smooth.  

But its a crammed two months.  B meets already starting tonight and then the grind sets in.  We will have the usual pep rallies and team events and themes for each A meet.  Getting enough people to volunteer can still be a chore.  I had to pull people from the crowd for second shift timers cause people just don't sign up to help.  Well if I gotta stand and time your kid then you can help stand and time your kid and mine.  But some people are fun to be around and as long as you make it fun for others you can slog thru the long meets and hot days.  

 

And also destroy a diet with all the food you need to cram in during meets to live.  Donuts, burgers, pizza.  RIP my diabeetus, cholesterol and clothes.  

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18 minutes ago, H2O said:

@vastateofmind @mattie g

We had our TTs on Saturday and it went really well.  Only swam our team as we have like 150+ swimmers.  Its stupid huge.  I think we had over 20 heats of free alone.  But somehow we got that done in like 45 min and only took 3 hours to get completely done.  We even had new S&Ts doing it with plenty of DQs so not like it went smooth.  

But its a crammed two months.  B meets already starting tonight and then the grind sets in.  We will have the usual pep rallies and team events and themes for each A meet.  Getting enough people to volunteer can still be a chore.  I had to pull people from the crowd for second shift timers cause people just don't sign up to help.  Well if I gotta stand and time your kid then you can help stand and time your kid and mine.  But some people are fun to be around and as long as you make it fun for others you can slog thru the long meets and hot days.  

 

And also destroy a diet with all the food you need to cram in during meets to live.  Donuts, burgers, pizza.  RIP my diabeetus, cholesterol and clothes.  

This was my life as a kid. Ahhh.. Saturday morning swim meets we're the best. Home meets we're my favorite. Done by noon and pool rest of the day. 

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3 hours ago, H2O said:

@vastateofmind @mattie g

We had our TTs on Saturday and it went really well.  Only swam our team as we have like 150+ swimmers.  Its stupid huge.  I think we had over 20 heats of free alone.  But somehow we got that done in like 45 min and only took 3 hours to get completely done.  We even had new S&Ts doing it with plenty of DQs so not like it went smooth.  

But its a crammed two months.  B meets already starting tonight and then the grind sets in.  We will have the usual pep rallies and team events and themes for each A meet.  Getting enough people to volunteer can still be a chore.  I had to pull people from the crowd for second shift timers cause people just don't sign up to help.  Well if I gotta stand and time your kid then you can help stand and time your kid and mine.  But some people are fun to be around and as long as you make it fun for others you can slog thru the long meets and hot days.  

 

And also destroy a diet with all the food you need to cram in during meets to live.  Donuts, burgers, pizza.  RIP my diabeetus, cholesterol and clothes.  

Our team has 95 kids this year*, and that includes the littles, so we're able to cruise through things like time trials and B Meets against teams that are pretty close to our size (we have two teams in our B Meet group that are substantially bigger than we are). And we also only swam ourselves in time trials (never even considered having another team involved!). Same as you, we had two new S&Ts helping out, but our timers time for the whole meet since we don't have enough families to be able to split the shifts. The best thing was that the kids danced on the lower and upper decks after we were done. Now...THAT made it feel like summer swim!

Most of our folks are pretty cool, but as with any large group of people we have our pains in the azz. I just try to ignore them. :lol:

* 95 kids is five more swimmers than last year, which was almost ten more than the year before that. if there's one thing I'm really trying to contribute to this team is to get more kids and more families involved!

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