Happy holidays to all WAVE members!
Swim School and Operations
Throughout this year the Wave Swim School management team collected input from our swim lessons families, staff, swim team coaches and other members of the aquatics community. We compiled your input and used it to refine our swim lessons instructor training and teaching techniques! The newly revised Wave Swim School curriculum encourages progress and creates a fun, engaging lessons experience for students of all levels, including pre-competitive. Pre-comp lessons will be offered on weekends, and our instructors train with the swim team coaching staff.
This November, coinciding with the launch of the updated Wave Swim School curriculum, we also moved to a new online swim lessons management platform, iClassPro. The iClassPro Parent Portal app allows parents to monitor their students’ progress week-to-week, and conveniently manage enrollment and billing in one place.
Wave Swim School is continually working to improve your swim lessons experience; feel free to contact us if you have any questions or input: waveswimschool@waveaquatics.org
Visit the new-look website to check out the Wave Swim School curriculum and Parent Portal: www.waveaquatics.org/swim-school
Wave is also hiring Swim Instructors and Lifeguards! Wave Swim School offers paid in-house instructor training; no certifications are necessary to apply. We have two upcoming Lifeguard Training courses: December 27th-30th and January 2nd-5th. Participants must be 15 years of age on or before the last day of the course. Register online at www.waveaquatics.org/lifeguard-training, or contact jobs@waveaquatics.org.
Masters
Lake Washington Masters swimmers again did outstanding at the Short Course Meters meet last Sunday at the King County Aquatic Center in Federal Way.
There was no separate competition between workout groups, but that gave coaches the ability to put together lots more relays, some of which broke long standing PNA records. Many thanks to Bill Hayes who was feeling under the weather, but came anyway to fill out some relays. His normal sunny visage was replaced by a mask of Ebenezer Scrooge. “The highlight of the day”, said Bill, “was the warm shower after my last race”.
Bill's noon workout lane-mate, Mike Chastain, swam in his first ever meet and did fantastic! Not only did he swim Lifetime Bests!, but his in-pool starts insure that after he learns to dive he's guaranteed to drop several more seconds off his times!
Linda Chapman not only helped out at the meet, she also won the 50 and 100 breast and the 100IM, and dropped several seconds off all of her seed times. Apparently the rehab' from her knee surgery is going pretty well!
Morning lane five was well represented at the meet. Mike Porter backed up his outstanding 200 fr from a couple weeks ago at Snohomish with a first place in the 200IM in 2:36! Jin Y. got first or second in all five of his races, beat his seed times, and managed to tie himself in his 100 fly and 100im times. Is that normal? His 5:03 400m time means that he and I are going to duke it out in the 500 free at PNA's in April. Rounding out the Lane 5 crew was new swimmer Jake Li. Jake is another pure sprinter who also beat his seed times in all his races. After blasting out 27.8 and 27.9 relay splits to start the meet, Jake backed those up with a 28.1 in the 50fr and second over-all in the very competitive young gun age group.
Charlotte flew in from Phoenix to do the meet (and also see her family over the holiday), and of course mixed up her normal magic sauce with lots of firsts and some really valuable relay contributions.
David McCarty had a super challenging day with four relays to go along with his 100, 400, and 800 free's. Somehow, in his last event of the day, the brutal 800m, David managed to negative split his time with 5:13 and a 5:09 and win his age group. Impressive!
A couple lanes over in the same race, Rick and Mats had a battle Royale for about nine and a half minutes. Normally Rick and Mats swim in front and behind each other in practice, but in this race they were shoulder to shoulder the whole way. (They only needed one counter!). I think there was some planning to this little synco' swimming demonstration because even though Mats pulled away a bit in the last 50, he paced Rick to a world record in the 800m free with a time of 9:26.94. That's a whopping 27 seconds ahead of the previous record set in 2015!
Mats had some other great swims in the 400, 200 and 100 free. His 100 swim was his best in some time so he was pumped about that.
Rick also broke his own world record in the 100 breast by 1.5 seconds, but missed out on beating his IM world record by one second, and the 100fly record by less than half a second. Pity his lane 4 partners; we've got some 50 fly repeats coming up on the horizon!
Great job everyone! I'm looking forward to more great swims next spring for the SCY season!
Water Polo
Wave Aquatics water polo team attended Spooktacular water polo tournament in Victoria, BC. 5 games in two days with the last one on Sat ending at 10:30pm and first one on Sun starting at 6:30am. With two players falling ill just before the first day of tournament, our boys and gals demonstrated nothing less than great sportsmanship, endurance, great skills, and great spirit. They played 5 matches without subs and demonstrated great resiliency.
Comments from all parents attending the tournament were very positive. For example, Anastasia Strebkova (mom of one of the players) added on the Facebook Wave Aquatics water polo team homepage: “Lastly, after witnessing what other coaches were doing for the sake of win for any price, I can only be happy that our coach Julia focuses our kids on great sportsmanship, comradery, and just be the best they can.”
Also, last weekend 4 players from Wave Aquatics water polo team attended USAWP Olympic Development Program camp in Oregon which is designed for all young players across Pacific Northwest. Our players demonstrated great swimming and tactical skills. This is a great step towards being selected for a junior Olympic team. Next week 8 players will attend Snoqualmie ODP camp. Based on the results of this camp, a zonal team for PNW will be created. ODP program is a great way to for our players to meet players from other states and national coaches.
Swim Team
WAVE Swim Team has had a very busy start to the Short Course Season. Between adding in new pools, swim meets, and team events, we have had a fun and challenging start to the Season. Check out some highlights below.
Swim Meets
WAVE has had some solid swimming to start off the year with a busy meet schedule. The team kicked off the year with our annual Purple V Black meet, which was a great chance for the team to come together and get to know each other across ALL groups. The team followed that up with our October Challenge, where our younger athletes set the bar high with some early season cuts and best times. From there, we had a large number (almost 100 athletes) travel to Wenatchee for a Dual Meet with Velocity Swim Team, which WAVE won. We finished off November with a Mini Meet for our younger athletes, and then the November AGI Meet. Both meets were great successes with a lot of best times and good racing experiences across the board.
The team is now gearing up towards Champs Season, with Fall Divisionals and PNS SC Champs right around the corner. Good Luck to ALL the swimmers participating in those meets.
New Pools
The swim team has seen the addition of Strattonwood Pool and Peter Kirk Pool for this winter. These pools have been great to fill the void during the Redmond Closure. The kids have really enjoyed the chance to swim outdoors in the fresh air and Coach Chad has enjoyed having a reason to grow his beard out to keep him warm. The Coaches want to thanks all the families on their patience during the Redmond closure.
Team Events
The Team has enjoyed some major bonding this year in a number of events. The kids started the year off at the Black Team and Purple Team Practices, where the older kids got a chance to help teach and pass along some lessons to our younger athletes, and all the kids enjoyed making signs for the meet the following day.
The team also attended the annual Corn Maze party in October. The weather was a little bit wet for the event, but for those that attended, they had a good time venturing through the maze and mud.
Our most recent team event was our first ever Halloween Party. The event was a total blast with swimmers from the Black group through the SR Prep group attending, playing games, hanging out, and having some candy.
We have some more exciting events coming up throughout this year, so keep an eye out for updates.
The coaches are excited for the upcoming year and can’t wait to see the kids hard work pay off in the pool for Winter Champs. Good Luck Swimmers!!!
WAVE on 3!!!
On a different note, we started the search for a new Executive Director. If you are interested, or know of someone that would be a great fit, please contact us at jobs@waveaquaticsboard.org
If you have further questions, you can contact me at Kfir.Ami-ad@waveaquaticsboard.org
Happy Holidays! Kfir Ami-ad President, Wave Aquatics Governing Board
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