08/20/06
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Hi Tsunamis!
GCCC MONDAY PRACTICE..........Tomorrow, Monday 21st, there will be no GCCC
practice at all. All practices for that day will be at Frank Brown Park.
Novice will be 5:00-6:00 as always, Age Groups from 5:00-6:30 and
Pre-Senior/Senior from 5:00-7:00. I know this is very late notice and I
aplogize for that. However, I just found out Saturday morning about this.
Then, on Tuesday we go back to our normal schedule of 7:00-8:30 at GCCC.
Please keep in mind that every Friday GCCC practice is 5:40-7:10. I'm sorry
if that does not coincide with some of your schedules but it's the only
schedule we have.
PCST FALL MEET SCHEDULE..........Another announcement I would like to make
is our fall meet schedule. (Please bare in mind that if something
unexpected arises, this schedule is subject to change and I will always let
you know as soon as I find out about it). These are the meets I will be
encouraging as many PCST Tsunami swimmers to attend as possible, and the
only meets PCST coaches will be going to. For those new families who are
unsure about whether or not your child is ready for a meet, just ask their
coach (or me) and we'll fill you in on what to expect and which meets would
be best to attend. I've tried to spread the meets out to at least 2-3
weeks apart and have scheduled a "championship" meet for the first weekend
of December. I will inform you of the qualifying times for that meet
because it's one this team has never gone to and will be a great experience
for those who go! Here's the schedule and we'll get it up on our website as
soon as possible.
September 23-24 Auburn Aquatics (in Eufala, AL, not Auburn)
October 14-15 Pensacola Navy Youth (Pensacola, FL)
October 28-29 Dothan Dolphin Swim Team (Dothan, AL)
November 10-12 MYB (Montgomer, AL)
December 1-3 Gator Swim Club Invitational (Gainesville, FL) *PCST season
Championship Meet*
I realize some of these meets may conflict with high school meets, so I
encourage all high school swimmers to attend PCST meets when possible and
consider putting a focus on the Gator Swim Club Invitational as well as the
high school Regionals and State meets. You'll have time to taper for high
school meets and then have another month to get ready for the Gator meet
where you can swim more events, swim longer events and have another shot at
a prelims/finals championship style meet again some new competition. I'm
going to encourage our swimmers to learn those qualifying times and strive
for them, even if they think they are not in range at first. :)
SES CHAMPIONSHIP MEET NEWS (sorry it's so late!)................Speaking of
championship meets, due to popular demand, I am going to present to you the
news from the final days at the SES Long Course Championship meet from this
summer in Knoxville, TN. As most of you remember, we had 3 swimmers compete
and swim out of their minds going best time after best time at the
championship meet. Well, unfortunately, there was a major storm with a big
power outage that delayed the meet for a half-day, causing the coaches and
meet officials to decide to switch the meet to Timed Finals only for the
last two days instead of Prelims-Finals. This meant our swimmers had one
shot to show their stuff and that was it. Thankfully, they did it and did
great!
KEVIN FAULHABER had one heck of a day before the outage by swimming the 200
I.M., 50 Free and 100 Fly. He had a great 4 second drop in the I.M. to go a
2:29.52, and swam the 100 fly for the first time in forever to get 9th with
a 1:06.73. Before the race I wrote down my prediction for what I thought he
would go ..............guess what it was??? 1:06.73.......no lie! I'm just
that good, haha.................(some of you are thinking.......yeah right!
haha!) In between those races he had one heck of a 50 freestyle, going yet
another best time and finishing 4th overall! That was his best finish of
the weekend and it was a great one. On Sunday, Kevin finished off with two
more best times. In the 100 free he showed that he's literally one of the
best sprinters in the entire Southeastern Swimming LSC by finishing 6th with
a new best time of 58.50. After a long weekend, he managed to put together
one last great swim by dropping another second in the 200 breast, going
2:56.49. He ended up finishing 19th overall out of all 13 & 14 year old
boys! Pretty awesome!
LAURA KEARNS...........if you remember...........was absolutely on fire all
weekend! Although she didn't get to swim finals of her 50 free, which would
have been great to see her go even faster, she still broke :31 for the first
time ever, going a 30.83 and finishing 6th overall. That's MOVING for a
long course 50 free! Her 800 free was supposed to be swum on Saturday, but
it got postponed to early Sunday morning. (Not the ideal time for that
race, especially with other important races coming up later in the day), but
she did great! She finished the race with a 10:31.64, getting 5th place
overall. Did I mention this was the first 800 free Laura had EVER done???
Honestly, who gets 5th place at the Southeastern Swimming Championship meet
the first time they ever swim the race?? I guess only a Tsunami swimmer is
capable of that! Even though an 800 free is exhausting, Laura went on to
swim the 200 free in a huge personal best 2:26:24, finishing 9th place
overall. Then, as if swimming 6 best times all weekend wasn't enough, she
blew away her best time in the 50 back at the end of the meet to go a 36.93
and finish 16th. In her first ever SES Championship meet, Laura ended up
getting 7th place overall in the 11 & 12 girls division! Make sure you pass
along your congratulations to her when you get a chance.
To finish out the trio of championship PCST swimmers, VICTORIA HOVE
continued to have an incredible meet on the final two days in Knoxville.
After finishing her 200 IM, where she went a 2:50.75 (a best time by over 2
seconds), she looked upset. I was confused how she could be so upset after
going a best time by 2 seconds and she gave me this wierd look of
realization after I informed her of her success and she said "ohhhhhhhhh, I
was looking at Lane 1's time not Lane 8's!" haha. Needless to say she was
pleased after that. Later that day she swam her 50 freestyle with her
goggles wrapped around her neck and STILL went another best time by nearly a
full second by going 33.10. Then, to finish out the meet, she had a strong
100 breast by going 1:31.93 and a full second drop in the 50 back by going a
37.51! This turned out to be a fantastic meet for Victoria!
Overall, I saw an enthused and motivated group of swimmers who used those
fast swims to make them hungry for the upcoming season! Out of 39 teams
that participated in the meet, PCST finished 22nd overall and that's with
only 3 swimmers!!! That's very impressive and when the SES Championship
meet rolls around again in the spring, let's see if we can't get another 3
or 4 or 10 swimmers to qualify and respresent PCST! Let's start learning
those qualifying times and setting goals to achieve them. I want a big
group of matching PCST shirts scaring other teams at that meet! :)
UPCOMING OPEN HOUSES AND NEW PCST MEMBERS..........Okay, before I go, I want
to pass along one last positive note. We have had 14 new swimmers join the
PCST family in the last week alone! With the upcoming open houses for Bay
County elementary and middle schools, I anticipate that we will continue to
grow tremendously. If you can help out and sit at a table handing out PCST
flyers at your child's open house sometime in the next month, please let me
know and we'll get you set up and informed about what to say with particular
questions. Your job will be easy. Hand out flyers and sit at a table with
a sign up sheet for families to fill out their name, email and phone number.
I will send them an email that answers as many questions as possible and
contact them personally through a phone call if they do not have email.
Thanks for all your volunteer help! The team is changing and growing and
it's thanks to great families like yourself that we continue to feel like a
close family even with the extra new swimmers. We want all our new families
to feel welcomed and informed, so when you see them, bring them in and make
them feel special.
Catch the Wave!
Jonathan
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08/17/06
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Hey Tsunamis!
I sincerely apologize for this, but I just found out tonight that our
practice schedule at GCCC is different on Fridays than it is the rest of the
week. I honestly have no idea how I didn't know this, but it is what it is.
Instead of 7:00-8:30 like Monday through Thursday, we practice from
5:40-7:10. This means the Novice swimmers will be from 5:40-6:40. This
change takes place immediately and is apparently the way it's been in the
past. So for your new families who didn't see this coming, I apologize
again. Keep in mind that it's ONLY FRIDAYS.
On another note, I've had some families ask me about Saturday practice with
the Novice swimmers. I want everyone to know that I do not mind having
Novice swimmers at Saturday practice, but I cannot have Novice practice
right now because I am the only coach at Saturday practice for the time
being. As soon as I get a good Novice coach that will coach from
10:00-11:00 on Saturdays, then we will have Novice available on Saturdays
again. I will keep you updated for sure.
One concern I have is that some families may have their young Novice swimmer
practicing 6 days a week and I do not recommend that. 5 days a week is
good, but at that age and ability level it's important to make sure the kids
get time off from the sport as well. There will be plenty of years in the
future when the current Novice swimmers will be moving up to 1.5 hour and 2
hour practices as well as training regularly on Saturdays and eventually
mornings, etc. I want those families to take it slow at the beginning (even
if your child has been swimming for a few years already) to make sure the
kids continue to absolutely love the sport and never even come close to
reaching a burn-out stage.
Please keep in mind that the decisions I'm making for the team are all in
consideration of a very sound future vision that will continue to provide a
wonderfully positive and effective training environment for everyone
involved for many years to come. If you have any questions about the
direction the team is heading, please feel free to ask me personally, or
maybe wait until the September 2nd Team Picnic at Frank Brown Park when I
plan to explain in person my vision for the Tsunamis. We've had 13 new
swimmers join the team in just the past week alone with many more to come!
Things are really looking great and I hope your kids are really enjoying
themselves, making some great friends, learning a lot about competitive
swimming, and getting faster! :)
Have a great day and we'll see you at the pool!
Catch the Wave!
Jonathan
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08/08/06
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Hello Tsunamis!
I hope everyone has enjoyed their time off and is getting settled into the
routine of school and swimming again. Just ro remind all of you, we have
practice from 5:00-7:00 from Aug. 7th through the 15th at Frank Brown Park
only. This is available to ALL PCST families, not just those who usually
train at FBP. Only the Gold level swimmers will train for 2 hours, so
parents of Bronze and Silver swimmers can expect to pick their kids up
around 6:30 or so. On August 16th we will begin our fall schedule at GCCC
which is 7:00-8:30 PM. Once again, Bronze swimmers (beginners) will swim
from 7:00-8:00.
CARPOOLS AND A MOTHER'S REQUEST.........As always, I encourage our parents
to use carpools and look for new ways to get our children to swim practice
when the schedule doesn't always make it easy. Please read below to one of
our mother's request and email her if you can help out.............
"My daughter, Katrina Nicholas, needs someone to pick her up by 6:00 PM on
Tuesdays (starting Aug 29th) from Northside Elementary School and bring her
to practice at GCCC. May I email the team and ask if anyone is available?
Sincerely,
Lisa Nicholas (email at ldnicholas@yahoo.com )"
TWO NEW COACHES ADDED TO OUR GREAT STAFF..........I am proud to announce
that we have two new part time additions to our coaching staff that will be
working at Gulf Coast Community College and am working on a few more coaches
to work 4-5 days a week at GCCC and/or FBP. I will let you know who they
are when they are hired. For now though, I'm pleased that So Yun Musser and
Alyssa Yarbrough will be coaching at GCCC on Wendesdays. So Yun will be
working with Coach Dom's swimmers and Alyssa will get in with the Bronze
group who will be coached by Mark Broersma during the rest of the week.
GREAT SUCCESS AT LOCAL SCHOOL ORIENTATIONS!.........We've been getting a
tremendous amount of interest in the team and I really expect PCST to grow a
lot in the upcoming months! With the help of a few team parents, PCST
attended 3 elementary schools and one 6th grade orientation for schools out
on the beach. From those 4 brief encounters, we got 84 families very
interested in PCST and the program! Granted, not all of them will join, but
the interest is there and word is getting out about what a great program we
have! I want to continue to spread that word in both Panama City Beach,
Panama City, Lynn Haven, Callaway, etc.etc. (I've even received phone calls
from 2 families in Santa Rosa Beach wanting to join!)
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED FOR UPCOMING SCHOOL OPEN HOUSES.........I plan to go to
open houses for Elementary and Middle Schools around the entire county to
promote the Tsunamis and continue to grow our team. If any of you could
volunteer to sit at a table for an hour or so at your child's open house,
pass out team flyers and answer questions parents may have, please let me
know and we'll get you a poster board, flyers and email/phone number sign up
sheet. I know open houses will be here before we know it, so the sooner you
could volunteer, the sooner we can plan things out and make sure we're
getting to as many schools as possible.
COACH JONATHAN'S HOME NUMBER IS CHANGING..........just as a reminder, my
home phone number is changing soon. It was supposed to be today (Aug. 8th)
but it has not changed yet. So for the meantime, please try my new number
first, and if it doesn't work, call my old number if you need me.
New is 850-249-PCST (7278)
Old was 850-249-9229
I know it's crowded this week at Frank Brown, but I see that as a good
problem to have because it means a lot of people are showing up for
practice! Keep being wonderful and patient, and once we begin practicing at
both locations again, things will be running much more smoothly. OH, and
before I forget, I will be announcing Swimmers of the Month for June and
July pretty soon so keep an eye out for that. Sorry we've fallen behind on
that since making the switch with a new coach, but it is very important to
us and we'll have it back up and running again soon. (I'll also be
announcing the PCST All-Time Team Records that were broken this
summer.......soon to come!)
Catch the Wave!
Jonathan
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