Howdy Tsunamis!

Life is good up here in Tennessee as our three Southeastern Championship 
Tsunami Swimmers continue to show everyone here how to "Feel the Force" of a 
determined Tsunami!  After Day 2 of the meet, we are 2/3 of the way to me 
getting thrown in the pool and nearly reached that goal already!

Kevin Faulhaber had a couple of great swims this morning by dropping from a 
2:12.8 to a new personal best of 2:10.5 in his 200 freestyle, finishing 13th 
overall.  He then went on to drop nearly a second in his 100 breast from a 
1:18.4 to a 1:17.6 and qualified 8th in prelims.  Tonight he went a 1:18.3 
and finished in 8th overall (after being seeded 10th going into prelims), 
making himself the second Tsunami swimmer of the meet to score points for 
our overall team finish!  Tomorrow is a big day for Kevin as he swims the 
200 I.M., 50 Free and 100 Fly.  (Yes, the fly is last, but he's a tough boy 
and he'll get through it!)  :) 

Victoria Hove made her long course Southeastern Championship debut this 
morning in UNBELIEVABLE fashion!  She went from being seeded 26th in the 50 
Breast with a 42.73 to finishing 9th overall with a 41.00 just missing 8th 
place by .01!  I told her she couldn't even come close to blinking that 
fast!  She then went on to the 100 backstroke where she improved from 33rd 
to 14th overall by dropping an amazing 4 seconds from a 1:23 to a 1:19!  She 
will be competing in one of her best events tomorrow, the 200 I.M. as well 
as a new solid event for her, the 50 Free.  She's on fire so far, so 
hopefully we'll continue to "burn up the competition" tomorrow.  (Oh man 
that was cheesy!!  haha)

Tonight I told Laura Kearns that she was addicted to swimming best times and 
that she's definitely been biten by the swimming bug.  She's just whooping 
some serious booty here and believe it or not, this is her first EVER 
Southeastern Championship meet!  This morning she qualified for the top 8 in 
2 more events making her 3/3 on scoring points this weekend.  She led off 
the morning with an incredible 100 Freestyle where she dropped from a 1:10.0 
to a 1:07.1!!  Then, as if dropping 3 seconds wasn't enough, she came back 
tonight and go a 1:06.25 and finished 4th overall.  (Keep in mind that her 
best time actually seeded her 19th before prelims.)  That wasn't all for her 
though.........this morning right after Victoria dropped 4 seconds in her 
100 back, Laura swam in the very next heat and also dropped 4 seconds from a 
1:21.7 to a 1:17.1!  After being seeded 25th in prelims, she ended up 
finishing 7th tonight with yet another best time of 1:16.86.  She gets to 
show the wide range of her freestyle abilities tomorrow by racing the 50 
freestyle as well as her first ever 800 freestyle.

Like I said............LIFE IS GOOD...........and the Tsunamis are on 
FIRE!!!!  I hope everyone is enjoying their last week of summertime and look 
forward to bringing you more good news from Tennessee.

Catch the Wave!

Jonathan

Greetings Tsunamis!

I'm writing to pass along some great news from our first day of competition 
at the Southeastern Long Course Championships.  We may have only 3 swimmers 
here in Knoxville, Tennessee, but they are already representing us well!  
Tonight was entirely longer distance swims, leaving our Laura Kearns as our 
sole swimmer for the night.  She got a great surprise when her older sister 
Amy drove all the way from Colorado to watch her swim!  To make life even 
better for her, Laura also got a brand new fast skin racing suit.   :)   
Needless to say she was pumped and ready to go as she raced the 400 meter 
freestyle today.

For those of you who do not know, Laura swam this race for the first time 
ever only one month ago in Auburn and only just recently got her 
Southeastern qualifying time at the CLUB meet a couple weeks ago.  Her 
previous best time was a 5:17.98 and she BLEW that away today with an 
incredible 5:03.88, achieving her first ever AAA National Age Group 
Motivational Time!! (The highest being AAAA).  To make the story even 
better, Laura went from being seeded 17th out of 19 swimmers and basically 
racing herself in her heat to finishing 5th overall!!  I can't imagine how 
much faster she would have gone had she had more girls to race.  That 5th 
place finish guarantees that PCST will finish with a ranking this year since 
the top 8 swimmers score points for their teams.

(Plus, I promised if all 3 swimmers score points then they can throw me in 
the pool.......uh oh.....I'm 1/3 of the way to being soaked at the end of 
this meet!)

So congrats to Laura on her great swim and keep checking your email for 
updates from our long course championship meet.  Tomorrow Laura will be 
competing in the 100 free and 100 back, Victoria Hove will swim the 50 
breast and 100 back, and Kevin Faulhaber will swim the 200 free and 100 
breast.

Before I go I have a message from our novice Lane 1 coach, Nicole, that she 
would like to pass along to all of you.  We will greatly miss her and Coach 
Ansel and I want you all to know how much we appreciate what a great job 
they've done with our Tsunamis!  Here's her message:

"I just wanted to send out a quick message before I leave Thursday night 
after the GCCC practice. I want to thank everyone for welcoming me as one of 
the PCST coaches! I have enjoyed my time with the team and regret I wasn't 
part of it longer. I had a lot of fun and hope you did as well! I will miss 
everyone and hope you keep me posted on the team's success as I take on the 
next step in my career, college and family life. - Nicole Y Fitzgerald"

Hopefully I'll have some great updates to pass along to you again soon!

Catch the Wave!

Jonathan

Hello Tsunami Family!

I just got back from a gorgeous Sunday afternoon driving down the coastline 
to Saint Joe Beach with my golden retriever, Buffett........while listening 
to Jimmy Buffett of course.  :)   What a gorgeous secluded beach that is!  
Anyway, I've got some PCST business to go over followed by a few personal 
questions I have for you.  You certainly do not have to read the personal 
stuff at the end if you do not like.  I'm only using the team email for a 
few personal reasons because besides all of you I really don't know anyone 
here yet and was hoping somebody could help me with a couple things.

Before I get into anything......if somebody has had trouble reaching me at 
the coachjonathan@panamacityswimteam.com address on the team website it's 
because we are having complications with getting that email forwarded to my 
hotmail account.  We're figuring it out now but if you have not heard from 
me after sending an email to that account, that's why.

Okay.......team stuff........just as a reminder, there is no GCCC practice 
on Monday 17th.  Practice will be at Frank Brown Park only tomorrow.  The 
rest of the week is a normal schedule except there is no Saturday practice 
at all due to the Master's Long Course meet (which some of you may even be 
participating in).  Although this is not our meet, I am looking for any 
volunteers to help them set up the meet on Saturday morning.  There is no 
obligation, but I would think it would be a nice gesture to help them and 
the good people at Frank Brown Park in their first big meet.  If you are 
interested then let me know and I'll put you in touch with Sue Cottrill 
because she would be a great person to talk to about that meet.

Also, I'm proud to announce that Coach Mark Broersma will be re-joining the 
PCST coaching staff again beginning Monday, July 24th.  He will primarily be 
working with Bronze/Silver swimmers at Gulf Coast and I can't wait for him 
to begin! As promised, here is an idea of what the fall training schedule 
will be like.  Yes, there are changes, but they are great for the team!  
First, as I have said to as many of you as possible, I will be taking over 
the Gold Group completely once Ansel leaves.  However, I cannot coach at two 
locations at once, so all Gold practices will be coached by me and held at 
Frank Brown Park from 6:00-8:00 every evening.

I have received a very positive response from my coaching with the Gold 
swimmers in my first month and am looking forward to bringing a portion of 
the team together by combining the Gold practices.  Not only will the 
swimmers be coached by me and have a consistently planned and organized 
training schedule (which results in VERY fast swimming), they will become 
closer as a team again instead of being separated.  (The swimmers have also 
expressed a strong interest in this and have actually already begun training 
together on their own, sometimes following me from practice to practice).  I 
am very excited about building that group up and helping those swimmers 
establish and reach goals they never even imagined!  I would also like to 
thank Ansel for getting them excited about their swimming all summer long 
too!

For those of you who may be frightened by driving out to Frank Brown Park, 
it's really not as bad as you think.  If you live in Panama City or the 
southern part of Lynn Haven it's no more than 30 minutes.  If you live in 
northern Lynn Haven then you can take 77 across that bridge, go down 388, 
turn left on 79 and left on back beach road where FBP will show up VERY 
quickly on your left.  That trip is no more than 30 minutes too and escapes 
the perceived traffic of Hathaway Bridge (which is actually only bad on the 
East-Bound road from 4:30-6:00 which won't affect you if you're heading 
West).  Also, I would encourage families to use car pools to take kids to 
practice.  There isn't a team in this world that doesn't use car pools since 
we know how hectic your family schedule can get and we know gas prices 
aren't as friendly as we'd like either.

The bottom line though is that I plan on providing coaching for that Gold 
group like they've never seen.......something that would be worth driving an 
hour for!!  (Man that sounds cocky.....that's supposed to sound positive, 
not egotistical!)   :) 

However.........I have certainly not forgotten about my precious Bronze and 
Silver swimmers who are the real base of this team!  :) 

PCST will be offering Bronze and Silver training at both locations.  It is 
my goal to recruit as many new families to both locations as possible.  Gulf 
Coast practices will be from 7:00-8:30 and Novice/Bronze level swimmers will 
most likely be practicing from 7-8.  I am working on completing my coaching 
staff for that location, and it's going to be a great one!  Although GCCC 
will be the main center for developing our Bronze and Silver level swimmers, 
I would still encourage families to check out the new beach pool because 
it's a tremendous facility!  Once you see it, you may even want to consider 
buying an annual famliy pass to show our support for the facility.  We just 
won't have much lane space available for Bronze/Silver swimmers out there, 
so GCCC will be where those groups will do the most growing, and 
occassionally we will combine them so the kids get to know each other and 
become closer even if they train at separate pools.

At Frank Brown Park, I am looking into getting lane space from 4:30-6:00 for 
our Bronze/Silver swimmers.  This would allow those swimmers to have an 
earlier practice and be coached by me.  However, as of right now we only 
have lane space available from 6:00-8:00, which would mean I would be 
getting a new qualified coach to work with the Bronze/Silver swimmers while 
I coach the Gold and High School level swimmers at FBP.  I'll let you know 
when I know.

I am also working very hard to recruit lots of new great families to the 
team and could certainly use your help!  Our board has created a beautiful 
flyer and we have printed 500 copies of it.  I've begun passing out flyers 
at Frank Brown Park, Gulf Coast C.C. and have spoken to families with 
children in high level Red Cross lessons.  I also plan to put a PCST 
representative with flyers at as many school open houses around Bay County 
as possible.  If you are interested and know the dates of your school's open 
house, please let me know.  Also, if you have friends and other families who 
you think may be interested in joining PCST and you would like to get some 
flyers to hand out to them, let me know.  Finally, if you have a business or 
location where you think you would like to post a PCST flyer, please let me 
know and I'll get one to you.  I would love to really grow this team and 
provide a great positive swimming experience to the entire county, so all 
help would be greatly appreciated!

Moving on......here's the coaching schedule for the week.

Jonathan (Mon. Gold and Siilver at FBP, Tues. all at FBP, Wed. Silver at 
GCCC and leaving for one last trip to Clemson Thurs-Sun.)
Ansel (Tue. and Wed. Gold at GCCC, Thurs. Gold and Silver at GCCC)
Dom (Mon. Bronze at FBP, Tues. Silver at GCCC)
Nicole (Tues. through Fri. Bronze at GCCC)
Carl (Wed, Thurs. all at FBP, Fri. with Coach Len from Emerald Coast 
Swimming at FBP)
Mike Faulhaber will also be helping out on Friday at GCCC due to just about 
every coach and their mother being out of town, haha!

Real quick.......congratulations to Laura Kearns who got 2nd overall and won 
the Overall Female Award at the Deerpoint Lake 1 mile open water race this 
past Saturday!  Congrats Laura!

Okay......on to personal stuff real quick.  First, would any of you be 
interested in taking care of my puppy (Buffett) while I am away at the 
Southeastern Swimming Championships from Thurs. 27th-Sun. 30th?  I could 
place him in a kennel, but would rather he be with a loving family I trust 
while I am gone.  He's a 1 year old golden retriever who loves to play and 
exercise!  Also, I am looking for a good reliable roommate to move in with 
me.  If anyone knows of a person or family member who may be looking for a 
good place to live, please contact me.  I currently live by myself in a nice 
and new 3 bed 2.5 bath townhouse on Middle Beach Road.  Rent is affordable 
but we can discuss details if you contact me.  Finally, I currently do not 
have a washer or dryer for my townhouse and am looking to buy used ones.  In 
addition to checking ads in the paper I thought I'd ask all of you of you in 
case someone is looking for an excuse to buy new ones and sell me their old 
ones.  :)   It would be a win win situation for all, haha.

You can call me at my home 249-9229 or email me to be in touch.  Hope you 
all have had a great weekend!

Catch the Wave!

Jonathan

Hello Tsunamis!!

I have returned home from Alabama with great news about the Tsunamis!!  It 
seems like a lot of people here in Panama City and PC Beach are really 
"Cathing the Wave" because we had 32 swimmers represent PCST this weekend at 
the Dothan Waterworld Classis meet in Dothan, AL.  We also had 3 swimmers 
represent us well in Pensacola at the CLUB Makos long course meet!

I am very proud to say that every opposing team at the meet felt the 
powerful force Tsunamis can bring when they come together as a 
team.........guess what???.......we brought home the First Place Visiting 
Team trophy from the meet!!!  We finished ahead of many great teams, 
including ocal friendl rivals Blue Water Bay Barracudas, Emerald Coast 
Aquatics, Maverick Aquatics and Area Tallahassee Aquatic Club.  It was a 
fantastic meet for everyone involved and it went just about as great as I 
could have hoped.  I wanted as many Tsunamis to go as possible and we had 
one of the highest turnouts in years!  We came home with the 1st place team 
trophy with only 1/3 of our team competing in the meet.  Imagine how great 
we could be if we got 2/3 or more to race at a meet!

I saw a lot of great things this weekend that promoted great team 
comraderie, Tsunami spirit, and positive competitiveness.  Hopefully each 
and every swimmer on our team is proud of their accomplishment because 
winning a meet is no easy task!  It was my hope that they all felt like they 
were a part of something bigger this weekend.........something 
special........and we needed each and every one of them to reach that goal.  
Between the fast swimming, Tsunamis cheering for other Tsunamis even if they 
didn't know them well yet, good team stretches together, everyone wearing 
their PCST shirts on the right days, and one heck of a fun Saturday night 
outing at the Waterworld water park.......I'd say it sure was a great 
experience for everybody.  I know I sure had a great time!  :) 

In addition to the team trophy, we had a few swimmers go home with some 
hardware of their own too.  Congrats to these swimmers for dominating their 
age gropus!

Mikey Faulhaber (2nd place trophy) 10 and Under Boys
Kevin Faulhaber (1st place trophy) 13 and 14 Boys
Drew Bronnenberg (2nd place trophy) Senior Boys

Hello Tsunamis!

I am up and running again!  I've moved into my new townhouse and am very 
excited about it.  Well, I've kinda moved......no furniture yet, but that'll 
only be for a couple weeks.  :)   Just wanted to give you an update about the 
Dothan meet and a couple other things real quick.

First, for all of you who were at practice on Monday, I want to apologize 
for the confusion at the beginning of the practice.  Ansel was running late 
to practice and I heard we had 34 swimmers show up that day!  When I heard 
that I think my exact words were "HOLY COW!!"  I take it as a great sign 
when we have that many swimmers showing up for practice on a day when a lot 
of teams would cancel practice entirely due to a lack of expected 
attendance.  Well done Tsunamis!

Okay, on to Dothan.  All of you should have the meet information I sent last 
week.  In addition to that, I have the warm up times for each session.

Friday arrive at 4:30 so we can all get a good spot to sit together as a 
team.  Warm ups for PCST will begin at 5:15 and the meet begins at 6:00.

Saturday a.m. session (all 10 & unders and 11&12 boys) arrive 7:00 to 
stretch, warm ups at 7:15, meet begins 8:00.

Saturday p.m. session (11&12 girls and all 13 and up swimmers) arrive 11:00, 
warm up not before 11:15, meet begins no earlier than 12:00

Sunday a.m. session (same morning ages) arrive 7:00 to get a spot as a team 
and stretch, warm ups begin 7:45 for PCST and meet begins 8:00