RESL Championships 2011

I say it every year taking the risk of repeating myself, but when an event is this good, I really don't mind. Few meets bring the team together the way RESL does, no other meet has swimmers race up to 16 events in just two and half days and no other meet requires as much parent support. And although exhausted, everyone was very excited at the team's performance during the weekend. I feel that it was the perfect end to the best swim season ever. Jeff and I got to watch our swimmers swim honest races (over 370), each athlete stripped down to the basic feelings of determination, physical discomfort and a boost of self-worth. What a meet!

Happy Marlins

42 swimmers participated in this year’s Championships in El Cerrito competing in a total of 370 races.  Although our numbers were not as high as in years past, we definitely made up for it in quality. Knowing that we were very light in the younger age groups, I made the decision to have all our swimmers enter 2 races instead of the usual one race on Friday evening. I think it paid off, the kids had the training to handle the extra load and the 83% best times over the weekend confirmed that. Again this year the team finished 3rd, but a lot closer to 2nd!

Waiting for the relays.

The Marlins were the most improved team with 83% best times.  We received 8 disqualifications, half from last year and well below the teams’ average for the meet. 29 swimmers improved their time standard with a total of 15 new "B" times, 38 new “A” times, 41 “JO” times (20 in 2010), 11 “FW” times (12 in 2010), 2 “PRT” times (2 in 2010) and 1 Sectional time (0 in 2010).

Most amazingly, 28 team records were broken in one single meet, congratulations to Coco Berkenfield, Monica Sears, Ava Salmi, Alicia Vogelaar, Annalise Schlafer, Kate Claman, Tyler Welty, Jack Berkenfield, Ian Chow-Ise, Anton Zahradnik, Aidan Cumming, Jared Sears, Alex Claman, Tommy Davis and Justas Reskevicius. All 15 swimmers helped break 5 relay records and 23 individual records.  In addition, Tyler Welty matched a RESL meet record in the 13-14 100 breaststroke.

Overall, the kids improved their times by a total of 1148 seconds, almost double last year’s improvement. That's 19 minutes shaved off their entry times ... I don't really know how to explain this, but I could get use to it! Out of the 42 Marlins swimmers participating, 40 helped score points for their team. Our swimmers did a great job and Jeff and I are certainly proud of their achievements.

I have posted the results (swimmer / meet) at the pool and the ribbons are filed in the team folders. You can stop by the pool anytime during business hours and the lifeguards will be happy to bring the folders out for you.

Team Meeting

Special thank you to all the families for doing their part in helping run the meet. To Jackson Miller for supporting his team and helping the coaches on Sunday. There are some great pictures available for download on the team’s website (you do need to log-in). Lester Ng took some very nice pictures of the kids, it's a different look at our sport and certainly a break from the usual yellow cap sticking out of the water. Click here to take a look at them. Thank you to all the parents who participated in the Friday morning breakfasts at Drake over the summer, who again helped put together a great Doughnut Breakfast and a fantastic team BBQ, who were generous enough to give great gifts for the coaches, who take the time to give me feedback on the team, who counsel and assist me when needed. Again, thank you all for giving Jeff and I the opportunity to work with your children.

Marc

110

Unlikely title for a blog post and unlikely number to sum up our 2010/2011 season. This is certainly a reductive view of the team, but this number is also representative of the transformation the team is going through. 110 team records broken over the last season is quite an achievement.

Thanks to Coco Berkenfield, Lani Kamler, Lizzie Ferguson, James Beard, Monica Sears, Ava Salmi, Annalise Schlafer, Alicia Vogelaar, Jack Berkenfield, Aidan Cumming, Ian Chow-Ise, Anton Zahradnik, Jared Sears, Tyler Welty, Kate Claman, Emma Jones, Justas Reskevicius, Isabella Salmi, Alex Claman and Tommy Davis. These 19 swimmers are helping to create a momentum that has helped the rest of their teammates perform at a higher standard.

Although this season we have seen fewer of our swimmers participating in competition, the ones who did ended up swimming more races, producing faster performances and doing it "cleaner" since we only collected 38 disqualifications out of 2800 races (46 out of 3000 during the 2009/2010 season).

USA Swimming publishes a virtual club championship that is updated once a day during the season. Based on that ranking, the Marlins are certainly improving.

Season (9/1 to 8/31)	Score	National Rank (PCM/Total # of Teams)
2003 - 2004	8328	1889/2463
2004 - 2005	6788	2036/2455
2005 - 2006	8480	1986/2189
2006 - 2007	9772	1940/2454
2007 - 2008	9646	1964/2462
2008 - 2009	26175	1467/2483
2009 - 2010	30932	1368/2553
2010 - 2011	45923	1048/2611

We have a tough job ahead of us this coming season. We still need to build on this great momentum while dealing with the pool remodel. I feel confident that coaches and swimmers are up to the task. But this will not happen unless we also get a lot of parent support.

Moving forward, we now have three certified stroke and tun judges on the team thanks to Judy Ferguson, Theresa Kamler and David Claman. But we need a lot more for two reasons, job sharing will make the task a lot easier and it will be a lot cheaper to swim at meets as the team will get fined $100 per day we cannot provide enough judges for the number of swimmers entered - this fine would be shared by everyone entered in the meet.

I would like to take our team to a place where we can run sanctioned meets. It would be better for the swimmers as their times would be added to the USA swimming database and with our new pool, we will have enough lanes to offer a quality meet. Next year, if we want to keep RESL in El Cerrito, we will need some parents to get trained in running the computer / Colorado timing system. Again, the more parents we have the easier it is to split jobs into smaller parts.

As our team becomes more competitive, my goal in this next season will continue to be welcoming to all levels and to provide all swimmers with the quality experience they have come to expect from the Marlins. I believe what makes the Marlins special is that all of our elite swimmers started at the beginning, in Groups 1 and 2, and this is why we will continue to foster a team that supports a strong foundation and love for swimming that will carry our younger swimmers through all the groups.