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.