Spring Break

I hope everyone is enjoying their spring break and getting their "batteries recharged". It's almost time to get back in the water to get ready for the Long Course season. Our first meet is little more than a week away. The POW (Pool Open Water) meet in The Colony should be a blast. If you've never seen or participated in this sort of meet you're in for a surprise. It's a great time.

This sort of meet is a great opportunity for our swimmers to get exposed to a "new" and different facet of our sport. Open water swimming has been around for ever and ever....in fact, about 100 years ago open water events would bring in crowds in the tens of thousands to watch the swimmers race in all sorts of different venues. There were races around islands, point-to-point races, races across lakes between cities, and many other types of races. The prize money for the winners could be in the thousands of dollars with big corporations sponsoring the events. For example, the Wrigley's (chewing gum) sponsored a race to Catalina Island off the coast of CA with a $10,000 first prize. Then of course there were the large number of swims across the English Channel. Open water swimming was wildly popular "back in the day". There has been a resurgence of interest in open water swimming recently. The world championships last year in Rome provided us with some spectacular races with the USA winning several medals. USA Swimming has committed itself to promoting open water swimming with a goal of dominating this facet of the sport, like we do in the pool.
I hope to see several of our swimmers at the POW event next week. Please let me know if you have any questions.
See everyone back in the pool next week, March 29th.