Swimming News

AU SWIMMING & DIVING: Three Tigers head to World University Games - Opelika Auburn News

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:14 GMT

AU SWIMMING & DIVING: Three Tigers head to World University Games
Opelika Auburn News
Ohlgren earned her position on the USA National Team following a 400 Individual Medley victory at the 2008 USA Swimming US Open. ...

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Southeastern Swim Club plunges in for national meet - Indianapolis Star

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:58 GMT

Southeastern Swim Club plunges in for national meet
Indianapolis Star
The Southeastern Swim Club will be well represented at the upcoming USA Swimming National Championships and World ...

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Heavy On Talent Short On Water

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:45 GMT

Area swimmers are accustomed to sharing lanes at crowded club practices. (Preston Keres, The Washington Post)

Things could hardly be better for swimmers in the greater Washington region. Membership numbers rise year after year. Local clubs churn out talent and grow in national esteem. The region's thriving summer leagues are considered a national model.

But there is one problem.

The area is running out of water.

This is not news to all of the swim parents who stumble out of bed at 3:45 a.m. to shuttle their burgeoning stars to practices at 4:30 a.m., the only time lanes are available for many club teams. It is not news to coaches who scratch and claw for practice time at facilities that are decreasing lane rentals or charging higher rates.

And it is not news to age-group swimmers so accustomed to sharing lanes with six or seven others during workouts that, when they get to meets, they are all but incapable of following the black line in the middle of each lane. They swim, as they do during jam-packed practice sessions, down the right side and back on the left.

It is, in effect, swimming in a circle – precisely the route John Ertter, Potomac Valley Swimming's executive director often feels he is going when he seeks solutions to the strange water shortage in the District's suburbs, a region with dozens and dozens of pools.

“The problem is driven simply by our success,” Ertter said. “We probably have more pools in the greater Washington area than any part of the country. But because of the numbers, it still creates an imbalance . . . and it's going to get worse if nothing is done.”

Building new pools is not easy. Some problems are obvious: a lack of available real estate and premium land prices in one of the most expensive areas in the nation. There is this, too: 50-meter pools designed for only for competition bleed money regardless of where they are located, experts say, because they are so expensive to run.

Other apparent remedies, such as putting bubbles over the region's myriad existing outdoor pools, haven't caught on, in some cases because of neighborhood resistance.

The situation is dire, according to Mick Nelson, USA Swimming's club facilities development director who gives an annual seminar on building pools.

“You,” Nelson said about the greater Washington swimming community, “are disproportionately in peril.”

****

Back in 2001, swim coaches Christian Doud and Dan Jacobs thought it would be a great idea to form their own swim club after stints at York Swim Club in Chantilly. They expected it might be challenging to get swimmers, but the problem was where to put them.

With virtually no afternoon lanes available for rent throughout Fairfax County, Doud and Jacobs snatched up pre-dawn training times, often at too-small health and fitness centers with inadequate ventilation. Instead of after-school practices, the Arlington-based Machine Aquatics swimmers would train primarily before school.

“People like afternoon practices because kids stay healthy and get enough sleep,” Doud said. “Our team is actually the complete opposite. We have had to wedge in space wherever we can.”

Machine Aquatics is not alone. Dale Lewis hit an immediate roadblock when he opened Best Times Swim Club in Wheaton nearly three years ago: he found no lanes available in Montgomery County. Virtually all of the available pool time was reserved for the huge Rockville-Montgomery Swim Club, which has 1,800 members and first dibs on the county's public facilities.

So he secured three lanes at the District's Takoma Aquatic Center, capping his membership at 60 (he now has four lanes and 80).

“I have no options,” Lewis said. “If they decided they don't want to rent me lanes, I'm out of business.”

Even clubs that have been around for years, such as the 31-year-old Curl-Burke Swim Club, which has 15 locations around the region, struggle to accommodate increasing legions of swimmers.

“It's always an adventure,” said Pete Morgan, a Curl-Burke coach. “To try to put your business plan based on somebody else's availability is no easy thing . . . Since 1978, we've seen the rates of leases go up from $4 per lane per hour to as much as $30 per lane per hour.”

Potomac Valley Swimming includes 35 teams in Fairfax, Montgomery and Prince George's counties and the District of Columbia, making it geographically one of the smallest of the 59 regional governing bodies in the United States. Yet with more than 9,000 swimmers, it is the fifth-largest in membership.

Ertter speculates that the largest roadblock to starting a new club in the region is finding lanes in which to swim. Coaches say six swimmers per lane is considered about the limit for a decent practice session among older youths. Often, however, clubs train with more.

“If you're talking about young age-groupers, I've seen workouts where clubs probably have 20-30 kids in a lane,” Ertter said.

****

New pools open infrequently, and they are usually small. A handful of community pools have popped up in Fairfax County; the Germantown Indoor Swim Center in Boyds opened two years ago; and the Takoma Aquatic Center in Takoma Park opened in 2005.

Arlington, meantime, has been waiting for years for construction of a recreation center near the 14th Street bridge that would include a 50-meter competitive pool. Despite $50 million in bonds the county board made available in 2004, rising costs have stalled the project.

The proposed recreation center will contain a therapy pool to rent out for medical needs, a warm pool for kids and senior citizens, and a workout room filled with exercise machines and weights. Without such amenities, such a facility could not make money, Nelson said.

“It's sort of a catch-22,” said Erik Beach, an Arlington planner heading the Arlington project. “In order to make the facility viable, you have to have a mix of facilities.”

That requires a lot of space – and up-front money.

Though coaches, swim parents and officials have been beaten up, they haven't given up. Some still toss around the idea of putting plastic bubbles over outdoor pools, such as has been done at the Quince Orchard pool in Gaithersburg.

But paying for the bubbles, converting facilities that don't meet USA Swimming requirements and satisfying neighborhood concerns present roadblocks.

Lewis said he fantasizes about putting temporary pools in vacant lots every time he passes an old warehouse or closed-down store.

“With my situation, it's something that's stuck in my craw for quite a while,” Lewis said. Some clubs “are a lot bigger than I am, but I realize they are fighting the same battle.”

Croatian Championships: Duje Draganja, Monika Babok Finish Day One With Croatian Records

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:06 GMT

RIJEKA, Croatia, July 3. THE sprint 50 fly events featured record-breaking performances during the first day of long course meter swimming at the Croatian Championships held in Rijeka. Duje Draganj...

Garrett's Blog: Helping the Next Swimming Generation - Swimnetwork.com

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:45 GMT

Garrett's Blog: Helping the Next Swimming Generation
Swimnetwork.com
No matter who we are or what we do, we can all have a positive impact on the lives of those around us. This past April I was part of a USA Swimming counsel ...

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Michael Phelps v Milorad Cavic

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:39 GMT

Below, a commercial for the 2009 FINA World Championships: Phelps is THE STAR, and yes, Alain Bernard is a star in his own right, but the real showdown at the World Championships in Rome will be Phelps v Cavic. Globally,...

My Club Program Is Way Better Than Your Club Program By Chris_desantis [Blog Entry]

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:10 GMT

You know whats really been burning me up recently? Your club program. It was featured on floswimming in the last two years, and mine wasn't. That really makes me mad for one reason: my club program is way better than your program. Oh, I know you've had your successes. But lets be serious, your team is only a USA Swimming Gold Club, and my team is so amazing that they created the USA Swimming Diamond Club because it was that good. Can you beat that? We had a dual meet last week with Team Australia. They stopped scoring after the first event because we won by so much. This issue is really important to me because swimming for the best team in the country is my goal in life. Its going to open up all sorts of doors for me. Last week, President Obama called up my club coach and asked him what to do about North Korea. My coach said he was busy and that he would call Barack back when the long course season was over. My coach is incredibly awesome. One time he made eye contact with one of my teammates right before he swam and the kid immediately dropped 10 seconds in a fifty. Your coach is terrible and really overrated. The only reason people think he is good is because he has good swimmers, and they all came from another club before that Thats not all I have to get off my chest. I saw that your state's high school swimming has been featured on floswimming. What a joke. My state is the best state in the history of high school swimming. I looked at your state results. Did you know that my state's 12th place finisher in the 200 freestyle was way faster than your state's? Well now you do. Pwned. So why don't you crawl back into the hole you and your team/state came from and never appear again. In the meantime, I have a bone to pick with one Garrett McCaffrey. How could he not show up to our pool unannounced and uninvited? How rude!

NBC, Universal Sports to Provide Broadcast Coverage of 2009 ... - SwimmingWorldMagazine.com

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:04 GMT

NBC, Universal Sports to Provide Broadcast Coverage of 2009 ...
SwimmingWorldMagazine.com
NBC and Universal Sports will bring fans coverage of USA Swimming's biggest domestic event of the year when stars of the 2008 Olympic Team head to ...
Big Red Dog: High School IdiocySwimnetwork.com
USA Swimming Announces List of Suit Manufacturers Available at ...SwimmingWorldMagazine.com
10 Questions to be Answered in IndySwimnetwork.com

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NBC, Universal Sports to Provide Broadcast Coverage of 2009 ConocoPhillips USA Swimming National Championships

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:03 GMT

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado, July 3. NBC and Universal Sports will bring fans coverage of USA Swimming's biggest domestic event of the year when stars of the 2008 Olympic Team head to Indianapolis for ...

World University Games, Water Polo: Day Two Competition Complete

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:32 GMT

BELGRADE, Serbia, July 3. DURING the first day of men's water polo preliminary competition, and the second day overall for water polo at the World University Games, eight matches took place. Franc...

Andrew Lauterstein Breaks Commonwealth Record

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:00 GMT

MILAN, Italy, July 3. ANDREW Lauterstein has finalized race preparations for the World Championships in Rome by breaking the Commonwealth and Australian record for the 100m butterfly at the Giorgio Ar...

College Recruit Rankings Profile: Five-Star Samantha Tucker, Class of 2010

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:43 GMT

PHOENIX, Arizona, July 3. SAMANTHA Tucker, a five-star prospect from the Class of 2010, begins another series of Swimming World College Recruit Rankings Profiles that will appear on this site in the ...

Coach Steve Bultman Talks About Underwater Pullouts for Breaststroke

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:29 GMT

PHOENIX, Arizona, July 3. THE underwater pullout is a key component for a successful breaststroker, and on the Texas A&M University women's swim team, Coach Steve Bultman makes sure all of the bre...

USA vs. Europe: A More Fitting Dual Meet

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:22 GMT

Guest editorial by John Craig PHOENIX, Arizona, July 3. EVIDENTLY there are talks being held about the possibility of a USA vs. Europe dual meet in the near future. The U.S. had previously taken on...

For Old Georgetown, It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:05 GMT

Eight-year-old Megan Bull makes peanut butter sandwiches last Friday at the Old Georgetown Pool. This summer the swim team started making sandwiches each week to donate to Martha's Table in Washington. (Bill Oram/The Washington Post)

The sandwiches piled up quickly Friday night. Stacks of two became stacks of four, which became stacks of eight, which then became little peanut butter and jelly fortresses before they were whisked away and wrapped up.

It was a lot of food to be sure. Twenty loaves of bread transformed into 340 sandwiches in little more than half an hour by energetic – and soaking wet – swimmers at the Old Georgetown Pool in Bethesda, who donated the meals to a group that feeds Washington’s poor.

The whole exercise was the brainchild of Janet Vissering, whose two kids swim for Old Georgetown, a team in the Montgomery County Swim League.

In past years, Fridays would be a day to indulge rather than donate. The team would spend about $700 each summer buying swimmers doughnuts as a reward for a week's worth of hard work. Vissering saw an opportunity to channel those funds in a different direction.

“We’re trying to promote a healthy lifestyle and healthy habits, and kids sitting here with doughnuts didn’t make that much sense,” Vissering said.

She knew of local schools making sandwiches during the school year for Martha’s Table, a not-for-profit agency in Washington that tries to distribute 2,500 sandwiches each day.

Vissering said that in Bethesda, one of Washington’s affluent suburbs, kids are often unaware of the extreme poverty in the area.

If the mission was to get kids thinking about helping out, it seems to have struck a chord.

“They understand they’re doing this for someone else,” parent Mariana Straathof said.

And to hear the swimmers tell it, they really do.

“I just think it’s really great how we can help the community,” said 16-year-old Andrew Germunder.

“You’re helping instead of getting something for yourself,” said Evan Connolly, 11.

“I just really like peanut butter and jelly and it’s great to make them for someone else,” said Camille Hoffman Delette, 10.

And it’s not just that the kids are learning about community service, said Emily Cavanagh, a 15-year-old swimmer. She said the ritual of sandwich building is also good for team building.

“I think it’s really great,” she said. “There’s lots of kids. You sit there and goof around with your friends and make sandwiches.”

Typically the team members make the sandwiches right after practice on Fridays, but last week they pulled double duty. They combined to make 200 sandwiches in the morning, but that evening was the team’s annual pasta dinner fundraiser. So Vissering , who got $300 from the team to launch the program, bought more bread and PB&J and set them out on tables.

When a thunderstorm erupted, sopping swimmers piled inside and got to work. They slipped on gloves for two reasons: to be sanitary and keep the sandwiches from getting soggy.

The kids worked with the efficiency of a trained assembly line. One girl slathered strawberry jelly onto a line of bread slices, while the girl next to her did the same with peanut butter.

Amid the mayhem, Vissering said, “We rise to the occasion.”

The team's exuberance and efforts help pick up some of the slack for Martha's Table, which sees a sharp decline in its donations during the summer.

“We have a fairly large group during the school year,” said Dominick Musso, director of facilities and food programs at Martha’s Table. “We have a much smaller group (in the summer). For example, typically during the summer we’re more reliant on churches and corporations than we would be on schools.”

While some of the kids said they definitely miss getting doughnuts on Fridays, nobody said they wanted to get rid of making sandwiches.

The success of the Old Georgetown Pool’s sandwich workforce has Vissering and other parents hoping that the idea spreads to other pools and that more summer groups get on board with the idea.

“It’s a wonderful thing for us if that comes to fruition,” Musso said.

Bridlewood To Celebrate Fourth With A Bang

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:00 GMT

The first Firecracker Relays, a fundraiser for the Prince William Health Systems Foundation, takes place Saturday. (Haraz N. Ghanbari, The Associated Press)

You can credit it to the spirit of the season — that's summer swim season, mind you — but one local summer swim team is giving back.

The Bridlewood Bridalwaves, a team in the Prince William Swim League, will celebrate the Fourth of July with its first Firecracker Relays, a fundraiser for the Prince William Health Systems Foundation. The relays will involve teams from across the league and organizer Scott Deibler said he expects about 700 kids to participate. The goal: To raise $3,500 at one meet.

Deibler said Bridlewood wanted to organize an event that incorporated all 24 of the PWSL teams — and he said only those that already had meets scheduled won't participate — and doing it to benefit a local charity was extra incentive.

“Every team is in the county and that’s an obvious place every team in the county can get behind donating to,” Deibler said.

Foundation spokesman Ken Collins said the group's primary mission is to provide healthcare for people who can't afford it, including the homeless in Prince William County.

“We're really excited that out of the charities out of our community that they did choose us,” Collins said.

The foundation aids the Prince William Community Health Center, as well as about a half dozen more clinics throughout the area. Last year it donated $150,000, in addition to a $10 million campaign for the Health Center.

The meet starts at 7:45 a.m. on Saturday and Deibler said he expects it to run through about 11:45 a.m. Twenty events will take place, with two heats in each event. Admission is free and money from concessions and T-shirt sales will go directly to the foundation, he said, because a local business covered the costs of the meet.

Is your team also doing something cool for charity? Let us know in the comments section of this story or post it on your team page.

WHAT: ConocoPhillips 2009 USA Swimming National Championships and ... - thepaper24-7.com

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:32 GMT

WHAT: ConocoPhillips 2009 USA Swimming National Championships and ...
thepaper24-7.com
"I have to focus on myself and focus on swimming my own race." Bretscher will compete in next week's ConocoPhillips 2009 USA Swimming National Championships ...
Questions to be Answered in Indy: Peirsol's Prognosis and Hoff's HopeSwimnetwork.com

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Professional Swim League? By Thescreamingviking [Blog Entry]

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:15 GMT
Recently, the SCAQ blog has made a couple of posts calling for us to consider pushing for a professional swim league. We are now in the dawn of the professional swimming athlete, tech suits, and more importantly, the age of Michael Phelps. We are getting the press. I feel that we have reached the point where we are getting many of the negatives of being a premier sport, but we haven’t quite capitalized on all of the positives. Brent Rutemiller at Swimming World recently made the case that there has never been a better time than now to take the plunge. A professional swim league that embraces suit technology could be the perfect way to keep the Olympics and our traditional system intact and pure, while allowing the suit companies to innovate and keep the sport fresh and growing. Who says we can’t have meets that don’t follow FINA rules? The high schools have been operating that way for years. It would not surprise me if the NFHS continued to allow tech even if FINA goes back to permeable with length restrictions. So what if we were to host a meet where the times wouldn’t count as traditional world records? Why couldn’t we add the 50’s of the strokes and underwater fly kicking as events without pressuring FINA to add it to their meets? This honestly could let FINA off the hook regarding suits, and give us a way to resolve the issues that might come up with the looming decision on whether or not to let records set in technology stand. It would not have to be done with a spirit of defiance… It could be something completely separate from the way we currently do things, but it could be done in the interest of enhancing and promoting our traditional system. We now have hubs of post-college excellence in teams like Club Wolverine, North Baltimore, Mecklenburg and the Race Club. Why not have suit company sponsored training sites with sponsored coaches leading them? Team TYR and Team Speedo could have a whole new meaning. They could set up a college-style system of dual meets and a championship, or even a system of invites for pro athletes similar to the Grand Prix series that would not interfere with our current club system. They could keep it light and fun, and give pro athletes a way to take an exciting detour during the season and generate income to keep their traditional swim careers progressing. I would personally buy a ticket to watch Ian Crocker put on a tech suit and put Lochte and Hill Taylor to shame with some serious fly kicking. College or high school format duals would be fun. Eight man 50 free shootouts are a blast. Anything that makes swimming more spectator friendly could be fair game. Come on, guys. Let’s get creative. Just like butterfly spawned from people innovating their breaststroke technique, a great thing could come out of suit companies innovating their products. Let’s help write a mission statement for this thing and come up with a way to end the fighting over tech. Let’s allow it to bring our sport to a new and exciting place while simultaneously ending the debates over the purity of the sport. In the comments section below, I want to know what you would like to include in the mission statement, format and rules for a professional league. Let’s bust the door to the house of ideas wide open. We could create a real solution.

University of Toronto Launches High Performance Swimming Centre, Hires John Rodgers

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:38 GMT
TORONTO, Ontario, Canada, July 2. THE training environment for Canada's top swimmers receives a huge boost today, as the University of Toronto confirms the establishment of a High Performance Swimming...

Rice Swimmers Post Top Team GPA Among All NCAA Division I Swim Programs In 2009

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:36 GMT
HOUSTON, Texas, July 2. THE Rice Owls posted the highest team grade point average for all Division I swimming & diving programs, the Collegiate Swim Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) announce...