Monday, August 10, 2009

Aug 8th,2009 @ 12:36p (HST)

All,

Thank you all La Grande Swim Club members for your support this past week. It was incredible the support we felt from home! Matt had a great meet, breaking two IES records(unofficially), 2 first places, 2 seconds, a fourth, and a sixth, all personal best times.

He also won the Open Water Swim in Waimea Bay and got a high point award. It meant a lot to him and our family to feel like you all cared and were supportive of him.

It sounds like LGSC had a great meet. Congratulations to all of the kids for their great swims! Also, thanks to all of their parents who helped make the meet happen.

Thanks again!
Kelly Cook

Oregon Trail Invitational-Aug 2009

LGSC Parents/Swimmers:

Thanks to all of you who swam or helped out with the Oregon Trail meet here this weekend. Hosting a meet takes a lot of work from a lot of people and we had many step up this weekend to make the meet run smoothly.

Thanks especially to Karen Clay and Lynn Tovar for running the meet computer and dealing with things like cords being pulled out in the middle of an event, the computer shutting down because it was hot, etc.

Thank you to Rob McNeil and Tajah McDermott for running our great timing system. The timing system was purchased a few years ago with fundraising and a generous grant from the Grande Ronde Hospital foundation. It takes knowledge to set up and run the system properly, but the results of accurate timing and a great timing board for everyone to view makes the meet easier to follow.

Janet Hume-Schwartz served as our Chief Timer and kept all of the timers on task and the timing area very organized.

Nicki Ebel was outstanding at recruiting many helpers to make food for our hospitality room and keep the officials, workers and timers fed, watered and happy.

Darren Dutto did a nice job announcing when he wasn't swimming, showing the kids that an old guy can still swim too.

We have several certified officials who worked the meet, including Shalem O'Rourke, who coordinated all of our officials and training of officials.

Dave Felley and Nicki Ebel served as stoke and turn judges.

We also had several other parents on deck getting observation time toward their stroke and turn official certifications, including Karen Clay and Becky Mullarky.

Lia Spiegel (Abby and Dan Felley's mom) took over our snack shack, which is an important fundraiser for the team. She kept some popular items we have served in the past and added some new items to the menu, and worked hard to make it all come together. My kids enjoyed the finger jello.

Shalem O'Rourke put together our heat sheets and does a beautiful job with these.

Emily Insko did a lot of behind the scenes work (like make sure the heat sheets got copied and all of the teams paid us) as well as worked the heat sheet table.

Sandy Smith worked tirelessly to organize the awards and get them all organized and labeled. She came up with a great idea to have embroidered towels for the high point winners. They had beautiful embroidery of a covered wagon. It was a usefull and wonderful gift to give our high point winners ask one of our high point winners to show you sometime (Dhara Chai McDermott,

Garren Dutto, Bryce Ebel or Allie Godfrey).

Chrystine Brown organized the little ones in our bullpen. The 8 and under swimmers were shuttled to their correct lanes and those events went off without any problems. We have been to other meets where our younger swimmers missed events because the host team's bullpen was not run properly. Missed events can lead to much disappointment and tears with the little ones and Chrystine made sure they all had a good experience at our meet.

Finally, our coaching staff of Joe Andrews, Jan Gillies and Chris Tritchka did a wonderful job with all of the swimmers throughout the summer and at our meet this weekend.

We also had many other volunteers who served as pool marshalls, timers or just helped post results. Every person who helped is much appreciated and really helped us to run a very organized, smooth, fun meet. If I mentioned you (or did not because I am running on not enough sleep), please give yourself a pat on the back. If you are interested in helping at future meets, please let me know and I will help you to find a job that you enjoy.

We are planning on hosting some smaller dual meets beginning this fall. We will schedule one a quarter. These will be a great opportunity for kids and parents to keep up and practice doing a swim meet. It is also an opportunity for those who are hesitant about competing to swim in a low pressure meet without any travel involved. The first dual is scheduled tentatively for October 10th.

I hope to see you at the LGSC annual meeting Monday, August 17th.
Corrine Dutto
LGSC meet director

Here is the last blog from the Western Zones Meet

--Yesterday was a long day, too long to have time to blog. Matt swam the 100 back and dropped 2 seconds and placed 2nd. It was a fast group of kids! Just 30 minutes later Matt swam the finals in the 100 free. He swam well and placed 6th, not his favorite swim. Then Matt swam the anchor leg of the 200 free relay. The IES Relay placed 4th. In the end IES also won the Sportsmanship Award for the whole meet!!

--Today Matt and Emily both swam the open water race at Wanauma Bay. This was a 1K race, and Emily's first and Matt's second open water race ever. Matt took first in his age group in 19 minutes and change! Em got overwhelmed(thinking about the sharks) and cut out of the race early. The Bay was gorgeous and after the race the IES team went and jumped off the cliff into the water. What a cool day! 5 days of swimming over.

Thanks for doing the blog.
Kelly

Saturday, August 8, 2009

08/0/09 11:26a (HST

Hanama Bay is definitely on our list of things to do if the Tropical Storm doesn't get to bad. Sunday thru Tuesday the weather is supposed to be pretty rough, so might have to wait till Wednesday.

Well, here is today's blog:
Today Matt had the 400 free, which hasn't typically been his best race. He went in to prelim's seeded 11th, I think.He dropped 10 seconds in prelims, swam a 4:19, another senior sectional cut. He ended up being seeded 1st in finals with a 4:19. We thought he had definitely swam his best race after that, but he had more for finals. He dropped 2 more seconds in finals, swam neck and neck with one of his best friends from Hood River, ended up first with a time of 2:17.

According to Joe, just off an IES record, but dropping 12 seconds in one day was still impressive!
He also swam the backstroke leg in the 200 IM relay, IES placed 4th.

Good luck to D.C. at the meet this weekend!
Kelly

Friday, August 7, 2009

August 06, 2009 9:32 PM (HST)

Matt doesn't really have access to a computer or time to use it. He is at the pool from 7 in the morning till 5 or 6, usually. The travel time to and from the hotel is too long for the team to travel back to the hotel to rest between prelims and finals.

If you want an idea of how Matt is feeling, here is my idea. He is not getting as much sleep as he would like, so he is tired but still feeling good. The pool is a bit warm, but is a typical long course pool. He is happy about his swim today, dropping all together 5 seconds today in his 200 free. I know he wanted to win that race, so he was happy he dropped time and got the IES record, but he would have liked to win. We don't get to talk to him much because he needs to cheer for his team or he is racing or cooling down or warming up.

Thats about it. Thanks so much for all of your support, that means a lot to him( and us).

He says good luck to Dominic and Travis, and hopes everyone has a good meet(and beats Pendleton).

Good luck for a good meet,(thanks for all of your work),
Kelly

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Aug 6th, 940p (HST)

Matt swam the 200 free today. In prelim's he dropped a second off his best time and ended up being seeded 6th in the finals. Because of that he was in an outside lane.

In the finals he dropped 4 seconds off his best time and swam a 2:01. This placed him second at Zones and broke another Inland Empire record. He was happy to have dropped so much time but he would have liked to win the race of course!

The boy who won the race stands over 6'3 at the ripe old age of 14.

Kelly