Hello Mallard Families,

Once a year, the board hosts a meeting for the entire swim team. This is your opportunity to meet the board members and provide suggestions for next year's season.

• Annual Swim Team Meeting
• Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2018
• 7:00pm
• Neely Farm Clubhouse

Thank you to the families who completed the online survey. Based on the results and the overall swim team experience, we have asked Coach Madison to be the Head Coach for the 2018 Summer Season. Coach Madison has accepted and agreed to make some changes to the program based on the survey results.

Here are a few of the results. Please note, these percentages are the above average answers the top 2 choices out of 5.

What were your overall goals for participating in summer swim team? Please indicate how well they were achieved. (Nailed It and Pretty Well)

• Learned to swim               37.48% (52% said not applicable)
• Improve Technique           62.51%
• Friends                             81.26%
• Fun                                   87.50%

We did ask some specific questions about the swim team practice. Based on the survey, 75% of the parents prefer to keep the makeup practice in the afternoons as opposed to before swim team practice in the morning. With regards to the 6 & under practice, it was almost a draw between practice at 8:00am or 11:00am. We will review and finalize the practice schedule before the Parent Meeting in Feb/Mar 2018.

Based on your feedback, here are some things we will be doing differently next year:

• Have a parent volunteer as deck manager & asst. deck manager -- Coach Madison needs to watch the kids swim, cheer, take notes on swimmers, etc
• Have parent volunteers work at GT whether we are on the deck or not. Coaches cannot swim their events and manage the kids.
• Rotating swimmers' events. Maybe they swim they're best event and then rotate other events, so they have times for Tech, or we put them in a 3rd event -- exhibition
• Swimmers get rotated into the B relay. Swimmers on the A relay will still be picked based on times, but B relay swimmers will be rotated.
• Asst & Jr. coaches get in the pool to instruct swimmers. Madison stays on the pool deck to direct the coaches, assist with swimmers, and be more available for parents.
• Coach Madison will write a 4 day lesson plan to be given to the coaches on Sun evening to review, so they can implement on Mon morning.
• Applications for Coaches & Jr. Coaches will be available sooner. The goal is to have all the coaches hired by the Parent Meeting/Suit Fitting in late February/early March, so that everyone can meet the coaches.

We are still looking for a few volunteers. I agreed to work for the 2017 - 2018 swim season, so this is my last season. I would lie to work alongside someone this year to train to take over for the 2019 season. (You do not have to live in the neighborhood to be the Swim Team Coordinator.) Please contact me if you are interested. We still need volunteers for the Grill Coordinator, Events Asst, Volunteer Asst. It really does take a village to run a swim team, and we would really appreciate the extra help.

Thanks,

Beth Ostapiuk