Hello swim families,

Here we are, wrapping up the last week of school before the holidays! I can’t believe how quickly this year has seemed to fly by. We’re past the season's halfway mark and are now on the “competition” side heading towards our final meets and Championships in January. There are only THREE regular season meets left for the year - and one of those is our Hall County Championships! You’re going to see the practices continue to be very rigorous in the time that we’re together, but also, we’re going to start working on honing some specialized skills and further developing our strokes.

Here is some important information for this last week of regular season practice before the break:

1. PRACTICE SCHEDULE:

This week, we will have normal practice at our regular times and locations on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. We will NOT have practice on THURSDAY morning. Between our parent's night out event and a stressful schedule of midterms and finals, we want to ensure we end the season with strong grades.

Remember that HS students MUST pass 5 out of 7 classes, and MS students must pass 4 out of 6 to remain eligible and continue competing with the team. Finish the season strong!

2. PARENTS NIGHT OUT

Friday night, we will have our Parents Night Out event. This is a fundraiser for one of our swimmers, Jack Lowe, who is currently battling terminal Ewings Sarcoma. We’d love to have as many people as possible to turn out for this. Please share the flyer with your neighborhood Facebook pages, social media, friends, and co-workers. It will be a really fun night with many great activities planned. If you know someone who needs this time or would like to participate but the donation fees are too steep, please let us know, and we will work something out. We never want cost to keep us from providing a service to our community!

3. MEET SCHEDULE UPDATE:

For HS/Varsity swimmers, we have some important Meet Updates. We will be making the following changes:

• Saturday, December 16th - MEET CANCELED

We will NOT participate in the Holiday Eagle Invite this weekend in Canton. Instead, take this time to heal from various illnesses, spend time with your families and communities, and be ready to head into a strong back half of the season mentally!

• Saturday, January 13th - Woodward Winter Invite

We will travel to Woodward Academy rather than the Cherokee County Aquatic Center due to the timing of the meets.

• Thursday, January 25th - Marist Last Chance Invite - We will attend this meet, but it will only be open to qualifying athletes.

The next meet for ALL swimmers will be on Saturday, January 6th. We will host this meet, so be looking for more information about this coming soon!

4. HOLIDAY PRACTICE SCHEDULE:

We will have practice during the holiday break. Practices will be from 11 AM to noon at Frances Meadows. We have a lot of great things planned to help students get better and get conditioned, including some special clinic guests, so please plan to try to have your swimmer at these practices as much as they can! Remaining conditioned before our final meets is important!

The dates of the practices will be 12/18, 12/19, 12/20, 12/21, 12/27, 12/28, and 12/29.

Thank you all so much for your dedication to this sport, this team, and these swimmers! We appreciate you all more than you know, and I can assure you that we do NOT take the opportunity to coach your child for granted!

Happy Holidays (only one more early wake-up this year!)

Coach Goodwin

P.S. Watch out for information on informal holiday “hangouts” for both Middle and High School swimmers over the next few weeks! We’ll send out more information via email and on the team GroupMe! Think movie dates, gingerbread house contests, and more…