Parent Information 

Please check your email or the bulletin board for weekly newsletters from Coach Jill.  If you are not receiving these emails - please sign up to get mail using the link on the left!  If you do not use email, please pick up a copy of the newsletter each week from the team bulletin board! Thanks!

Snapper Parents Meeting November 20 at 4:45 PM

Practice:
Practices are held in the evenings Monday thru Friday and for some swimmers Saturday mornings. Please refer to the practice schedule page for specific times. Practice is a time for the team members to improve their skills, learn new techniques and better their times. It’s also a time for them to get to know one another better and have fun. Please be sure to have the children at practices each day.

Meets:
YMCA regular season meets are held on Saturdays. USS meets and YMCA championships are often three day events beginning on Friday evening. For the list of up coming swim meets please refer ro the season calendar page. Start times for meets vary so check with coaching staff prior to the meet.

It is important that you have your child at the meet before the designated warm-up time for several reasons:

1. The first event the team swims is the Medley Relay and if your child is not present before the meet begins, he/she will be scratched from the event. The team can lose vital points if a swimmer is scratched from the roster.
2. Warming up is essential for athletic events of any kind. Swimmers perform better if he/she can loosen and warm up before the meet begins.
3. Team members are provided information regarding which races, race numbers and lanes that they are to swim in during that hour before the race.

Coaches put together the swim roster the day of the meet. Please inform the coaches if your child is NOT swimming in the meet no later than the morning of a race.

Volunteers:
In order to have a team and meets, many volunteers are needed. Being a volunteer in swim team related activities can get you involved with the swimmers, have fun and show support for the whole team.

Home and Away Meets:
We need Swim Team parents to participate at every swim meet. Each swim team must have timers, judges, ribbon writers and runners at every meet. There is always someone to explain how to do any of the needed jobs – nothing complicated! It’s a lot of fun and can be very exciting to be right down where the action is. And, most importantly, it does make the meet go faster! We ask that parents sign up for a minimum of three meets for any of the activities. We need parents to help make sure swimmers are close by and know which race they are in. We try to get them lined up a couple of races before theirs, particularly with the younger ones.

Here is a brief description of the jobs we must fill during all meets:

• Timers – Each lane has 2 timers (one from each team) who time the swimmers and report the average of the two times to the runner. Stopwatches provided.
• Head Timer – Collect times from timers.
  
• Runner – Collect times and DQ cards from head timer. 
  
• Official – Responsible for making sure proper stroke are swum and make sure starts, turns, finishes are legal. Stroke and Turn clinics are available. We need at least 2 volunteers since we need one at all times at all meets (this is a good job to split).
  
• Ribbon Writers – Write out the ribbons for swimmers.
  
• Snack Bar (Home meets) – 2 – 4 volunteers are needed to set up snack bar, sell goods and handle money.