6/13 - Hill City 487 Oakwood 151

Meet Recap
Most of you, have already seen the score of the meet, although it always nice to win the meet, the score isn't the most important thing this time of the season. What is important is what each swimmer did in the water and how do we will improve over the next few weeks. The prizes are all at the end of the season.

Overall, I was very impressed with the way we swam. We swam much better than I thought we would and there were many pleasant surprises. There were many swimmers who I now have raised my expectations for this season, because they swam so well in this first meet. The key is to make as many practices as possible and keep improving. Set your own goals on how you want improve.

Remember, a week from tonight we will be making the trip to Falling River Country Club, another chance to get better and faster.

See you at the pool.

Coach Hank

6/27 - Hill City 479 Falling River 157

Good meet! My goal for this meet was to get swimmers into new events and see what they could do. Also by swimming alot of different events it will help me fill in my best times chart and that will help the team when we get to the end of the season meets. What we found out was that many of the swimmers could do other events and do them well. I feel like we used our "bye week" well and made some very good improvements. Nice job but we have to keep it up.

We also set a record for the least DQ's ever in a meet. From all the swims in the evening we had a total of 7 DQ's - amazing. Keep that up too.

7/5 - Hill City 498 FAST 166

This evening's performance was very impressive. I thought the meet would be quite a bit closer than it was, because their team size is very close ours and I moved quite a few swimmers around. What I didn't account for was all the REAL fast swimming that everyone would be doing. There were many improvements in time, and more importantly, I could see everyone working on what asked - swimming longer.
The only widespread negative I saw was in streamlining and coming up swimming off the start and walls. Many swimmers weren't doing a very good job of "working" underwater and on their break out. (coaching point coming) The easiest way to drop time, is to streamline and kick, and have a good first stroke. You can drop seconds just by being tighter off the wall or block. Don't worry we will be working on it.

7/11 - Hill City 364 Boonsboro 133

Congratulations everyone. It was a nice meet, but I feel bad that not everyone got to swim their last event. Although there were not many best times (too hot, too dehydrated), I still felt like it was a nice meet for many of you. I saw alot of the things we have been working on in practice, improved in your races. Keep up the good work and keep working to improve, because we will have the biggest and the best to finish against.

7/18 - Hill City 401 Peakland 312

After the meet, Coach Greg of Peakland was very complimentary of our team. He said he thought he'd be able to beat us in certain age groups but we showed alot of balance in our age groups and no weaknesses. Coach Greg is right! Age groups that I thought we'd struggle in came through like champions, we took many races that I thought we wouldn't. Great job everyone, great RACING!!! We also kept the trend of steadily improving, I saw many things that we have been working on, improved in many of your RACES.

That's enough of the good stuff, here's what we need to work on.
A. I thought the people that came back from vacation last week struggled a little, so I'm anticipating much better swims Monday after a week in the water. It is amazing how quickly swimmers lose the feel of the water and it only takes a few practices to get it back. I am counting everyone to swim better on Monday.
B. We RACED very well but we still had problems swimming straight. No lines on the bottom of the pool is our home pool advantage, but some of you really struggled staying straight off the walls and in the middle of the lane. Luckily, Monday there are lines to follow, it should help.
C. Even though Wildwood only beat Peakland by 21 points, they present match up problems for us. Their team is loaded with many year-round swimmers and they will win many events against us. In those events, we must finish second and third to not lose that event. Hence the problem, we need to find depth between today and Monday. So my question to you again is who is going to step up and win those close RACES?

Get excited, this is what good competition is all about.... to push yourself to be your best. So far we have 67 swimmers with A meet qualifying times. It would be great to add a few more entries to our roster this Monday night. It should be loud, crazy, and the environment will be perfect to do it.

7/25 - Hill City 386 Wildwood 316

What’s that spell…. UNDEFEATED !!

I was a little worried the way started the meet: our first 2 relays were DQ’ed , a couple of swims that we should have won we didn’t, a couple of people complaining about how tired they were from being in camp all day, a few more saying how hot it was… Not the way I like to start a meet. The team managed to hang tough and after 36 events we were ahead slightly. Then we had a few swimmers broke through and knocked off swimmers from Wildwood that seeded ahead of them…I felt much better then. After that point it seemed like we started building momentum into the relays. As most parents will tell you these meets are long, there are many things that can happen over the course of the meet. The key is not to lose focus and even in the meet try to learn from your experiences so the next race will be better.

A few areas that we really need to work on.
FOCUS !!! We had 6 people get DQ’ed for false starts and there should have been more. We had four swimmers come up swimming the wrong stroke, five one hand touches on turns/finshes, three backstrokers turnover on the finish. By this time of the year these are mistakes that shouldn’t be happening.
Other things that need to be worked are the details, the little things. Not breathing off the start or turn, finishing hard to the wall, streamline and kick off the walls. We can still do so much better.

Congratulations to all the Hill City swimmers for an undefeated dual meet season. As I said in our team meeting, it is really hard to be undefeated in any league in any sport, but it exceptionally hard to be undefeated in summer league because you never know who will be on vacation. Against FAST we were missing 38 swimmers, against Boonsboro we were missing 21 swimmers, against Peakland we were missing 24 swimmers, against Wildwood we were missing 12 swimmers. In many meets it is a numbers game and because of the way swimmers have stepped up and filled in we have won that game. The second thing that has happened this season is how much our swimmers have improved. Coach Greg, from Peakland said after our meet that he was surprised our 8 & younger swimmers were so good. Our goal is to continue to improve all the way through the season, peaking in the championship meets at the end of the summer. Against the toughest competition, I want everyone to be swimming their best.

Get ready, it gets even better with the B Championship and the A Championship meets just around the corner.