mattie g

Radar is more impressive than the rainfall so far.

Keep talking...

Gotcha. Yeah...that's plain as day and even if the Reps weren't aware of the rule (which is totally understandable), they should 100% defer to the Referee in that instance. What a crappy way to end a meet!

Just add to the chorus above…my co-Rep and I saw false starts on two different relays (both the other team’s) that didn’t get called. We both immediately looked at each other and mouthed “huge flinch”, but it’s just not worth making a fuss about it. There’s something to be said for holding kids accountable to play to the rules, but there are other ways to address it than DQing kids.

That sucks. I get the idea of being able to protest, but it should only be used in the most obvious of circumstances and if it makes a difference in terms of the outcome of the meet…and even then I question whether that card should be pulled. Full slate of DQs is hilarious! We have a small 8&U crew this year, and few of them are experienced swimmers, so our only boys fly swimmer DQed…but he was close! We had a really fun meet that was closer than we thought it might be. Our opponents had some much better swims that their seed times suggested, but we held them off in the end. And <Dad Brag> my girl had another PB in 9-10 free, nonchalantly going MUCH faster than any of us expected </Dad Brag>.

We often get a single ant infestation in our mailbox each spring that always follows a heavy rain event. I just nuke them and they're gone...not to return until the next year. We only got that one decent rain event at the end of April, but I haven't gotten any ants so far this year.

Makes sense since when we get general area-wide precip, we usually fall pretty much in line. Swim practices cancelled this morning due to the cool temps. Pretty wild for June 22!

About .8" based on CoCoRaHs nearby. Seems about right.

Lots and lots of underwater volcanoes?

Ended up with a few sprinkles (literally) after bedtime. Not worried, as we'll get ours this week.

Congrats on your kids doing well! It's always rough when lots of kids are missing. It's understandable, but never fun, especially for the coaches when they're putting their lineups together. My guess is that your team is bigger than ours, and we feel the pain big time when we miss kids, but no matter what it's always a blow to go into meets knowing you don't have your full team available to you. The positive to that is that it gives other kids a chance to swim in A Meets! Wow...free and back in only 1:15? That's flying! And agreed on the non-A Meet kids getting their chances to swim! We hosted last night and somehow got through the whole meet without a delay! Storms stayed to our west and south the whole time, but even so we still ended at about 9:00. It was a fun meet though, especially because we swam against our closest neighbors whose kids generally go to the same schools as ours, so we all know each other. It was also my 5-year-old daughter's first race! Great start (if I do say so my biased self) and got all the way across with no issues!

The US Men looked really good in both the Mexico and Canada matches and were deserved Nations League winners. Not going to dissect the matches, but I was really pleased with what I saw! As for Berhalter, the discourse is ridiculous. I have absolutely no issues with his reappointment nor, does it seem, do the players. We have three years until the World Cup, and if things don't go well through Copa America, then we can make a change leading into 2026.

Turned out a little chillier (and breezier) than ideal because our hosts' pool was mostly in the shade during the meet, but our kids were seated in the sun, so they looked comfortable enough! We had lots of good swims, including personal bests and a team record! And I have to brag on my older girl who won her first A Meet heat ever with her own 50 Free personal best! I have to say that I felt bad for the other team reps because they were missing more swimmers than they expected, which led to a pretty lopsided, unfortunate final score. Plenty of closer meets to come, though.

Lots and LOTS of underwater volcanoes!

HRRR doesn't seem super enthused about our latest weather-hype phenomenon. Maybe some smoky haze, but nothing like what it was last week.

I appreciate the heads up! I think we'll be fine though.

For sure. If there's one thing I've become more appreciative of, it's how the referee sets the tone for how the meet will run and how the clerk of course keeps sh*t moving. First B Meet makes sense for a new ref to work, but I think he was a little overwhelmed. Hopefully he comes along and gets more comfortable as the season progresses. We're lucky to have a fantastic CoC who worked last night (at home meets, she's a monster!), but with the chaos on the deck and the other team's coaches/reps not really doing anything about it, there was only so much they could do. I honestly have no idea why they even had marshals since there was barely a thing they could do to keep the deck clear. That's high praise for H2O's pool! I hope other teams feel the same about ours!

Team size is all relative, but last night's other team is bigger than ours, though probably on the smaller size of the NVSL spectrum in general. And even with that, after the 30-minute thunder delay, we didn't get done until about 9:35 . It was a bit of a sh*tshow, to be honest. Their swim club's footprint is tiny, so it's absolute chaos on the deck; they also had a first-time referee who, while a very nice guy, didn't do a great job of setting the tone for moving things along. Also, from what I could tell, there were a number of times when kids from the other team were supposed to be there to start, but they weren't there so the officials waited for the kids to be found. Luckily, they're five minutes away, so it wasn't a long drive home, but still lots and lots of tired faces today! I can't wait to get through this last week of afternoon practices and to the first A Meet and morning practices after!

Our meet finished so f'ing late last night. Kids at the bus stop were miserable this morning We host a B Meet this coming Monday, and while we need the rain I really hope it holds off. Kids love those meets, as does the team because B Meet concessions make a HUGE difference for us!

Some very light rain with a distant rumble of thunder or two that delayed our swim meet last night. And damn...it was chilly by the time it finished (at like 9:40 pm)!

Our team has 95 kids this year*, and that includes the littles, so we're able to cruise through things like time trials and B Meets against teams that are pretty close to our size (we have two teams in our B Meet group that are substantially bigger than we are). And we also only swam ourselves in time trials (never even considered having another team involved!). Same as you, we had two new S&Ts helping out, but our timers time for the whole meet since we don't have enough families to be able to split the shifts. The best thing was that the kids danced on the lower and upper decks after we were done. Now...THAT made it feel like summer swim! Most of our folks are pretty cool, but as with any large group of people we have our pains in the azz. I just try to ignore them. * 95 kids is five more swimmers than last year, which was almost ten more than the year before that. if there's one thing I'm really trying to contribute to this team is to get more kids and more families involved!

I think having a smaller team can help in many ways in getting folks involved. We all know each other well and there’s a little bit of light peer pressure without anyone overtly putting the pressure on. What’s interesting is that I was just looking at the NVSL officials list and our team has more officials than many of the much bigger teams, which really surprised me! Sounds like you had an amazing experience, though I totally get your feeing of it also being a drag on your summer! I can’t agree enough that it builds relationships and a true neighborhood bond that would be hard to recreate in other ways. My wife and I have developed friendships with other families that likely would never had happened had it not been for summer swim, and being the social creatures we are we’re profoundly thankful for it!

You can probably credit that quick wrap-up to two things: 1) A relatively small team with not all kids able to make it and 2) A clerk of course who takes no prisoners! We started at 8, so in all it was pretty quick. It helps that our primary clerk of course is also the pool ops lead and wanted to make sure we were done well in advance of the pool’s 11am opening time! It really was great to have finally had the kids in the water in the morning. Good luck to your team this year!

Turned out to be an amazing morning. A little chilly to start, but by the time we finished (about 9:45) it was really nice. Mornings at the pool make it really feel like summer!

I think this is being lost with all the smoke discussion. The temperatures have been outrageous for quite some time now. To have lows consistently in the 40s and 50s through much of May and the first week of June is amazing. Since the beginning of May, Dulles has had only three nights with lows of 60 or above.