December 2010

Corvallis Aquatic Team Newsletter

MARK YOUR CALENDAR team’s website up to date with the current information you need and other interesting swimming news. Bookmark it and Jan 7 – 9 CAT Open – Corvallis*** check it regularly. Jan 15 H.S. Rumbaugh Invitational - Corvallis Jan 28 – 30 SCAT B/C Champs – North Bend http://www.corvallisaquaticteam.org Feb 11 - 12 H.S. Districts - Corvallis Feb 17 - 19 H.S. State – Gresham CAT Board of Directors meetings are OPEN to Feb 19 – 20 10&U Champs – Springfield the public the second Wednesday of the month in Feb 24 – 27 11-14 Champs – Corvallis*** the meet hospitality room. Join us! Mar 3 – 6 Senior Champs – Gresham Mar 9 – 13 Senior Sectionals – TBA Mar 12 – 13 CAT B/C Invitational – President’s Message: Corvallis*** Dennis Wells Mar 18 – 20 Age Group Sectionals – Federal Way From the Office of the President – December 2010

ANNOUNCEMENTS First and foremost, this will be my last newsletter input for this year… I would like to extend warm wishes and blessing ***CAT families need to volunteer during this event to to the entire CAT family for a safe and joyous Holiday Season meet their volunteer hours commitment to the team. and a very Happy New Year!!!

The CAT Den stocks most of the following items: CAT Thank you to everyone who was able to attend the City suits/apparel, backpacks, silicone caps, water bottles, and Council meeting in December. With a quick show of hands vinyl window decals, key chains, screened drawstring bags, (called for by the Mayor), 87-93% of the attendees were in and insulated coolers. Many items can be personalized. support of preserving the services and programs at Osborn Aquatic Center. The city’s Budget Commission did meet at I can be reached via email at [email protected] or you 7:00 PM Monday, December 13th at La Sells Stewart Center’s can leave a message on my home phone, 752-1759. Austin Auditorium to again address the city’s forecasted budget shortfall. Please refer to the article in the Saturday’s Sandie Ashland - CAT Den Corvallis Gazette-Times along with CAT Notes for details.

On behalf of the Board of Directors, I am pleased to announce that Tashia Hoekstra has been appointed as the CAT Bulletin Board/Mailboxes: We want you to be informed! Office/Team Manager. Additionally, the Board extends a CAT uses several methods of communication. Please remind sincere thank you to Jackie Rochefort for stepping in as the your swimmers to check their mailboxes daily. The bulletin acting Manager for the past three months. Please take the time board is also a good source of information. This newsletter is to thank these wonderful parent-volunteers for their time and published once a month. Greg does a great job keeping the commitment to the team.

1 Page 1 third in the meet behind Eugene and Hillsboro. Nice job (continued) everyone.

(President’s Message continued) December 9th -11th , Jessie James and Jacob Pebley represented the Corvallis Aquatic Team at the USA Wow! CAT has experienced some great swimming this past Swimming Junior National Championships in Atlanta month. Last weekend CAT hosted a successful Oregon Senior Georgia, at the Georgia Tech swim facility. The meet Open. We had a chance to observe and cheer on some consisted of 900 of the best 18 and under swimmers, from fantastic student-athletes from our local area along with guests around the country, from over 300 teams. In the final team from Washington, Idaho, and California. Our younger standings CAT was 17th in combined team scores and 15th in swimmers are putting on a display of aquatic prowess at the the male standings. Jessie and Jacob broke eight CAT TEAM Eugene Invite. And, did you have a chance to watch records, eight Oregon Swimming records and two meet any of the live video streams from Junior Nationals? If not the records. webcasts / videos are posted at: On Monday December 13th , the City of Corvallis Budget http://www.swimnetwork.com/events/meets/2010/december/s Committee, decided to move forward on a tax levy. They still hort-course-junior-national-championships.aspx. need to decide how much and the duration of the levy. This is a good move in the right direction. Be ready to do some foot Jessie and Jacob had a superb week of racing! The quote of work to get the word out. the meet, “he put the hammer down!”

Thank you to all of our swimmers, parents, and coaches for all your time and efforts. We now get a short break before the Senior Report: Rick Guenther CAT Open in January. And, yes, my swimmer friends, that is ‘break’; not necessarily ‘rest’. How do you say, Winter Training? Next week we begin our winter training. We have 39.5 hours scheduled. You need to make all 39.5 hours to earn the winter And, to close out the year – Navy 31, Army 17!!! It doesn’t training sweat shirt. In the past the squad has wanted medium get any better than that! weight. sweat shirts. I plan to keep that the same. We will vote on color and type of logo over the next week. You may Stand tall! Swim FAST! Have a Happy Holiday! And, I’ll see use equivalent high school practices to make up missed CAT you on the pool deck. practices. What that means is that the high school practice needs to be appropriately challenging. Right now Kelly and I See you on the pool deck, up in the bleachers, or down at the are planning to run yoga during winter training. We just need fire station. -Dennis to figure out a schedule. The training schedule is posted on the front page of the CAT website.

We are now deep into the high school season. I have a couple Staff Report: Rick Guenther of reminders: Seniors should be attending the same number of practices as they did prior to the high school season. So if you have a mid-week HS meet, you need to make up that missed Happy Holidays everyone. I hope everyone is enjoying this practice. Keeping to this schedule will keep our swimmers wonderful time of the year. from accidently tapering into the mid-season meets. Every meet is a sprint practice, also called a lactate set. If you must We had three great meets in December. The month started miss a practice to have a meet, you might as well get with CAT hosting the 2011 Oregon Senior Open. This is a something out of the meet. So, if you find yourself way out in prelims/finals meet where all swimmers compete in the front of the competition in your event, GO!!!!!! - even if you morning and the top 24 return to race at night. Corvallis won are in the next event. It will toughen you up for your next the meet followed by Hillsboro and then T-Hills. To add to competition. No cruising races! the fun of the meet, we had a number of teams from outside the state. Thank you to all of our hard working parents. As I hope everyone enjoyed the last two weeks of racing. We always, you make the meet possible. saw some amazing step ups in our competitions. I love watching our team go crazy on races. This sport is so much Last weekend our 14 & unders headed to Eugene for the fun. Always have fun in your racing whether it is a national TEAM Meet. CAT had a ton of best time and some incredible meet, dual meet, invitational, sectional or HS championship. swims in the 500 FR and 400 IM. The parents did a Race as a team and have passion for your sport. spectacular job of cheering throughout the meet. CAT finished

2 Page 2 Novice – Senior Prep Age Group Report: dry-land before we get in. I have invited some of the Junior Greg Bostrom II’s to join us at some of our practices. What a great Senior Open the preps had! It is nice to see you It’s hard to believe we are already at Christmas break. The step up and race with the older kids. Molly tied the team last day of practice for Novice, Junior I and Junior II will be record in the 200 FL, Patrick got a few second swims, and Tuesday the 21st. There is no practice December 22nd through everyone had a few best times. The Junior II’s joined in with December 26th and December 31st and January 1st. the great swims at the TEAM Winter invite. Everyone swam multiple best times and the preps were even faster than the The Osborn staff has asked us to remind everyone that we are week before at the Senior Open. We had a ton of new A and not supposed to be out on deck more than 10 minutes before B times. That was a great meet. Get signed up for the B/C our practices start. They are concerned about the early novice champs if you don’t have at least six A times. That is our last group being on deck unsupervised for a prolonged period chance to qualify for the Championships in February. before Miranda shows up. We will be finishing up our entries for the CAT Open at Lauren has put together a cookie decorating party for the practice this week. If you are going out of town for the team. It will be on Tuesday, December 21st from 4:15-6:30 holidays make sure you let me know if your events are alright PM in the activity room. Everyone will be having practice in before you go or send me an email if you need to change the afternoon so you should plan on attending the party either something. before or after your practice. We also have a dine-out planned Greg for December 28th at Papa’s Pizza. You must print the flyer from the website and bring it with you. The team will receive 50% of the proceeds. Junior IA, IB: Karri-ann Benthin The CAT Open is January 7th – 9th, 2011. This is a qualifying meet. To swim an event you need to have the “B” time of the lowest age in your age group. Please login to the website and The Junior 1 swimmers have been doing great. Over the past see if you were entered. If you don’t see any events listed few months we have seen some great improvements. Many then we were not able to enter you into the meet. Since this is swimmers have dropped a significant amount of time on their a meet that every family is required to work at we make sure events at meets. This is awesome news and I can’t wait to see to enter everyone that we can. The meet at the end of January, these improvements continue. the B/C Championships in North Bend, is a great meet for those that did not qualify for the CAT Open. Please sign up One thing that I strongly believe is that excitement needs to be for that meet. The entries are due January 10th. at both practice and competition. A single swimmer’s attitude plays a large role in the whole groups’ excitement. Positive As everyone has already heard there will not be a Colorado encouragement is great and should be shown every day. trip this year. :-( My parents felt that they would not be able Another point I have been explaining is that swimming is a to live up to the experiences that the other trips have had. team sport. I want to pass on the meaning of sportsmanship to Instead we are planning a bus trip to Spokane for a long all these young athletes. Please encourage your swimmer(s) to course meet June 17th -19th. This is open to everyone on the bring a positive attitude to the deck. Lastly, I want all the team, but we need to work out the details for the younger kids. Junior 1 swimmers to remember to treat others the way they Most 10 & unders have never been away from mom and dad want to be treated. This is a competitive sport, but it is before so we need to figure out how we can make everyone essential that we have friendly behavior in order for everyone comfortable. to be able to excel, learn and have fun. All of these things will greatly help with the development of friendships and enthusiasm.

Junior II and Preps: Greg Bostrom The swimmers in the Junior 1 group have been working on stroke technique, driving, flip turns, circle swimming and Preps be sure to take a look at our practice schedule over the most importantly - teamwork. These are all fundamental break. Nobody is required to attend all the practices, but if aspects of swimming. Each swimmer should bring the you want to get the winter training reward you must make all following to practice: water bottles, goggles (high priority), a 27 hours. If you lost the schedule that was handed out to you swim cap, a positive attitude and of course a SMILE!!! there is one posted on the website. We will not be swimming (continued) more than one and a half (1.5) hours at any practice. Afternoons will still consist of approximately 30 minutes of (Junior IA, IB continued)

3 Page 3 Overall, everyone has been doing a fantastic job. Keep up the hard work CAT swimmers and best of luck at the upcoming swim meets.

Coach Karri-ann

Novice: Miranda Beehee

The Novice swimmers have been working on their streamlines. This is a primary part of swimming and definitely cannot be overlooked. Next month, the swimmers will be spending more time on diving.

As of January, Novice swimmers are not allowed on deck until 3:10, which is only five minutes before their practice is scheduled to start. This is due to little or no coach/adult supervision on deck. We encourage the swimmers to be early, but it is simply unsafe to have these children on deck before an adult is present. Swimmers are allowed to be in the lobby until 3:10 and then can come onto deck right at practice time. We hope this will eliminate any chaos that has been occurring on deck prior to practice. Thank you for your understanding.

Coach Miranda

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