WTSC NewsWave March 4th

WTSC NewsWave March 4

1. Deadlines- no sign up deadlines are approaching. Note however that several championship meets are in the next several weeks. While our default method is to sign up swimmers automatically that have cuts, if you need to sign out of a meet or decline a certain day, please contact your coach ASAP.

2. News

  • Divisionals is this weekend! Click here to view the entry report & the meet schedule, including order of events and warm up times. One small change from the schedule is Friday warm up time; the meet hosts have pushed that back to 4pm due to school day changes caused from excessive snow days. The link above details the Friday changes more specifically.
  • Important reminder for all championship meets- if you are signed up to swim an event, you may not skip that event without prior communication with your coach, BEFORE the meet starts. Failure to do so will result in you being scratched from future events. Also note it's important to check your place before you depart from the preliminary session. If you qualify in the top 16 (FINALS) and fail to show up for that evening final swim, you will also be scratched from the rest of the meet. These are not WTSC rules; these are Indiana Swimming and USA Swimming rules for championship meets.
  • Championship Team Celebration Party is tonight! Swimmers will start with normal practice and then depart for the cafeteria around 6:45pm. All swimmers are invited as we honor those swimmers qualified for either the Divisional or State Meets. Dinner will be served for the swimmers. Anticipated end time is 7:45pm.
  • While Divisionals is this weekend, Age Group State and Senior State are the next two weekends, respectively. Practice attendance is critical for these two meets, in particular as the coaching staff is building relays and talking with their swimmers in great detail regarding both their individual event selection as well as placement on relays. Approximately half of our Age Group State team are Relay-Only swimmers- in other words qualified as part of a relay but do not have qualifying times in individual events. Coaches will be releasing preliminary relay reports on Monday and finalizing them by Tuesday AM. Two main things here: practice attendance and attention to our website for relay lists.
  • Long Course (50meter) time trial will be here on Thursday, March 20th. This serves three great functions 1) a great extra swim at the end of the season 2) a way to get a time particularly in any event 400 longer so you are not cut from events at summer meets 3) an introduction to what summer meets are like if you have not participated in a long course meet yet. Sign up via our website by next week.
  • Current Age Group State qualifiers, not including relays or times from this upcoming weekend.

3. Cool Stuff

  • USA Swimming provides a club performance evaluation tool called the Virtual Club Championship or VCC.  The VCC automatically ranks all USA Swimming member clubs based on swimmer performance from the ages of 11 to 18. You can see how your club stacks up against others in the state and nation.   Their computers figure out the best possible event line up for your team. The emphasis is on TEAM here as the scoring system pulls in times for almost every 11 to 18 year old on the team.  Read up more about how the VCC works here. Some historical perspective for our club for past several winter seasons:
    • 2010-2011: 30th in the state
    • 2011-2012: 25th in the state
    • 2012-2013: 24th in the state
    • Our current rank for this winter season is.......10th!!!!
    • This is a truly remarkable improvement trend, but the season is not over yet! We are in a tight battle in the 8th to 12th range- we look forward to watching our swimmers battle for more over these upcoming championship meets.