Piranha News
Welcome!
Welcome to the 2026 swim season! For some reason, the last couple of years, the first week of the swim season has brought cold weather and a bit of rain. It’s been a joy to watch our swimmers tough it out and get in the water ready to swim! We will try to send out a weekly email highlighting the successes of the past week, what we’ve worked on as well as things we may need from parents and swimmers. We’ll try to keep the recaps and highlights shorter throughout the season, but we have quite a bit to go through this time.
First week
Our first goal was accomplished! Swimmers got in the water with great attitudes, ready to swim, despite the cold and rain.
Our younger swimmers worked on the fundamentals of swimming, including the basics of freestyle and navigating lane traffic jams.
Our more experienced swimmers were focused on getting back into the rhythm of practices. The endurance will come back quickly.
We’ve had some questions about weather-related cancellations for practice. We’ll try to run practices all the way through, but we’ll monitor swimmers for signs that they are too cold and may stop practices early or get them out of the water for a few minutes, if necessary. The weather will surely warm up, but we’ll have another cold spell hit us during the season. If you don’t like the weather in Maryland, wait a day. If you like the weather in Maryland, wait a day!
Next week, we’ll continue focusing on our fundamentals for all the strokes. We’ll spend some time on starts and turns as well.
Time Trials
Our first swim meet of the season will be our Time Trials, which will be held on Saturday, 6/6, from 8:30 AM until approximately 11:30 AM. It is expected that all swim team members participate in time trials. This event is not for Pre team members. In order to participate, you will need to sign up on our website. Under “Schedule” you can scroll down and find Time Trials and sign your swimmer up. You should sign your swimmer up for every stroke they are legal to swim in. If terms like “time trials” or “legal” don’t make sense to you, please read the document titled FAQ’s also on our website. Many questions can be answered there. The coaches may make the decision to remove swimmers from an event if they know we know they are not legal to swim it.
The deadline to sign up for time trials is Wednesday, 6/3.
If you can’t make time trials, we’ll schedule a makeup date during practice on Monday, 6/8. The makeup is not for swimmers who don’t want to swim all the strokes or want extra time to sleep on a Saturday morning, before the meets start. They are for people who truly aren’t available. We’ll have to take time out of practice to run the make-up trials, and we simply can’t run an entirely separate meet for make-ups.
Going Forward
Declare your eligibility for A meets now
While you are on the website, take some time to learn more about the team and upcoming events. Even more importantly, we need every swimmer to declare their availability for A meets. You can always change it in the future, if necessary. As a review, each week we take a look at the swimmers' times and select the top 3 for each event (top 6 in freestyle) to swim at the A meet on Saturdays. We will only select swimmers whose parents have said they are available to swim. Now, some of you read that paragraph and thought to yourself, “oh they don’t mean me, my swimmer isn’t fast enough for A meets” YES, YOU!! EVERYONE means absolutely every swimmer on the team needs to do this. Parents, it’s really simple, look at your calendar and if you are around on a Saturday, click Yes, I will attend. If you are on vacation one particular week, then click No, I will not attend. By clicking I will attend, it does not mean that your swimmer will be selected, but it does mean they will be considered. The lineup showing who is selected will be sent out on Wednesday evenings or Thursday mornings. On Friday, the lineup is final, and we can not make changes. We can not stress enough how important this is. It should be considered an honor to be selected to represent the team at an A meet, and every year we have a handful of swimmers who we would love to reward by putting them in an A meet lineup, but I can’t because their parents didn’t click a button on their computer.
If you sign up for an A meet and are selected to swim, but for some reason you are unable to attend, please let us know as soon as possible. A no-show at A meet will absolutely cost us points, but also keep a swimmer who is available from being able to participate.
Please sign up to help out at meets. The swim team is run completely by parents and needs everyone to chip in. If you’ve never volunteered at a swim event before, no worries! We have on-the-job training, and you certainly do not need a PHD to run a stop watch or hand out snacks and make change. Just like we get stressed out when we don’t have enough swimmers eligible to swim an A meet, the team reps get stressed out when we don’t have enough volunteers to run a meet.
I think that’s all for now. As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.
Once again, we’re grateful for the opportunity to work with your swimmers this summer and can't wait to get the season going!
Have a great rest of your weekend!
Coach Andrew and Coach Claire
Gmails