All Kinds of Thank Yous!

 Hi Team!

Holy cow!  The last two weeks have been amazing!  And busy!  And inspiring!  I'm sorry to be so far behind on blog posts, and I'm doubly sorry that some of these thank you's are so late!

First of all, I'd like to say a big thank you to the September 1st Lambeau clean-up crew!  I was a little worried about getting enough volunteers to come out on the Friday before Labor Day.  All that worrying was for nothing, though, as a big bunch of you showed up, and we had Lambeau cleaned up in no time!  I'd like to give a special shout-out to Dan Angiulli, who came out to help clean even though his daughter graduated last May!

Dan now joins a small but amazing group of alumni parents who have showed up to clean Lambeau after their child graduated, the other being Chad Held's parents who came to clean in June.  We also had a few alumni swimmers come out to clean this summer--Meghan Harper (and her boyfriend!), Chad Held, and Connor O'Brien are all super-alumni!

Back at the pool, the girls have been working extremely hard getting ready to start meet season.  All of our new swimmers joined the 200 club before August was over.  I can't tell you how amazing that is; most of those girls couldn't even swim a 25 without stopping when we started on August 8th.  Our huge group of new swimmers inspire me every single day!

On September 5th, we kicked off our Conference season with a big win over Appleton East.  That night was also Parent Night, and I can't tell you how awesome it was to see our athletes and their parents span 3 sides of the pool!

I'm pretty sure our success that night was due in large part to the excellent team meal the parents made on Monday night.  The spaghetti and meatballs were AMAZING!  Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone on that meal team!

There were lots and lots of good swims that night. For me, the highlight of the night had to be the JV 200 Free Relay.  We had athletes in every single lane (28 total) competing at the same time.  That one heat had more athletes than were on the whole team my first year!  Amazing!!

On Friday night, the Varsity competed in the Terror Relays, our home Invite.  There is no time when the phrase "It Takes A Village" is more appropriate than before a 10-team swim invite.  Thank you to every single person who helped make the Terror Relays such a success!  There were parents and volunteers who set up and ran concessions, prepared food and fed the coaches and officials, timed behind the blocks, helped with awards, and cleaned up afterwards.  I seriously could not have made it through that night without all of you!  THANK YOU SO MUCH!

The next morning, the Varsity was up bright and early to swim at the Patriot Pentathlon.  It's pretty hard to compete back-to-back like that, but the AW-K ladies made it look easy!

 They took home a few awards, too.  The pile was so pretty, I hated to pass them out!  :)

This past week we shifted into Phase 2 of our training cycle.  The entire team added weight training and core work to the work they are doing in the pool, and the varsity added morning practices into the mix.  My goal was to make them sore.  Based on their feedback, it's working.  :)

Our fabulous parents provided another delicious meal this week, even though it was a bye week.  The girls went crazy for the chicken Alfredo!  Thank you so much to Monday's meal team--you guys knocked it out of the park!

On Saturday night the girls traded in their swimsuits for dresses and head to Pullmann's for dinner.  It was so fun seeing the girls with dry hair and makeup! The girls spend so much time with their heads underwater, it's fun to see them just laugh and have fun together over a meal.  We even got to see Haley get asked to Homecoming (!).

This week we head to Neenah High School twice.  On Tuesday we have our dual meet.  It starts at 5:30, and our divers will compete during the meet, after the 50 free.  On Saturday, the entire team heads back to NHS for the Neenah Invite.  The girls need to be at West by 7:00 to load the bus. The meet starts at 9:00 am.  Seating is always tight at Neenah, so come early if you want a seat.

I can't tell you how much I am enjoying this year's team--this group of girls is truly special!  Thanks for all you do to support them and the entire AW-K program.  I hope to see a big bunch of you at NHS this week!

With AW-K Pride,
Coach Vicki