Ringing in the New Year!

WINTER 2014
West Coast Aquatics
Ringing in the New Year!
What Is Inside:
Super Swimmers
New Year’s is a time to remember, both our triumphs and missteps, our promises
made and broken. The times we opened ourselves up to great adventures or closed
ourselves down for fear of getting hurt. Because that's what the New Year is all
about -- getting another chance. A chance to forgive, to do better, to do more, to
give more, to love more. And stop worrying about what if and start embracing what
would be.
Senior Bronze
Age Group Silver
Pre-Competitive
Age Group Gold
Happy New Year to everyone ! We have so much to celebrate from 2013 and so
much to look forward to in 2014. WEST has accomplished so much this past year.
We finished a remodel that so many programs are envious of, we worked to together as team to make the transitional time successful. Our swimmers became
stronger and swarm further and faster. Our program received recognition from the
city of San Jose and the Pacific swimming for our outstanding program. WE has kids
qualify for every level include JO’s, Far Westerns, Sectionals and the national level.
We graduated an outstanding class of swimmers who are now swimming well in
college and making us proud as strong student-athletes. The Senior program had
many strong swims at the Husky invitational by, Andrea Morrone, Jeremy
Haynes, Jaysiee Haynes, Brandon Nguyen, Christopher Ruiyantoro and
Priyanka Signh. Ian Ordes swam well and represented WEST at Junior Nationals
this past December in Greensboro, NC.
Lessons
Pictures
After returning from our December meets and our brief holiday break, the seniors
got right back to business and hit the holiday training very hard. Both of the Gold
groups and Senior Silver joined together to participate in our annual holiday training. During this time we did a lot team building activities as well as tough sets,
which are special and only done during this time of year. Some of these sets include
100 x 100’s in celebration of New Year’s and the annual WEST gauntlet. During
the beginning of this New Year we have set our New Year’s resolutions for swimming and look forward to seeing what the New Year will bring.
Coach Danica
PAGE
2
Age Group Silver
2014 has started off with a bang! With one meet already under our belt, Age
Group Silver swimmers have already picked up a few more Junior Olympic and
Far Western qualifying time standards. A new year has brought new swimmers
to our group increasing Age Group Silver's roster to 20! Attendance is at an all
time high with great consistency every day of the week. Let's keep this up
throughout the year! Competition within the group is also at an all time high.
Swimmers are racing everyday in practice and learning to compete at the next
level. My goal this year is to harness the competitiveness I am seeing in practice
and translate that to the swim meets. We have a great lineup of meets for our
spring season including a travel trip to Phoenix, AZ which
many of Age Group Silver's swimmers will be attending. Keep
up the hard work and let's have an awesome 2014! Go
WEST! Coach Ryan
Pre-competitive and Lessons
This year is the first time
West has offered Winter
Swim Lessons! We are
having a great time working with these small classes! Thanks to our committed West families this
has been a mutually beneficial experience. Offering
Lessons in the winter has
created a feeder for PreComp during this time as
well. Since swimmers are
continuing to join PreComp, we have been able
to continue offering M-F
Pre-Comp which we also
have not been able to do
in the past. We will con-
WEST
COAST
AQUATICS
tinue to offer once a week
classes for Lessons
through April. Please see
Coach Kristin if you are
interested in joining a
class.
I wish to congratulate Samuel Phan, Sarang
Ambalakaat, Theodore Vo,
Allister Lee, Caitlyn
Quach and Malavika Romarao who have all very
recently moved to Super
Swimmers from PreComp. These swimmers
all worked very hard to
improve their strokes and
increase their endurance
in order to qualify for the
Swim Team. I am so happy
to see the newest swimmers enthusiasm for our
sport, and commitment to
swim in the winter.
WINTER
PAGE
2014
3
Super Swimmers and Senior Bronze
Super Swimmer Swamp Monsters have
gotten off to a great start! We started
the year with some best times. Congratulations to Dylan H. Nguyen, Jocelyn
Nguyen, and Sean Chen for dropping
time this past weekend at the Zones D.1
Meet. I am very proud of them. I also
want to say congratulations to all the
super swimmers who moved up to age
group bronze: Andrew Do, Danny Van,
Kyle Fang, Vicki Pham, and Vivian Pham.
We’re looking forward to the Morgan
Hill meet on February 8th & 9th, where
a lot of our swimmers are going to be
competing in their very first meet!
Can’t wait! J
The Senior Bronze swimmers have been
working hard in and out of the water.
Balancing schoolwork and
extracurricular activities is
never easy, but I’m glad to
see them committed to
both.
Congratulations to Christine Yang for getting her
best times in the 100 fly,
50 & 100 free, and 200IM
at the CSA meet. And
congratulations to all the
swimmers who swam at
the Zones meet this past
weekend. Some of our
swimmers got best times!
We’re looking forward to
the Morgan Hill Meet
coming up on February
8th & 9th. I can’t wait to
see how our swimmers
improve!
Also, good luck to all
those taking their ACTs
and SAT tests this semester!
Introducing Coach Lauren - Age Group Gold
I was born and raised in South San Jose. I went to Pioneer High
School where I swam and played water polo. I attended UC Santa
Cruz for college where I got my BA in Global Shakespearean Theater. I swam from the time I was 5 all the way through college for
what was once known as San Jose Aquatics and is now called
QuickSilver Swimming. After college, I coached for QuickSilver for
6 years, and taught Physical Education at Pioneer High School for
5.5 years. I took one year off from coaching, but am excited to be
coming back and joining WEST.
Go WEST!
Coach Lauren
8 Ways for Making This Your Best Year Yet!
Olivier Poirier-Leroy is a former national level swimmer
based out of Victoria, BC. In
feeding his passion for swimming, he has developed YourSwimBook, a powerful log book and goal
setting guide made specifically for swimmers. Join
1,800 of your fellow swimmers and coaches and sign
up for the YourSwimBook
newsletter (free) and get
weekly motivational tips.
It’s a New Year, and you
know what that means,
right?
You don’t? Not even you,
you person sitting with the
glowing screen ten inches
from your face? Well, that
got awkward.
Here’s a hint…
A New Year means New
Years resolutions, also
known as “Forced, Exorbitant
and Ridiculous Promises You
Make to Yourself Only to
Feel Like a Demoralized Bag
of Chumpiness When They
Don’t Come to Pass.”
Yeah, those things.
2. Unsuck at something.
Instead of making resolutions,
how about we not-so-subtly
change the name up to
“goals” or “things” or “stuffs.”
While I am not going to give
you advice about your specific
swimming goals, here are
some ideas that will help you
get towards your swimming
“stuffs” faster this year—
We all have parts of our
swimming that we resist
doing because we feel like
we aren’t as good at it.
Whether it is butterfly,
breaststroke kick, streamlining when you are tired,
decide to tackle that suckiness with everything you
got this year.
There are fewer things
more rewarding than mastering (or at least significantly improving) something you previously felt
inferior at.
1. Warm-up like a boss every
day.
When you get your core
warmed up, and your joints
and muscles loosened up
there really is no better feeling. One word of caution here,
you will feel so amazing when
you dive into the water, having been pre-pre-warmed up,
that your body will wanna fly.
Oh, and warming up tends to
lead to less injuries, which is a
nice little side bonus.
3. Challenge yourself on
the regular.
One of the best parts
about swimming and sport
is the ever-growing change
of what we believe ourselves to be capable of.
“10×100 on 1:10? No way.”
And yet it’s barely two
weeks later and you are
doing them on 1:05.
This growing process gives
you the warm and fuzzies
(Cont.) 8 Ways for Making This Your Best Year Yet!
in your belly, and I am not talking about the warm and fuzzies
you get the next day after eating
500 grams of lunch meat at
2:14am in a sleep-hunger stupor. (I know I am not alone on
this one… right?)
4. Share your goals, err, ”stuffs”
with your coach.
performance athletes face to
illness when training overtime.
It can be challenging with all
the commitments athletes
have with school, swimming
and what little of a social existence they have to properly
take care of themselves. Generally swimmers begin cutting
corners with things like sleep
and diet when stressed or over
-trained, putting them in a
prime position to get sickie.
Stay ahead of the sniffles by
clocking in for a solid night of
rest each night and fueling
yourself properly.
Phelps wouldn’t have gotten
where he was without Bowman,
so don’t feel that you need to
keep your goals to yourself. Our
goals can be a weighty burden,
so unload yourself a little bit and
expound on your ambitions for
the year with your coach. (Who
6. Break down what it is going
is there to, like, help you out
to take for you to swim faster
with these types of things.)
this year.
5. Be proactive about staying
What are you specifically going
healthy.
to have to do to achieve your
You’ve probably noticed this be- goal? Writing down “work
fore… After a sequence of tough hard” is a step in the right diworkouts you feel a faint tickle rection, but ultimately, what
in the back of your throat while does that mean? It’s way too
vague and open to endless
your nose begins to go for a
number of interpretations.
little jog. After a solid night of
rest, however, you are back to
normal, having narrowly dodged Split down your goal into
meaningful, actionable chunks.
the cold/flu/SARS.
“I need to improve my start by
If you’re hunch was that you
XYZ seconds. Here is what I am
were on the breach of getting
going to do to accomplish this:
sick because you’re training
your posterior off, you are cor- Do 10 timed dives at the end
of practice on Monday and
rect. Megan Fischer-Colbrie
wrote a good blog post over at Wednesday, improve my
Bridge Athletic, which outlines jumping ability by XYZ, etc.”
the increased susceptibility high
7. Be an awesome teammate.
I feel the need to point out that being
a rad teammate isn’t about being
overly peppy and cheery all the time.
In fact, you will find forcing that type
of attitude will have the opposite desired effect. Make your support authentic, without being overbearing.
A simple, “Let’s do this” is more
effective than ten minutes of “You
can do it, Bob! You can do it, Tiff!
Come on guys only nine more sets…”
8. Share your knowledge with the
youngsters.
No matter where you are at with
your swimming, there is someone
that looks up to you. Unless you’re a
baby. At which point you have other
pressing things to deal with. Like
drunkenly stumbling around while
parents coo at you.
What? Anyways. The point is… There
will always be kids that look up to
you regardless of where you are in
the swimming circle-of-life, so use
your knowledge and experience and
share it!
KUDOS TO THE FOLLOWING:
Jaysiee Haynes was chosen to attend the 2014 Pacific Swim Distance
Training Camp at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs
as an athlete and Coach Danica was chosen as a coach.
Congrats and best of luck!