Good afternoon, Barracudas!

There's a lot happening tomorrow afternoon, a lot of which is different than our normal meets, as well as a change from my last Remind message, so please read carefully. Towards the end, there are also instructions related to the Smoky Mountain Invitational (SMI) meet in late July—something I need you to do before Friday.

TOMORROW'S MEET

Yesterday, GKAISA sent an email about the USA Swimming guidelines for appropriate competition pool temperatures. Our pool, and I'm nearly certain all other outdoor pools in GKAISA, are currently hotter than the USA Swimming range. To be clear, we are not a USA Swimming team; none of GKAISA is. Teams that had meets last night experimented with a variety of methods to cool their pools. One team bought 5,000 lbs. of ice, which did almost nothing. To attempt to get closer to the encouraged range—and really just limit time in the sun—we are pushing tomorrow's meet back by 1 hour. Pictures, warm-ups, and the meet start time will all happen 1 hour later than previously planned.

Since we are pushing everything back 1 hour, we are limiting entries in the meet. Whittington Creek's coach and I further discussed the plan this morning, and we decided to keep the medley relays, but make sure there are no more than 2 heats in any event. Additionally, we will be combining as many events/heats possible to make the meet move fast. Some swimmers are in only 2 or 3 events due to this. We apologize for that. This is the best arrangement we could make given all the circumstances so we're not boiling in the sun nor at the pool all night.

• Pictures: Be at the pool by 4:45 PM if you plan on ordering individual photos. Be at the pool by 5 PM if you're just planning on being in the team photo. Everyone needs to wear this year's team shirt! If you haven't gotten a photo order form, there are still some in the black rolling cart. Ricke will have more tomorrow. Barbara also plans on getting pictures of all Big Cuda/Little Cuda pairs tomorrow, so be looking for that.
• Warm-Ups: Everyone will already be at the pool due to the team photo, so we will get in for warm-ups by 6 PM. There might be some lingering time between pictures and getting in the water, so try and make a shady place for your kids to chill.
• Competition: The meet will start at 7 PM. As this is our last home meet of the season, we will be recognizing our 4 seniors. We're doing this before Event 1 rather than halfway through the meet in an attempt to keep things flowing as quickly as possible. 

SMOKY MOUNTAIN INVITATIONAL

The Smoky Mountain Invitational (SMI) will be our last meet of the season on Saturday & Sunday, July 26th & 27th. 11&Ups swim on Saturday only, and 10&Unders swim on Sunday only. Competition is limited to non-USA Swimming kids. If you've swam a meet with CT or RPS since August of last year, you can't enter. If you've just trained with a USA Swimming program, but not swam meets, you're good to go. KISL & RBI for MS/HS don't count here despite those being USAS sanctioned. Anyway, I need to register our team by this Friday at midnight, so I need you to RSVP on our SwimTopia by then. I will ask y'all to recheck your RSVP later before entries, so if you're unsure if you're attending, just give your best guess for now because I need to tell them our numbers.

The meet is long, hot, all the way in Alcoa, but so many kids absolutely love it and call it the most fun meet of the year. It's also one of the largest outdoor summer league meets in the nation. JCSC has a historic reputation for strong SMI performances, so despite it being after City this year, we'd like to take as many kids as possible and swim FAST. Here's the SMI website if you want to know more: https://smi.swimtopia.com/.

Miscellaneous: Thanks to everyone who let me know about ribbons that needed to be fixed from our last meet. I'm going to try and get that done this afternoon/evening, but it may be at the end of the week that they'll be ready (along with their ribbons from tomorrow's meet, which will hopefully be correct). Sorry about practice being canceled yesterday afternoon; sometimes puke happens. Some people weren't aware of the cancelation due to not being signed up for Remind. I can't always get to my laptop to send email updates such as this one, so if you're still not signed up for Remind, please take care of that before Championship season (City & SMI). Reach out if you need help with that.

Thank you for your patience throughout the organized chaos, and thank you for contributing to this team that so many of us love. Drink water.

GO CUDAS!!!

Josh