Good evening!

I've got some updates for y'all concerning Smoky/SMI results, practice this week, and RSVPing for the Tom Schumann Memorial GKAISA City Meet Championship! That's a long name, so I'll mostly be referring to it as "Tom Schumann City Meet." Can't omit Tom's name.

First of all, I've obviously been MIA for the past week, which I apologize for. It's killed me not being at the pool, and it was especially hard to miss Smoky this past weekend. On the 4th of July, I came down with a terrible virus of some kind. We think it's mono, and I've been struggling with some GI complications maybe associated with it. I ended up in the hospital twice last week from not getting enough fluids; needless to say, this is the sickest I've ever been as an adult. I'm finally improving, but eating is still a struggle, so my time on deck this week may still be limited as I work on rebuilding strength. I'm extremely grateful for the assistant coaches and board members who've held things together in my absence.

Smoky Mountain Invitational
Results from Smoky have been uploaded on their website here. Shoutout to Clay Piper for winning all four of his individual events! We also had podium finishes from Mary Grace Purdom and Halle Hutchins, as well as plenty of other top-12 scoring finishes. As a whole, we finished 11th out of 27 teams. Last year, we were slightly higher (8th out of 26), but I'm confident that we will only perform better at Tom Schumann City Meet than last year, which is a tradeoff I'm totally fine with making.

Apparently, they couldn't finish processing all the awards from the 10 & Under day, so those medals and/or ribbons aren't in our possession yet. Grace said that they said they'd give them to us at Tom Schumann City Meet, so we'll just have to be patient until then.

Tom Schumann Memorial GKAISA City Meet Championship
This is our final meet of the season! RSVPing is now open on SwimTopia. Please mark "Attending" or "Not Attending" ASAP! If it wasn't letting you this morning after I sent my Remind message, try again now. We'll be working on entries over the next few days. With this being our championship, we expect everyone to be in attendance. If you have concerns about your child getting a ride, please reach out to other parents (or us coaches to connect you with parents) so we can make it happen.

You can find a lot of information about the meet here at this link. Most important to note is that 10 & Unders swim on Thursday, 11 & Ups swim on Friday, and finalists of all ages swim on Saturday. Plan for a full day for whichever days apply to you. It's very hard to say whether any given kid will make finals on Saturday, especially with relays in the mix. Top 16 in every event "final" to swim again on Saturday, and this includes even B and C relays. 1st and 2nd alternates (17th and 18th) are also expected to return on Saturday to be part of our Championship Team. Don't assume your child is too slow to make finals.

In addition to RSVPing on SwimTopia, I need you to fill out this Google Form: https://forms.gle/nZ3yNczVJSVd3Uqe9. We will use this to pre-order parking passes for everyone when we register our team along with submitting entries later in the week. Please complete the form before midnight this Wednesday. If you end up submitting a second form, notify me directly so that I can account for that.

Practice This Week
Almost all of our coaches will be competing in or coaching at a USA Swimming meet this weekend in Alabama. Therefore, practice Thursday evening and Friday might look a little different in terms of who gets coached by who and what exactly we do. Everyone is still welcome whenever, but patience with the literal practices is appreciated! That being said, we hope everyone continues to attend as many practices as possible between now and Tom Schumann City Meet so we can squeeze in the last bit of hard work this week before fine-tuning technique and race details next week!

Thanks for reading all of that! Reach out if you need anything!

GO CUDAS!!!

Josh