Season over

So my rookie season as a swim coach has ended. Umstead Pines finished the regular season 4-0, as previously stated. At champs, our 6-and-under boys and 15-18 boys both won their age groups, and overall, we finished 2nd in Division II, which, from what I understand, is our best finish in about 10 years. Most importantly, we had a lot of great swims from everyone at champs. We had some people drop over 10 seconds in a single event, and two of our last three swimmers in the 9-10 butterfly dropped 7 seconds each. Sarah won two out of three events, getting out-touched in the 100 freestyle but coming back to win both the butterfly and backstroke events. Joey had an amazing back half of the race in backstroke and raced ahead of everyone. Awards were quite a bit of fun, and the slide show put together by G was amazing.

So thanks to everyone for making this season happen...all of the other coaches, the swimmers, parents, parent-reps, and volunteers. I had a lot of fun, and I hope to be back next year for another exciting season.

Chuck Yu out.

Regular season over

So the regular season in Durham Summer Swim League is over, and Umstead Pines/Willowhaven is the Division II regular season champion! Woohoo! We finished the regular season at 4-0 last night with a nice win over Duke Faculty Club. Again, time drops all around. In fact, for the 11-and-up age groups (11-12, 13-14, and 15-18), we, the coaches, instituted a "Milkshake Challenge," where a significant time drop (determined by coaches Charles and Melissa) in an event (chosen by the swimmer) earns a milkshake from Cookout. We had quite a few people make it, but even those that didn't had some great time drops and near misses. I think the Milkshake Challenge is gonna stay around for awhile.

On another note, I also saw a few people that I hadn't seen in a few years...Roger and Emma were both swimming for DFC, and Lauren was lifeguarding. Fittingly enough, Lauren is the daughter of my first coach, Rusty, who is an amazing coach and pretty much my model for anything I do that is coaching-related. Except the Milkshake Challenge. Melissa and I started that.