Off The Deck - new webisode

Milton Dash for Cash Weekend

What a fantastic weekend in Milton! It has been a long 6 week preparation period for meet season and we focused on doing a couple of things better than anyone else coming into our competitions:

1.) Be better under water than the other teams.
2.) Cheer louder than the other teams.
3.) Have more fun than the other teams doing 1.) and 2.)

I've got great examples of each point, but I won't belabour the topic.

1.) EVERYONE was fantastic working on kicking and streamlining underwater this past weekend. This is certainly what we wanted to achieve with all the work we put in for about 6 weeks (drills, sets, video analysis, better feedback, etc) and in many cases it lead to significant best times. Avery Jans is a great example here in her 800FR. Avery took off almost 2 min and was able to make it to about 6 or 7 metres off of every wall (about 3m further than the girl from Milton that she was racing). As a result, Avery ended up taking about 70 less strokes than her competitor in the race. Her competitor was swimming a little quicker, but Avery was moving faster and easier under water fro each wall. In the end, Avery had more energy left, won her heat and dropped a ton of time. Sticking to the plan pays off!

2.) During Sunday's medal presentations, not only was HHBF the only team involved and cheering, but we were making a statement to the other teams; we are proud of and support those who wear the fin. I felt overwhelming pride to be part of the team this weekend and I'm sure athletes and parents felt the same way (and there were likely some envious people on other teams too).

3.) Lots of smiles and happiness all around from parents and athletes. Very successful weekend in this regard.

Across the weekend, we saw 4 club records (Kyle Haas - 50BR; Emma Fender - 50BR and 100BR, Matt Fox - 400IM & 50BK), a few new regional times (Paige Olmstead, Shannon Jickling, Aleks Plackoski) and too many people within arms grasp to mention. HHBF won the meet, followed closely by Milton. Regardless of the results, Chris, Shannan and myself were unbelievably proud of this team and feel that we got off to the great start we were hoping for.

I was surprised, however, by how many parents were taken in by the new facility. Yes, new facilities are nice, but we're still producing some very good athletes with what we have. Does it contain water? Yes. Is it regulation length? You bet! Add Jaclyn in charge of town aquatics, a renewed desire to win and some team cohesion, we're going to continue to do great regardless what facility we're training out of. I encourage all of you to listen to the upcoming episode 8 of coachmikepodcast where I speak to Nancy Sweetnham about becoming one of the worlds best out of a small program and 6lane/25m pool; she has many relevant things to say.

A few more notes:

- Next weekend is Swim International in Brantford for the Elite and Platinum groups where we hope to keep the momentum going with great swims and equally good team support.
- As a result of SI in Brantford, Friday night's Elite and Platinum workout is cancelled. Swimmers not swimming in Brantford can join the Friday morning groups.
- Keep tuning in to my podcast. I have some OUTSTANDING guests coming up. A lot of downloads outside of Georgetown too; its great, but don't let other teams benefit from this more than we do!

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Message to HHBF Elite and Platinum Parents

Attention all Elite and Platinum Group Swimmers and Parents,

Due to repairs at the GHIP, we will be truncating our usual workout on Friday night. Start time for November 4th, 2011 will be at 5pm and practice will be finished at 6:30pm. No other group practices will be interrupted on this day.

The pool should be fully functional next week (although we may still be waiting for starting blocks). The town has apologized multiple times for the inconvenience and appreciates HHBF's patience and understanding in this matter. I, personally, would rather this type of thing get done now and limit us for a week rather than sidelining us for longer later in the season. I thank the town for handling this quickly and efficiently. Please contact me with any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

Mike Thompson
Head Coach
HHBF

coachmikepodcast episode 7

Anyone who missed Tobias Oriwol's speech to the Blue Fins last Wednesday night (or wants to hear it again) can hear it on my podcast as well as some stuff from Dean Boles on the training camp going on out west. Check it out! Also available on iTunes and on podbean.

Podcast Powered By Podbean

HHBF Awards Banquet 2011

On Wednesday October 26th, 2011, HHBF held its annual achievement awards (achievement from the previous season). Club Records were celebrated (over 80 broken in 2010-2011 season) as well as qualifiers, top 8 finishers and medalists from the Regional, Provincial and National level were celebrated. Perhaps the most exciting moment of the night was the appearance of our Guest of Honour, 2008 Olympian, Tobias Oriwol (pictured above with Blue Fins, Livy Olson and Loren Monhemius).

Tobias's career spanned about 20 years and experienced many highs and lows. In his address to the Blue Fins, he detailed many of these things (his retirement and his reason to come back to swimming), but perhaps his most poignant message was about the importance of good team mates and being a good team mate. Toby was very generous with his time, very polite and extremely professional. An excellent speaker; I would highly recommend him for functions if you can get him (he is a very busy guy)!

We have over 90 people attend the banquet this year (Only HHBF's second annual event) which is significantly larger than last season. Not only was there a higher turnout, but HHBF was awarding more swimmers than we thought possible when we first organized the event 2 seasons ago. I must say I am extremely proud of my Team both as a member and as a coach. We have come a long way and will continue to evolve and progress. Wednesday night was a celebration of how much our swimmers achieved last season, but it was also proof positive that the Blue Fins have a bright future ahead.

I think Tobias said it best: "...While not everyone may get an Award tonight, it is important to remember that no one wins an award by themselves and we should remember the team mates that made it all possible."

HHBF Blue and White Meet

Saturday October 22nd marked the unofficial kick off of meet season for the Intro, Intro Comp, Bronze, Silver and Gold groups with our annual HHBF Blue and White Meet. My initial observations was how much better this meet runs now than it did 3 or 4 years ago! I believe this is for a few reasons:

- Chris Henderson and Shannan Andrews have prepared the athletes very well! Fewer and fewer of them find this meet (for some of the intro groups, this is their first meet experience) overwhelming. Chris and Shannan are also very enthusiastic and energetic people and these athletes feed upon that. The junior coaches were doing their jobs very well! I'm pretty sure that everyone had a great time as a result.

- Our athletes from the Regional Development, Elite and Platinum groups were there volunteering their time which made the day run much smoother. Nothing helps more than having volunteers who know how meets run.

- Parent volunteers were outstanding! We had no shortage of help at all Saturday morning.

- The older athletes were very helpful with the younger athletes. I can't put into words how proud it makes me to see older athletes like Emilie Knighton helping with the younger kids just because she wants to be a good team mate. Athletes like that make a huge difference in the development of this club!

- There was a lot of pretty quick swimming from these younger athletes! I can't wait to kick off the official meet season.

Thank you everyone for all of your help on Saturday, we could not have run such a great meet without you. Historically I do not involve myself directly with the Blue or White team, but instead spent time floating around, fixing problems and putting out fires. This season, things ran so well, it freed me up to closely watch a lot of the races and I must say, I'm very happy with what I see coming up the pipeline for HHBF.

UPDATE: Thank you, Rob Copeland, for the pictures
Scary Update: That was my 200th post. My how time flies!

Thank you

A quick thank you to everyone who reads and listens to my stuff. My blog is quickly approaching 30,000 visitors (at the time of writing this post) and my podcast was shut down by Podbean yesterday because there were simply too many streams and downloads of my podcasts. Podbean demanded because of the popularity of the podcast, I would have to upgrade to paid service or risk being shut down after a certain band width capacity. Thanks to a very generous donation from Coach Dave Ling of the Toronto Swim Club yesterday, I was able to upgrade and continue to provide uninterrupted service until I figure out how to fund this operation.

The response to what I have been doing is overwhelming and all I can say is thank you for appreciating what I am doing. I think that the sharing of as much information as possible is the only real way that we're going to make Ontario and Canada better.

Thank you, everyone!