[Breeze]

General Update

Gold has made an interesting change to the swim schedule for this season...the information about the change is below...

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We are rolling out a new meet concept this year that we are very excited about and wanted to give everyone a few more details. Our apologies on not getting these to you sooner, but we have tried to quickly define what we wanted to accomplish in creating a fun, exciting, value filled meet lineup. A little background:

We think that there are some inherent problems with the way that USA Swimming meets usually run. They are long, they can be expensive ($60+ for a weekend of swimming), and there just aren’t enough on the calendar to give our kids the racing experience that we need. Contrast that with a summer league meet for instance- They are fun, low pressure, inexpensive, and happen every week during their season. You can clearly see the problem there! This coupled with the fact that during the fall, some swimmers will only get one or two race opportunities before the focus meets in December. That just definitely isn’t working right.

With that in mind, enter the Gold Grand Prix Series (11 and older) and Saturday Sprint Series (10 and under)! These one day, one session meets will take place mostly at the Cherokee Aquatic center on the meet dates listed under meets at goldswim.com. They should be a fun and exciting opportunity to give kids the experience of racing in a way that reduces the time, expense, and anxiety of a traditional meet. These meets will not be USA sanctioned, so the times won’t be official but the focus will the be the fun and awards! Events here however, WILL count towards the highly coveted ironman award that we give out at the end of the season (for the swimmer who competes in every event offered in their age group). Here are some of the additional details of each:

Gold Grand Prix Series: These meets will be for 11 and older swimmers and will take place on Saturday mornings instead of normal practice. The series will be comprised of 4 meets with each meet being the same format: 50, 100, and 200 of each stroke in IM order. Each swimmer gets to select a total of 4 events during each meet. Over the course of the 4 meets, each swimmer will be required to have swum at least each event once. As you can see, a swimmer that has to miss one of the meets will still be able to complete all the races, and a swimmer that goes to all meets will have the opportunity to re-swim some races for a higher finish. Events will be scored over the course of the 4 meets in the age groups of 11-12, 13-14, 15-16, 17-18 both male and female. The finishing place in a race will equal the number of points that the swimmer scores, so lowest number of points wins. At the end of the Grand Prix series, points will be added up and the top 3 lowest point scorers in each age group will receive prizes! We have some pretty exciting prizes lined up- think high end wearable merchandise for top finishers, so we think the competition will be exciting. These meets will usually last just a couple hours and the cost will be $75 for ALL 4 meets.

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Currently, my kids are saying, as long as their friends swim the Grand Prix series, they will too...