Happy weekend Dolphins! We hope it's a sunny one!

Thank you for your patience as we work to plan the continuation of our Woods of Parkview meet. We now have official confirmation and information from the home/host team.

Monday, June 16
Woods of Parkview Meet Continuation
6:45 p.m. – Arrival (Please do not arrive early, as we are trying to be respectful of Parkview’s team, HOA and neighbors.)
7:15 p.m. – HW Warm-ups
7:30 p.m. – Meet begins with Event 31 Heat 3
We are hopeful that without weather delays, the meet will conclude – all individual events (no relays) – by 9 p.m.

Swimmers
If your swimmer is not able to attend Monday’s continuation, please email Head Coach Eric Brown: [email protected]

Volunteers
If you were scheduled for a second half volunteer shift, please look for an email from Volunteer Coordinator Laura Holder with information this weekend. If you weren’t scheduled to volunteer for the second half but are willing to sub in if needed as a Timer, Official or Bullpen/Staging, we would really appreciate it! Please email: [email protected]

Monday Practices
We will have normal Monday morning practice, but there will be no practice on Monday evening, June 16.

MEET & WEATHER QUESTIONS (Part 2)

We hope it goes without saying that the safety of our swimmers and families is our first priority, and we will never swim when it is not safe to do so.

We wanted to go ahead and answer a few additional questions we received from parents and swimmers about meets and inclement weather today. (My own kids, two who didn’t have the opportunity to swim any individual events on Thursday, have continued to ask weather-meet questions as well!)

Who decides if a meet is postponed or rescheduled or canceled?

Per League rules, the “weather committee” consists of the two head coaches (for us, Eric Brown), the Primary League Council Members from each team (for us, Christina van Maanen; secondary council is Patricia Heys), and head official from the home team. Home teams may also assign a designated “weather safety official” at the start of each meet to be part of the decision-making committee. Meets must be rescheduled or continued within 6 days.

How does the committee make a decision on whether to delay or reschedule?

Using League weather and meet rules as a guide, they look at the forecast on several different apps, the actual weather they are seeing, take into account how far the meet progressed before the delay, how far in the meet there is to go, what time it is, the availability of essential meet volunteers (for example: all meets must have a trained Starter) for the reschedule date … and other factors. Basically, it is a non-stop discussion of possibilities, best-case scenarios, safety of swimmers and families, etc. from the first clap of thunder on ….

It seemed like it took a long time to make a decision and plan on Thursday night?

Our veteran families know, in the past years, summer weather has caused much longer delays than what we experienced Thursday. The League says the meet should end by 11 p.m., and if we had been able to restart at 9:15 p.m. (as we hoped) then the meet would have ended before 11 p.m.

After what the committee saw on the radar at 8:30 p.m. changed (that the storm would clear by 9 p.m.), the conversation focused on when the meet could be completed.

What was Woods of Parkview’s plan to host the rest of the meet?

Ideally this is a quick conversation that would be planned quickly and swimmers and families would be notified at the meet before leaving. Unfortunately, Woods of Parkview did not have a plan for when they could host a continuation of the meet and some of their leadership wanted to cancel/forfeit the meet completely – which cannot be done until event 42 is completed.

After much discussion and pulling in the Woods of Parkview HOA vice president, a tentative date was set for continuation of the meet. Per League rules, the weather committee should have a plan before sending all swimmers and volunteers home.

What is Hanarry West’s meet makeup day for meets we host?

In our contract with the Hanarry West Club, our stated makeup day for meets is Saturday morning. We have also communicated this with the League and the teams we host.

Does HW leadership have plans to make rain delays better for everyone in the future?
Yes! We learn something new every meet and continue to make changes. For future away meets, we will advocate even harder before the meet begins that the host team puts in writing a plan for a canceled/continuation of a meet (this is a League rule). But please remember that the League and all the teams are led and run by parent volunteers. And in the case of Woods of Parkview this week, they were missing several members of their leadership team to vacation/travel. Also, this is the first rescheduling of a meet that our HW leadership team has experienced. In the past we’ve only had to delay the meet before continuing the same evening. So Monday’s meet will be a learning experience for all of us.

Our family is out of town next week, which means our swimmers are missing the Waterton meet and the remaining Woods of Parkview meet.

We tried our best to get in as many races as we could on Thursday because we knew any rescheduling would result in some swimmers not being able to compete. For our remaining two meets, we will again do everything possible to complete the meet that evening. We know our swimmers have worked very hard, and with just 5 meets in a season, every meet is important. To qualify for the County Meet, swimmers must compete in a minimum of two regular season meets. Again, half our team have their eyes on qualifying for the County Meet, and every race is an opportunity to do that.

My swimmer was so excited about swimming in a relay. Why are those canceled?

Relays are fun! We know the kids love them in practice and in meets. Unfortunately, when inclement weather is on the horizon or happens, these are the first to be canceled. The League rules give teams permission to cancel all relays if weather threatens a delay or cancellation. Individual events are the priority because they are directly related to the County Meet. Each team sends relays to the County Meet, and who is on the relays is assigned by the Head Coach. But individual events are qualified for individually (they are not guaranteed for each team). And individual times are also used to decide the seeding time for relays (each swimmer’s individual time is used and added with the other relay team members’ individual times to come up with the county relay’s seed time).