Newsletter_January

TNT Newsletter

The New Team on the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay

January 2008

NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCKS

A warm welcome to our new teammates, Rachael Lane, age 10 and Kellen Bullock, age 15. Rachael practices with level 2 and Kellen with level 4. Congratulations swimmers! You are going to have a lot of fun and learn to swim really, really fast.

TNT SCHOLAR ATHLETE HONOR ROLL

Congratulations to TNT swimmers who qualified for the A / AB Honor Roll during the 2nd quarter academic marking period. Special thanks to those parents who submitted their swimmer’s names for this listing.

BIRTHDAY GREETINGS

Congratulations to those swimmers who celebrated birthdays during the month of January: Carly Arnone, 7 on 1/4; Emily Feldvoss, 7 on 1/18; Abbey Giles, 12 on 1/18; and John Pereira, 12 on 1/19. Another year older and another year faster!

EXTRA SPECIAL

Congratulations to the following list of swimmers for their extra curricular accomplishments. Special thanks to those parents who submitted the highlights of their swimmers activities outside the pool for this listing.

Amanda Rudat is playing Upward basketball.

Will Anderson was chosen for the Math Counts Team at Christ the King Catholic School and will participate in the regional competition at the University of South Alabama in February.

Nicholas Szydel is playing basketball with the Christ the King 2nd grade team. He scored 7 of the 9 pts scored by his team during last weekend's game.

Andrew Szydel is playing basketball with the Christ the King 4th grade team. Andrew scored 10 pts in the season opener as he helped his team to a 2-0 start for the season.

Megan Midkiff was invited to participate in the People to People Sports Ambassador Program where she could participate as a member of a swim team with athletes from across the country and compete in an international youth competition in Holland.

Meghan Finney is playing basketball for Christ the King School.

Tommy O’Hara is playing basketball for Christ the King School.

Adele Mantiply was chosen for the CKCS Math Counts Team.

Lauren Chastang is playing YMCA Basketball and Club Volleyball.

Lauren Kinsey is reading the part of Mrs. Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank for her literature class.

The Christ the King Scholars Bowl team of Will Anderson, Ashley Kinsey, and Ashley Szydel finished third place in the Middle School District Meet.

CALLING ALL WINNERS

TNT’s 4th Annual Short Course Awards Dinner is scheduled to be held on Tuesday, February 19, from 6:00 – 8:00 PM at the Eastern Shore Presbyterian Church. All currently active team members and their families are welcome to attend.

Dinner includes pasta with Alfredo sauce and spaghetti with meatballs, salad, garlic bread and dessert. The cost is $5.00 for Adults and Youth ages 13 and up, $3.00 for kids ages 4-12 and ages 3 & under are free.

Following dinner, currently active team members will receive participation trophies and Southeastern Short Course Championship team members and meet qualifiers will be recognized and awarded.

THE FUTURE IS NOW

In an effort to conserve time, effort and financial resources, TNT's meet entry procedure is changing to an online, Internet based method of entering and opting out of meets. The new meet entry procedure is similar, but with much less paperwork, employing the Internet as the primary source of TNT meet entry information.

Families will receive a notice in their file folders informing them of an upcoming meet with instructions to check their email for the upcoming meet information. This notice also includes an opt out form for the meet, but not a highlighted swimmer event list. The email includes a link to a meet entry page containing swimmer event lists and meet notice (location, dates, warm up and starting times, etc), meet entry summary sheet and an opt out form. There will also be a link to opt out online. Please see Coach Jan with questions.

THREAT TO THREEPEAT

The upcoming 2008 South District Championship Meet, scheduled to be held February 16 – 17 at the University of West Florida is the final short course meet of the season for TNT swimmers to qualify for the Southeastern Championship Meet in Nashville, TN. Swimmers with who do qualify for Southeasterns may not participate in their qualifying events at this meet.

This meet also serves as Southeastern Swimming’s 8 & Under Championship Meet. TNT’s 8 & under boys enter the meet as defending back to back team champions, having won the meet’s 1st place team plaque in 2006 and 2007. TNT’s 8 & under girl’s team enters the meet with the strongest lineup to date and could also be in position to win the girls team title.

SOUTHEASTERN CHAMPIONSHIP QUALIFIERS

An all time high seventeen swimmers from TNT have achieved qualifying times for the 2008 Southeastern Short Course Championships, scheduled to be held February 21 – 24 in Nashville, TN. Several more TNT swimmers are also very close to making their Southeastern “cuts.” Congratulations to those current TNT qualifiers listed below.

A SHORT, SHORT COURSE SEASON

Some of you have probably noticed that the short course swimming season is ending a month earlier than in previous years. This is because the national office at United States Swimming has placed new emphasis on long course swimming (50 meter pools), the dimensional metric standard for international competition.

As a result of this national level movement toward long course competition, coaches from Southeastern Swimming voted last Spring to hold the SES Short Course Championships one month earlier, in order to begin moving more into line with the new emphasis on long course swimming. This decision was hotly debated and will probably be revisited at the 2008 Spring meeting.

At the local level, this change will occur slowly because most teams throughout Southeastern Swimming depend on hosting short course meets as their main source of fundraising. This is mainly due to a lack of long course facilities available in which to host meets.

This change does not affect TNT swimmers other than having one less month to qualify and prepare for the annual SES short course championship meets. Current TNT practices and group schedules remain in effect until the kids are out of school for summer vacation, at which time the TNT summer schedule begins.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS

TNT is hosting a long course meet at the University of West Florida the weekend of April 12 – 13. This meet is strategically positioned in the 2008 long course schedule, giving SES teams a full seven weeks from the end of the short course championships in February, until the date of our meet to get ready for their first long course competition.

This will be the first of many meets that TNT will eventually host and we are counting on support from all of our families in order to make these endeavors successful. This includes 100% participation from our all of our swimmers and the volunteer effort of our parents on both days of the meet.

Debbie Anderson will serve as the Meet Director and will be coordinating all volunteer positions. Please plan to reserve this weekend in order for your family to contribute to the success of this enterprise.

THE REAL OLYMPIC SIZE POOL

The term long course sounds big and bad. It’s not really; just less turns. Long Course (LC) simply refers to the dimensions of the pool, or the course that swimmers compete in. LC pools are 50 meters in length, unlike 25 yard short course (SC) pools that we have been competing in since September. The main difference is that LC races have half the turns. For example, a 50 meter event has no turns. A one hundred meter LC event has only one turn compared to a one hundred yard SC event with three turns; a two hundred meter LC event has only three turns compared to seven turns for SC, etc. Everything else remains the same with monthly competitions held throughout the Southeastern LSC including a championship meet in the middle of July. This summer’s championship meet is scheduled for July 17 – 20 in Nashville, TN

THE GOOD GUYS

TNT thanks those supporters who advertise their business on our web site. Proceeds from advertising sales help us with operational expenses and allows TNT to provide low cost, competitive swimming instruction to children of all ability levels. Please visit http://www.swimtnt.com/advertisers_page_07-08.html to learn more about the services our advertisers offer.

A-Safe Online Backup Service

Baldwin County Bonding Company, Inc.

Ben M. Radcliff - Contractor, Inc.

Bryant Bank

Bounds Family YMCA

Cricket Realty and Management

Daniel C. Deese, DMD

E.G.M. L.L.C.

Fairhope Health Foods

Goodyear of Daphne

Hartmann, Blackmon & Kilgore, P.C.

Jan K. Finney, Accountant

J.H. Wright & Associates

KONE, Inc. Elevators and Escalators

Mary Beth Mantiply, Attorney at Law

Sunflower Cafe

Shannon Thomas Arndt, Attorney at Law, P.C.

Sledge’s Custom Building, Inc.

Steven Kinsey, M.D. F.A.C.S.

T. Leavell & Associates, Inc.

Tameron Honda - Eastern Shore

Thomas Hospital Infirmary Health System

Threaded Fasteners, Inc.

Volkert & Associates, Inc.

Watermark, LLC

Waterville USA, Inc

FEEDBACK

Please direct questions or comments about information contained in this newsletter to TNT Head Coach, Jan Mittemeyer by phone 599-1019 or email at swimtnt123@aol.com

HOME PAGE

Will Anderson

Carly Arnone

Riley Boles

Simon Boles

Abbye Brunson

Marlye Brunson

Bailey Byrne

Lauren Chastang

Alex Daly

Hannah Denham

Jordan Dyess

Sahra El-Hamaki

Meghan Finney

Griffin Fisk

Connor Funke

Jordan Funke

Gabrielle Horst

Annabelle Kahalley

Killian Kahalley

Ashley Kinsey

Thomas Kinsey

Chase Knapstein

Eva Knapstein

Lola Mahner

Adele Mantiply

Breland McHenry

Megan Midkiff

Haley Miller

Tommy O’Hara

Andrew Oswald

Patrick Parish

Payton Peirce

Mason Pitre

Tyler Powell

Anna Ramsey

Nathan Rothermel

Amanda Rudat

Emi Rudat

Kyle Simpson

Ryan Simpson

Frances Sledge

Jack Sledge

Emily Smith

Joshua Smith

Olivia Smith

Rachael Smith

Chantz Stevens

Andrew Szydel

Ashley Szydel

Nicholas Szydel

Ben Turnipseed

Boyd Turnipseed

Patrick Ward

Anna Wilson

Emma Wilson

Will Anderson

Simon Boles

Daniel Doucet

Sahra El – Hamaki

Sophie Feldvoss

Lauren Kinsey