FEBRUARY 2020 DM NEWSLETTER

FEBRUARY 2020 DALLAS MUSTANGS NEWSLETTER

The month of February finds us smack in the middle of the championship season, both with our club and high school swimmers. United States Swimming (USAS) has a great set of stepping stones for swimmers as they grow and move through the sport. Better known as qualifying times or cuts, these times standards are the basis for most of the goals that swimmers should be setting for themselves. Every swimmer who starts off is classified as a “C” swimmer because they do not have any established times in the USAS database. As the swimmer participates in club swim meets, those times begin to accumulate. It could take a single meet or multiple meets for the swimmer to qualify for the next level. A break down of those levels are (most have cuts for Winter short course yards events and different cuts for summer long course meters events):

 

C, B, BB, A, AA, AAA and AAAA – These are motivational times that are set by USAS each four years and are the basis for how our local meets are divided.

 

Texas Age Group Swimming Championships (TAGS) – These times a specific to swimmers in Texas and should be the main goals for swimmers 14 and under. There is a TAGS meet at the end of the Winter short course season and one at the end of the Summer long course season.

 

Sectionals – There are about a dozen of these meets around the country at the end of each season and each meet has its own set of time standards.

 

Futures – There are four of these meets around the country and they only take place in the summer.

 

Junior Nationals – There are two of these meets in December and one in the summer, with the summer Juniors cuts a little bit harder than the Winter cuts. This meet is only open to swimmers 18 and under.

 

Nationals – Now these cuts are fast! This meet brings together the top swimmers from around the country.

 

Olympic and World Championship Trials – The top of the pyramid as far as qualifying times go. The top two swimmers in each event qualify for the USA Olympic team.

 

The vast majority of swimmers will not make it to the national level, but some will. Those times are there for swimmers to dream about when they are young and if the swimmer has the commitment to do the work that it takes to get to the highest level, then those dreams can become realities. And swimming provides plenty of stepping stones along the way to reestablish new goals when cuts are made.

 

With all of that in mind and the championship meets close at hand, we are hopeful that many of our swimmers will be taking the next step and achieving new qualifying times as we finish out the season. And two of the words that always accompany that conversation are “shave” and “taper”. The taper is the extended rest that the swimmers get at the end of a season. The harder the swimmer has worked and the more committed he/she has been at attending practices during the season, the better the taper will work. The shave is definitely a “swimmer thing” and is not common to the vast majority of sports. The swimmer should shave most of the body that is exposed to the water except eyebrows (that would look really weird!). The idea is to take off the top layer or two of skin so that body becomes more sensitive to touch and as a result, the swimmer can feel the water better. Yes, this is a commitment and there are plenty of excuses not to do it: boys saying that they feel weird going to school without any hair on their arms and legs; girls saying that their arm hairs will grow back thicker (if this were the case, we’d have a bunch of ex-swimmers who looked like gorillas!); girls saying that if they don’t shave their legs until the end of the season, they’ll be made fun of…… Well, shaving correctly all comes down to one question - how committed are you to being the best you can be? Don’t let someone else’s opinion or ignorance stand in the way of your goals.