Dear J&M Families
Welcome to another year of fun training and fast swimming with J&MSwim/NCAP! We are very excited to have all of you on our team and we want to first share our new mission statement.
To teach all children to swim with proper technique and compete in a safe and fun environment. Provide the guidance to grow and become happy, successful student athletes in and out of the pool. Giving them the confidence to go forward, to know they can succeed by working hard, staying positive and remaining focused on their goals. Creating memories and experiences to look back and draw on all through their lives.
Before we get into all the details of the start of the season, we want to thank you for helping the coaches and swimmers get through a season with very few incidents and no shutdowns during the pandemic. It wasn’t easy and it took teamwork by all of us working together and staying diligent and following our policies and procedures. The pandemic isn’t over, but we hope that by continuing to have daily check ins and health questions and working together we can have an even better swim season.
Attached you will find the dates of our upcoming swim meets, through the March Championships, our most current updated Policy and Procedures for the indoor season at our various Fairfax County Rec Centers, and equipment needs. Please read all the documents, they will answer many of your questions.
We will be starting swim practices at George Washington, Mount Vernon, and Providence Rec Centers on Tuesday September 7. All our Lee Rec Center programs will begin the following Monday morning September 13.
We will be having a new parent zoom meeting on September 21st at 8 pm, https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87331795261 Zoom information will be sent out as we get closer to that date. While we call it a new parent meeting, any parents may join that evening.
Most of our coaches spent the summer coaching NVSL or other local swimming leagues, which is how many of you ended up here as a part of J&MSwim. They have all been able to enjoy a little time off and now it is time to get back to the pool and thinking about the indoor short course season. It is our plan that you hear from your swimmers' coach prior to the start of the season. We have asked all of them to reach out and hopefully host a zoom meeting for you and your swimmers and or send an email to all of you.
Since we plan to have more normal meets (no guarantee of spectators yet but inching closer) we will be enforcing our volunteer requirements again this year. All documents will be up on the team unify page in the next month. In addition, if you have taken the stroke and turn officials’ course and need to do your apprenticing, we plan to have you on deck and certified as soon as possible. Please check the PVS Swim site as they prepare to offer more stroke and turn, starter, and additional classes. Please also note that the ‘dry side’ computer positions do not require you to be ‘wet side’ stroke and turn, etc. certified first.
Please stick to the practice days and times you have signed up for. We understand that now and then you may miss a practice and want to make it up, that is fine contact your coach and they will see if your swimmers can make up the practice on another day. For consistent training practices and to prevent lanes from being overcrowded please only attend the practices you are signed up for.
Finally, Kerri Andrews is our registrar, and she has done a fantastic job handling all the new parents registering and the returning ones as well and making sure our lane numbers are good and not overly full. What she can’t do is predict your swimmer’s t-shirt size, so please make sure you’ve gone into your team unify account and added or updated your swimmer’s shirt to the correct size.
We look forward to seeing everyone in the water soon!
Jeff King and Matt Murray and the J&M Coaching staff.
J&M/NCAP Alexandria Policy & Procedures Athlete Participation Policy
