Dear Marlin families,

I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday weekend and is looking forward to starting this week. I am asking all the Penn families to stop by the pool office at the beginning of practice on Wednesday. We have some welcome packets to share with you and I want to make sure to introduce myself.

We, of course, will have welcome packets for everyone at all three sites.

You may notice as the season unfolds there is quite a bit of redundancy with some of the information presented in the weekly emails. This is because with the vast amount of emails we receive a percentage of those are never fully read. In an attempt to help our members easily find important info I tend to repeat the most important topics week to week.

Practice Schedule for Week of 9/1

Penn High School

Splash 1 & 2: Wednesday 6:00-7:00

Splash 3: Wednesday 6:00-7:00, Thursday 5:30-7:00, and Friday 5:00-6:30

Fins Flex: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 5:30-7:00, and Friday 5:00-6:30

Fins Compete: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 5:30-7:30 and Friday 5:00-6:30

Elite: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 3:45-5:15

New Prairie High School

Splash: Wednesday 5:00-6:00 CST

Fins: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday 5:00-6:30 CST

Elite: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday 5:00-6:30 CST

Knollwood CC

Splash 1 and 2:

Wednesday 4:30-5:30 or 5:30-6:30

Tuesday and Thursday 3:30-4:30 or 4:30-5:30

Practice Notes:

New Prairie families continue to use door N18 to enter the building. Penn families use door D.

Contact Info

If you do not already have it, here is my contact information.

Email: [email protected]

Cell: 574-276-6057

I will share the rest of our staff’s information in next week’s email.

What to Expect at Penn

I am including this section since everyone will be “new” at Penn. Our NP and KCC families will have a level of familiarity with their location and the staff at each site. If there are questions specific to those locations, let me know. If I don’t know the answer I will be sure to find the person who does.

Swimmers-The first week or two you will be exposed to a lot of teaching/learning. There will be several new procedures that will be introduced. Plan for some chaotic first few days, especially on the days of the Splash group practicing. Have trust by the end of week 2 or the start of week 3 things will start to find their rhythm. Make sure to ask questions for anything that seems unfamiliar or new. We will measure success of these first few weeks by the amount of engagement our coaches have with you and if you feel you are learning.

Parents-The seating gallery will be open for you to stay and watch practice. In fact we encourage you to stay. After practice and once the last athlete is off deck the coaches will be available to speak to you to answer any questions you might have. We want to respect our coaches' time so we will be available each night but just for 15 minutes.

USA Memberships

If you have previously belonged to another club you will need to initiate a transfer from your USA Swimming account. I have attached a PDF with instructions (if you are using your phone the doc may not fully download).

Sometime in the next couple of weeks I will send you a link to register for this season’s USA Swimming membership. We will generate a link for the club’s portal and send that out.

If you have any questions about any registration issues you can reach out to me or our team/business manager Kelly Laneman ([email protected])

Swim–A-Thon/Penn High School/Oct. 12

Our 1st annual Swim-A-Thon is planned for Saturday October 12th at Penn High School from 8:00-10:00 AM. This is an event for our entire team. Each athlete will be required to raise a minimum of $100. Athletes raising $200 or more will win a logo’d team suit. There will also be other prizes for the overall top fundraiser and for the top fundraiser at each location.

Here is a preliminary breakdown of funds disbursement.

• 5% to the USA Swimming Foundation
• 10% goes to Michiana Marlins Foundation for scholarships for our athletes
• TBD % for needs for each location based on what each site raises.
• TBD % towards coaching wages/salaries
• TBD % coach education/clinics/professional memberships/required certifications
• TBD % future projects/travel/trips/clinics/guest speakers/emergency funds

I understand this is vague. I want to be as transparent as possible and will communicate exactly where the funds will go once it has been decided.

Switching to New Website Host

We are currently with SwimTopia and hopefully very soon will be switching to TeamUnify. We hope this will be seamless. But with all changes there will probably be few bumps and somewhat of a learning curve if you are unfamiliar with TU.

Spirit Wear

Hopefully you saw our social media posts with the link to our team store. If you missed it, no worries, here is the link.

Communication with Coaches

I’m looking forward to meeting everyone this week and wanted to give you some guidelines on our best practices concerning coach communication.

• The ideal time to speak to a coach would be after practice once all the athletes have cleared the deck.
• Prior to practice is not a preferred time. Coaches need to be focused on their practice plan and their athletes. So unless it is just a quick heads up or an update on something that may affect practice, conversations are best left until the end.
• If there is a serious situation that needs to be discussed please email me or the coach you’d like to meet with to set-up a time for a conversation. (I should be cc’d on those types of emails.)
• Any email should include what you’d like to discuss.
• Please allow 24 hour response time to emails, texts or phone calls. All of our coaches have lives and jobs away from the pool and, outside of an emergency situation, should not be expected to immediately respond.
• If you stay to watch practice please remember you are spectators and not participants. Once practice starts we need to make sure the athletes are focusing on their coaches.

Help Wanted!

We are looking for some volunteers. We would like someone to help coordinate all of our team spirit wear and serve as our social chairperson. We have some ideas on how this role would look, but the possibilities are endless for the right person/people!

We are also looking for volunteers to serve a term on our advisory board. While the details for these positions are still a work in progress we do have an idea of how we would like the board to function. As the name suggests, the board would advise our management team and handle some administrative type tasks.

We also have some paid positions that need to be filled as well. We are looking for a Swim School Director. This job would be about 4 or 5 hours per week administrative work and up to 10 hours of class instruction. Depending on our numbers we could also need more swim school instructors.

We are also looking for some coaching help. We anticipate our numbers growing and could use help at all three sites.

If you know of anyone interested in the swim school positions contact our team/business manager Kelly Laneman,( [email protected] ). For all coaching positions please reach out to me.

Parent Meetings

Here are the tentative dates for our parent meetings at each location.

The KCC parent meeting will be Monday September 23 at 5:45 EST.

The NP parent meeting will be Tuesday September 24 at 5:30 CST.

The Penn parent meeting will be Wednesday September 25 at 6:00 EST.

Specific meeting locations will be communicated in a later email. These dates are all subject to change based on coach availability for practice coverage. My presentation typically takes around 30 minutes followed by a question and answer session.

Social Media Sites

Make sure to like, follow, or subscribe to our social media platforms. You can click here to our Facebook page, X, and Instagram. We will use these sites to enhance our communication. These sites will be filled with pictures from meets and practices. We will also be posting any last minute announcements here as well. These will include practice cancellations, weather or otherwise, time changes to meet warmups, and anything else that needs to get out quickly.

Fall and Winter Meet Schedule/Dates of Meet/Location/Deadline to commit

This is our tentative meet schedule for the fall and winter. We may add meets if we find ones that fit our club’s needs. There will be two different dates listed with each meet The first date listed is the day(s) of the meet and the second date is the deadline to commit.

Swimmers wanting to compete will need to commit to those meets. The deadlines will be based on deadlines that were set in previous years. They may change once the meet hosts posts the meet information. When committing to multiple day meets, if the option to select the days you want is not available, leave a message in the notes section stating the specific days you would like to attend.

Some meets will be marked with an * and those will require swimmers to meet minimum time standards. Soon you will be able to see all pool locations on our website under the "Pools" tab.

DUNE Sweater Weather Swim Spectacular/Hobart High School/Oct. 5&6/Sept. 15

CON Skypoint Transit Invite/Elkhart Aquatic Center/Nov. 1-3/Oct. 12

GSI Goshen Rays Veterans Day Meet/Goshen Aquatic Center/Nov. 9/Oct. 13

IA Tim Welsh Invite/Elkhart Aquatic Center/Jan. 3-5/Nov. 5

CON IMXtreme Invite/Concord High School/Jan. 24-26/Dec.15

IA Jr. Superstar Invitational/Rolfs Aquatic Center/Feb. 15&16/Jan.12

CON Leisure Pools Last Chance Showdown/Feb. 28-Mar. 2/Jan.19

*IN Swimming Divisional Championships/TBD/Mar. 7-9/Feb.23

*IN Swimming Senior State/TBD/Mar. 13-16/Feb.23

*IN Swimming Age Group State/TBD/Mar. 21-23/Feb. 23

*USA Swimming Speedo Sectionals/IU Natatorium Indy/Mar. 27-30/Feb.23

As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

--

John VanDriessche

Head Coach

Michiana Marlins

Penn High School

(574)276-6057

MichianaMarlins.com

#letsgoMARLINS