Thank you GMA Families!

Feb 1, 2010
Thank you so much for a GREAT Vermont Invitational Meet.  I think that we really hit our meet-hosting stride as a team at this meet.  Thank you to all of our parents for your incredibly hard work to make this meet a positive experience for our athletes and for athletes from all over New England and New York.  Our meets are successful because every family is willing to work hard and have fun providing a great racing environment for all of the athletes.  We are so lucky to have such dedicated and supportive swim parents.  THANK YOU!
 
I want to thank our GMA Coaches for working so hard not only to coach our kids in every race, but also to support the team in running a great meet.  Our coaches are typically the first people on the deck in the morning.  They help finish the meet set-up and get the athletes ready to race their best.  Our coaches tend to stay on deck for multiple sessions of the meet, ensuring that the meet runs smoothly and that the athletes get the attention that they deserve.  Finally, our coaches are the last people off the deck at the end of the meet.  This past weekend, our coaches gave our athletes a bit of a break from their clean-up responsibilities and chose, instead, to take on most of the cleaning responsibilities.  Thank you to our coaches for being such great stewards of our team!
 
I also want to thank our GMA parents for doing such a terrific job balancing your parenting responsibilities with your meet responsibilities.  It is not easy to make sure that the meet runs smoothly and I know that it means you have to miss watching your kids races.  Thank you for ALL of the sacrifices that you make for the good of our athletes.  I want to thank a few families, specifically, who have really gone above and beyond at our home meets this season.  Both Don and Betsy Weaver have consistently worked every session of every GMA home meet for the last six years (or more).  I can't imagine our home meets without Don and Betsy leading our officials and ensuring that our meets are run with the highest quality of officiating.  You should know that Don has been so instrumental in hosting GMA meets at Saint Michael's College.  He has been the meet referee for every GMA home meet at Saint Michael's for the last 10 years.  You should also know that Don is the master at beating our timeline.  In fact, yesterday afternoon, Don and the officiating crew, finished our meet over 30 minutes early.  Way to go! 
 
I want to recognize the Griffith family for volunteering to work at every session of our meets.  Bill Griffith has run the Colorado timing system during the 10 and under sessions at the last few home meets, even though his athletes are no longer 10 and under.  In addition, Sandy serves as a stroke and turn official at every home meet and often works additional sessions and/or during a time when Bill is also working.  Thank you for putting all of your parenting efforts into supporting our meets. 
 
The Green family quietly manages to work every session of our home meets.  Often Jeff and Brenda will both work at every session.  They may not be on the job list and they certainly won't make any noise about it.  However, I notice that both Brenda and Jeff are always working hard for the athletes at every session of our meets.  Thank you. 
 
I want to thank our food concessions staff.  Meredith McClellan, Becky Fredericks, Amy McNall and MJ Mullowney are your friendly food concessions staff.  These awesome woman work so hard to provide the athletes with fresh healthy food.  Often they are working so hard that they don't even get to watch their athletes swim.  Becky, in fact, ran the food concessions area all alone yesterday because we were so short-staffed as a team.  The kids and families count on our food concessions to feed our athletes and families.  Thank you Meredith, Becky, Amy and MJ for all of your hard work for the kids. 
 
Finally, I want to thank the Ubert family and the Hall/Hadden family for your extra support of the meet yesterday.  Of course, Mary Ubert and Eileen Hall work hard as coaches at every meet.  On top of that, Kevin and Bob volunteer to officiate at every meet.  Moreover, Mary created the outstanding walking taco meals for our food concessions.  We now have a new team food tradition thanks to Mary!  Mary also created the "hot heats" bags for the athletes yesterday, bringing a new element of fun and excitement to the meet.  Thank you to ALL of our outstanding GMA parents.  We could not do it without you!!
 
Congratulations to our athletes who performed so well yesterday.  We had some of our newer athletes try racing for the first time and try new events for the first with great success!  We saw many athletes attain new qualifying times and qualify for new events.  We saw almost every athlete achieving personal best times throughout the meet.  What an outstanding success!!  GMA had 101 athletes in the meet.  Of our 455 swims, 200 were personal best times.  We achieved 44% personal best times, which was slightly better than the meet average of 41%.   Way to go TEAM!!
 
Now that we have finished our home invitational meets so well, we are very excited for our athletes as we head into the Regional Meet and the New England Championship Meets.  I anticipate that we are going to see A LOT of fast swimming in the next few weekends from our GMA athletes.  Make sure to leave a little extra room in those suitcases for all of the best time prizes our athletes are going to earn!!  We have a great opportunity as a team to end our season with some strong performances and some strong team experiences.  We will continue to encourage our athletes to race their best, to show great team spirit and to be leaders on and off the pool deck.  As you prepare for our end of season meets, it is recommended that you familiarize yourself with our GMA philosophies regarding end of season meets.  Please click HERE to read our guidelines.  
 
 
Best wishes to our athletes as they prepare for their meets.  Let's get excited to have FUN swimming FAST as a TEAM!   HERE WE GO GMA!!
 
P.S.  Thanks to Coach Laurie for the photos and Thanks to ALL of our GMA -Upper Valley families for your EXTRA help with timing and meet support.  It is so fun to be all together as a WHOLE TEAM!!