Hello dive parents!

Hard to believe we’ve reached the end of week 3 of practices and your kids are doing great! We’re so proud of all the hard work the kids have been putting into the practices. Just a quick reminder that morning practices start on Monday morning. Just as we have been doing, feel free to attend any one practice that suits you best at 7, 8 or 9. You can even come in for a half practice if necessary to get everyone off to camps or other summer activities. Yes, it’s the return of fun Fridays!! (if you know, you know). Morning practices are sunny and can be hot, so time to bring the sunscreen!

Our first A meet of the season is coming up next week, and many of you have had questions on how these meets work and who goes to these meets. We explain this in detail on the website at https://dhdive.swimtopia.com/about-diving; but in summary, to participate in A meets, divers must meet a minimum requirement of dives. For those 10 and under, they must be able to do a front dive (or front fall-in), a back dive (or back fall-in) and some other third dive. These requirements increase with age. The coaches have been taking notes on which dives the kids are able to do and we meet on Mondays to produce the list of divers competing that week from among those that have let us know they can be there (see below). It’s OK if your child is not ready, this is just the first meet and there will be plenty of opportunities later this year. We strive to make sure their first meet is a positive experience, so if your child is still working on a dive, we’d prefer to give them more time.

Please don’t forget to indicate if your child can or cannot attend the meets. You do that on our website in the calendar section here: https://dhdive.swimtopia.com/swim_meets Please click on “Meet Entry” for each one and indicate your availability. Remember, this is not indicating that you WILL or WILL NOT compete, just that you CAN or CANNOT be there. We will select from the divers that can be there. If you fail to indicate one way or another, we spend a lot of time on Monday tracking you down to find out.

Please, do this now for all the meets that you can…we’ll wait.

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Also, while you’re there, we two more judges to volunteer for this meet, it’s the other button labeled “Job Signup”. Anyone can judge, you don’t have to be certified. It’s just a summer fun league, we could use the help.

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Ok great. Thanks for doing that. Now back to the content.

This fist meet is very far away, near Mount Vernon. I don’t think there is a team any farther away than this one. Even with no traffic it’s a 35 minute drive from the pool. We must be there by 5:00 to warm-up before the meet at 6:00, so please start planning now to think about how you might get there on time. Angela and Thomas can drive some kids from the pool, but we suspect our shuttles may be full for this one. If you can miss some work to drive yourself and your child, that would be very helpful.

Stay tuned for our message on Monday with the list of qualified divers and more details on the meet logistics.

Final Judges Clinic – If you’re interested in attending a league training class on judging, the final one is next Wednesday, June 22 at 6:30 at Camelot pool. Location here

Covid Policy – As we’ve already had divers test positive for Covid, we wanted to share the pool’s covid policy for this season for swim and dive.

Please keep your swimmers (and yourself) home when you are not feeling well. The board has updated the pool’s Covid policy for the summer. If a swimmer becomes symptomatic or tests positive, we ask that they stay home from Day 0 through Day 5. They may return to practice on Day 6 if they have recovered. Weekly we will send a notification to the team if we have been informed of any cases of Covid among the team. We will not be doing contact tracing or providing any detail beyond the last date a swimmer was at practice, if we know that information. This is simply for awareness. We are appreciative of families who are committed to the health and safety of this community.

As we return to a “normal” season we would like to do everything we can to keep our swimmers and families healthy. We know there is no guarantee that people aren’t going to get sick but if we all do our part to stay home when we aren’t feeling well we can hopefully keep our community healthy.

Thanks and have a great weekend. We’ll see everyone again next week!

-Thomas