Highland Vista Aquatic Club

Peter Gariepy

Webmaster

Hello HVAC families,
I hope you've all recovered from the grueling two days of championships at Fort Lowell. It was certainly nice to sleep in on Friday morning! I've been talking with Coach Ed, and we think it might be fun to get together one last time to celebrate the 2010 season.

So, considered yourself invited to the Hut for Happy Hour.

WHEN: Wednesday, July 28th from about 5 pm to whenever ???
WHERE: The HUT, 305 N. Fourth Ave

Once again, Ed's friend, Scott, at the Hut has offered HVAC $3 micro-brews. We won't be sponsoring the purchase of pizza this time, but there will be a vendor at the Hut on Wednesday selling carne asada tacos, so food will be available for purchase until they sell out. Hope you can make it out for one last "hurrah" before we all go our separate ways for the school year. Thanks again for a great swim season. It was a great time!

Sincerely,
Jennifer Gould
HVAC, co-chair

A big thanks to the coaches. Our kids were so well prepared for the past two days. As I said after prelims, we had very few DQ's and many personal best times. This is all due to some fantastic coaching by Ed, Jeff and Carly. Thank you coaches for preparing our swimmers, easing their nerves, cheering them on and giving them personal feedback at the end of each swim. You are simply the best, and you deserve so much credit for our team's great success.

If you weren't able to get back to Highland Vista last night for the pizza party, please find some time to swing by the pool to pick up ribbons and/or medals. They were put into the file folders.

I hope that you are all able to enjoy a few final weeks of summer with your families before the school year resumes. I'll be heading to New Hampshire on Monday for two weeks of fun before I head back to the classroom. Thank you so much for your help and support this season. I look forward to another fantastic swim season next year.

Thanks again,
Jennnifer Gould
HVAC, co-chair

What a great morning/afternoon we had today. Our kids swam great! Many, many, many of our swimmers swam their personal bests today and there were very few DQ's. We should be very proud of our team.

Thanks so much to our awesome shade brigade! You did a great job. As we were breaking down the pop-ups, it came to our attention that someone took away one of the team's shade structures. It doesn't have a name on it. If you brought it home, would you please remember to bring it on back tomorrow? We'll need it, and then we'll make sure to get it back to the shed at the end of the meet.

In fact, anyone with a pop-up is kindly asked to bring it on back tomorrow. We'll evaluate the shade situation when we arrive, and we'll be setting up in the same basic area that we were in today. If there are lots of clouds, we might not need to set up quite so many.

Here is the time line for tomorrow's events:
2:45 at HV pool to decorate cars and caravan to Fort Lowell (optional)
3:30 arrive at Fort Lowell
4:00 warm-ups
5:00 meet begins

Hopefully, the relays will end at about 8:00 or 8:30. We'll wait at Fort Lowell for results and awards, and then we'll head back to Highland Vista for a pizza party at about 9:00.

Thank you so much to all of the volunteers today. It was wonderful to have so many of you quickly step up and help out. We could certainly use a bit more help tomorrow. Please check out the wiki tonight or see me tomorrow at the pool if you think you might be able to help. It is actually quite cool under the shade at the blocks. Not so bad to be a runner or a timer.

See you all tomorrow.
Until then, hydrate and sleep! zzzzzzzzzzz
Jennifer Gould :)
HVAC, co-chair

Wasn't the Awards Banquet a great evening? And, we sure lucked out as far as the weather is concerned. Big thanks to Stefanie Teller, Amy Kelaher, Maria Malloy, Tracy Denny, Scott Rice and Christina for putting all the pieces together to make one fantastic celebration!

On the evening of the banquet, one of our dads (Chris Strawn) brought in an EZ-Up shade for championships. He left it by the leader board by the snack bar so that we could put it in the shed until prelims on Wednesday. At the end of the evening, the EZ up was gone. I am wondering if someone picked it up mistakenly or perhaps someone overheard our conversation and volunteered to bring it on Wednesday morning. I'm not sure where it is at this point, and I'd really like to reassure Chris that we have his EZ up. If you could please look around for it, we'd sure appreciate it. His name is on the cover and on the structure as well. It is blue.

Now, for all pop-ups that have been volunteered. We'd like to have the pop ups delivered to the pool by the end of practice tomorrow. Charlie Singleton, Rob Foth, Scott Rice, Chris Kelaher and Sean Dreis are doing set up. A few of them (or maybe all of them) plan to be at Fort Lowell at 4:30 am. It will be hard to hold space without the pop-ups in our possession. So, if we can have as many as possible loaded up into trucks ahead of time, that would make things easiest. The following families have indicated that they have one that we can use:
Dreis
Foth
Gariepy
Kelaher
Lehman
Manson/Garcia
McCormick
Miller
Peskin-Owens
Rice
Singleton
Strawn (missing in action)
Walker
Wygal-Springer

If you plan to just bring your pop-up yourself as you arrive at the pool, please try to get there as early as possible. You might not be "connected" to the rest of the team. If you do bring your pop-up to HVAC tomorrow, please label it. Label the cover with a Sharpie and label the frame, too!

Thank you so much!!
Let's go Wahoos!
Jennifer Gould
HVAC, co-chair

Here are the results of the meet between Highland Vista and Eastern Hills - July 9th, 2010.

Peter Gariepy

Webmaster 

Yet another update for you. First of all, thank you for your timely replies to yesterday's call for pop-up shade covers. We currently have 8 pop-ups enlisted to do service from our families plus the two that the team owns. That is great. If we could get just a few more, we'd be in fantastic shape for two fun-filled and shady days at the Fort Lowell pool! Did I remember to mention the mud? Yes, it will be muddy. Wear foot attire accordingly.

It is terrific to see the wiki quickly filling up with volunteers for championships. We are in great shape for prelims. I just added a few more names to the "merry tribe of fools" setting up shade at 4:30 a.m. As one of the many parents not going to Fort Lowell at 4:30, THANK YOU shade brigade! We still need many volunteers for Thursday afternoon/evening. We'll once again need a team for shade and we need many timers and runners. Please consider signing up in advance so that we don't have to plead, beg and worry on the day of the event.

Please keep in mind that we are swimming against much larger teams this year and we are at a smaller facility. Prepare your family with ample cold drinks and food. We will probably be at Fort Lowell until 2 pm on Wednesday, and we'll have a later evening than usual on Thursday. We might not finish up at Fort Lowell until 9 pm on Thursday. That being said, we are still planning on a pizza party back at the pool after finals. We will pass out ribbons/medals and goal buster trophies during the pizza party. It will be a late night, but swimmers can sleep all day on Friday. I know it will be difficult for families with younger children to stay out late, but try to join us if you can.

Thanks so much for being such a great team of families! Hope to see you at the pool on Saturday evening at 6 pm (rain or shine) for the Awards Banquet.

Jennifer Gould
HVAC, co-chair

Hello HVAC families!

We are in our final few days of practice before championships. Wow! Today, Betsey Robinson and I went to Fort Lowell to check out the situation for next week. We will need many pop ups for shade. At Amphi, we have always taken advantage of their very large shade structure already in place. We won't have that at Fort Lowell. I think that we'll need a minimum of 10-12 pop-ups. The team owns 2. We need your help. If you own a pop up and you'd be willing to share it with the team, would you please send us an email asap? We'll need the pop-ups to be labeled with your Family Name (both the frame and the cover/case).

Then, we'll need to have all of the shade ready to roll very early in the morning on the 21st. If you cannot be at Fort Lowell at 5 am, that is really not a problem. You can bring your pop-up to HV on Tuesday (last practice) and we'll put all of them together in a truck that will be there early on Wednesday.

If we don't have enough pop-ups, we will certainly look into renting a shade tent. We'd like to avoid this expense if possible, but it may be necessary. So, please let us know right away if you have a pop-up shade structure that you'd be willing to share.

Thanks so much.

Jennifer Gould
HVAC, co-chair