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 My Site News: A Heart to Heart with our Tsunami Parents |
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Saturday, May 20
A Heart to Heart with our Tsunami Parents
Our meet against Navasota went very smoothly considering that we have lots of first time Tsunamis and we had a total of 300 swimmers entered in the meet between our two teams. Our kids were great and had some great swims! Many of them were excited to have already (or almost) qualified for the Invitational Meets in Houston. We hope to have great representation at those meets on July 1 and 2, so plan now to attend once your swimmer has achieved a qualifying time.
Our parent volunteers are the ONLY way that a meet can be successfully run. It is amazing how labor intensive a swim meet is and it truly takes an army of workers to keep it running efficiently. We have some amazing, hardworking and loyal parent volunteers that work the whole meet, every meet. While that is above and beyond (but sincerely appreciated!) the call of duty, we unfortunately have many parents that seem to try to escape their share of volunteer assignments. If you are one of our loyal, dedicated and hardworking parents, you know who you are (and so do we!) and the following certainly doesn’t apply to you.
BUT, if you are a parent that responds to your assignments by either:
*Not showing up for your shift (thinking that surely someone else will do it)………
* Telling your communication team leader week after week that you can’t work for whatever reason (even if you have a swimmer that you do not plan on entering in any meets, you are still obligated to do your part as a Tsunami parent!) …….
* Not responding to your communication leader’s emails or phone calls in hopes that she’ll go away……
* Telling her that you’ve already worked your share…….
……..THEN PLEASE READ THIS!
We are counting on every swimmer’s parent to work at the meets as needed. We have the blessing and the curse of having 4 home meets this season. While that’s great for our swimmers, home meets require much more of our work as meet hosts, which means many more people must contribute and more often. If you don’t plan to contribute as you are needed, then you must pay the $50 volunteer withdrawal fee by Wednesday, May 25th. You can put your $50 check payable to the Tsunamis in the
Tsunami box. We will then take that money and pay people from non-profit organizations to do the job that needs to be done.
We are one of the largest teams in all of NWAL with 235 swimmers, however, our parent worker base is very disappointing based on our number of swimmers. The average size team of 60-120 swimmers requires that almost every family has at least one parent work all meet, every meet, as there is no one else to do the job. With a team our size, you shouldn’t need to work every meet, but we do need you to do your share. Don’t worry about all the “experts”. Many people are unsure of trying one of the jobs out thinking that they don’t have the credentials or experience to do it, but all the jobs are easy and just require your willingness to give it a try. (The only job that requires true training is to be a swim official and although that training is over for this season, we would love to have anybody that is interested for next season. Contact us as we are always in desperate need of stroke and turn judges, starters and referees. The view of the races is great and you will enjoy the camaraderie of the other officials from our team and others.)
While a youth soccer, baseball, volleyball, basketball team etc. requires very little in the way of parent participation, Swim Teams and Track Teams require very heavy involvement, which is why you were required to sign the volunteer portion of the registration form when you registered your kid to swim.
Again, our sincere thanks to those of you that continually do more than your share and to those of you that are always looking for ways to help. You are why our team is successful. To the rest of our swimmer’s parents, we look forward to getting to know you better as you step forward to be one of our valued Tsunami parents.
Sincerely,
Jacky Pence and Leslie McGinnis
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