Meet Recaps, Coach Nate, Senior Dryland Update, Board Opening, Calendar Update

Hello Hurricanes Families,

We've had a lot of exciting swimming to report on over the last few weeks and are quickly approaching the championship phase of the season. Our practices will be slowly shifting towards an emphasis on precision and speed as we tune up for our best performances of the year. 

Please read on for some recent competition highlights and important announcements.

Keep up the good work, Hurricanes!

Coach Brian

MEET RECAPS

To begin with, Boyd Rothman joined Team Colorado at the Midwestern All-Star meet two weeks ago in Des Moines, Iowa. He competed against the very best swimmers from Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, and Nebraska. Boyd had a widely successful weekend, winning the 2nd Place High Point Award in the 10 and under age group. He was the individual champion in three events, the 50 Fly, the 100 Fly, and the 200 IM, a member of Colorado's winning 200 Medley Relay, and set 4 new Hurricanes team records. All of his success is even more impressive as a 9 year old competing in the 10 and under age group. Congrats to Boyd on a great weekend!

Last weekend 45 Hurricanes competed at the Cuda Classic at VMAC in Thornton. 

More than ever before, I could see hard-earned habits showing through in our swimmer's performances. I told our senior swimmers on Sunday that I am regularly watching them out-perform their equals in the critical details of our races: getting into and out of walls, underwater swimming and breakouts, managing pace and tempo. Mastering these details at race intensity isn't about learning about them or thinking extra hard about them. It is about repeating them with discipline, under duress, hundreds and hundreds of times in practice. When these details show up in meets it is a manifestation of a lot of painstaking attention to detail over a long period of time, and it makes me proud to see many of our athletes on exactly that path.

Some of the senior highlights of the meet came from Ian Geising and Mica Gillaspie, who's daily hard work paid off as they combined to drop a cumulative 34.57 seconds off of their previous best times in 8 events. A big pat on the back to those two, as personal bests of that scale are hard to come by this time of year!

Among the 12 and unders, Boyd Rothman won the boys 10 & under high point award for the meet, and Ruby Richards placed 7th in the 10 and under girls high point running. Townes Weiss dropped an amazing 50 seconds from his best times in just 3 races! Layla Fry had her best meet ever with personal bests in every single swim, and Paxton Hunnewell achieved his 3rd age group state qualifying time in the 200 back. Overall the age group swimmers had yet another outstanding meet after a series of similar lifetime best performances over the course of the winter. Way to go Hurricanes!

INTRODUCING COACH NATE

Many of you may have noticed a new coach on deck over the last few weeks. We are extremely lucky to have Nate Rothman on deck working with our athletes. I am so excited about the wealth of swimming knowledge and enthusiasm he has to offer our team, and I've been secretly hoping he would wind up coaching for us since his boys, Boyd and Nolan, joined the team last summer. 

You can get to know Nate a little through his bio below:

Nate is not a newcomer to the sport of swimming with 3 decades of competitive swimming and coaching under his belt. Nate grew up in the Evergreen area, and was a hurricane from 1994 to 2003 where he competed at the state, Sectional, Junior National, and National level. While at Evergreen High School in the early 2000s, Nate was a 4-time Colorado State Champion. From Evergreen he became a Wildcat at the University of Arizona where he competed for 3 seasons, after which he moved into coaching. Nate coached summer league teams for 6 summers including 3 summers as a head coach in BVSSL at the Meadows Club. Nate has also had a long career as a collegiate swim coach-starting out with CU Boulder’s club team then moving on to coach the Colorado School of Mines Orediggers for 11 years. Nate has stepped away from full-time coaching to spend more time with his 4 boys (Nolan, Boyd, Rowan, and Beinn). Nate, his wife Kelly, and the boys love to camp, mountain bike, paddle board, and generally enjoy beautiful Colorado.

SATURDAY SENIOR DRYLAND UPDATE

We will be suspending Saturday Senior dryland for the rest of the winter season in order to make the most of our Saturday morning workouts in the water. As we ease our way into the race phase of the season, coming into the pool fresh and ready for more precise, race-specific work is going to be our most beneficial use of time on Saturdays. Our regular Saturday swimming practices will now go from 7:00am -9:00am.

BOARD-MEMBER OPENING

The Hurricane's Board of Directors is absolutely critical to the ongoing operation and success of our team. Thank you to all of our board members for their support and dedication!

We have an opening for an at-large member of our Board of Directors and will be accepting nominations between now and our next meeting, February 7th. If you would like to nominate someone for a position on our board or have any questions about the commitment and responsibilities, please email the board email address at [email protected]. Self-nominations are welcome.

COMPREHENSIVE CALENDAR UPDATE

The initial version of our 2024 Comprehensive Calendar has been posted. There are still some tentative items listed that will be subject to change, but we are getting this out to families asap for planning purposes. You will be notified of any updates to this version from here on out. You can find the calendar in the "Athletes" section of the website, or by clicking HERE.