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Get RegisteredLong course comes to an end in just a few weeks, which means it is time to begin planning for the 2021 - 2022 season. First step is to register through Team Unify. We are currently evaluating new swimmers who want to join our team, but accommodating our current families is a priority, so please register as soon as possible. Use this link to view the planned 2021 - 2022 Short Course Practice Schedule. Practices will resume on Thursday, August 19. This will be more of a “welcome back” practice, and we will have a pool party on August 21, 2021. The normal practice schedule will resume on Monday, August 23, 2021.
Ensworth Aquatics does not bill training fees for the month of August.
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Here are five tips from Coach Bahr to improve over the break
- Give yourself permission to enjoy the time off from training.
- Stay active in different ways. Our athletes train extremely hard, so it’s not uncommon for them to have a lot of excess energy. Encourage your kids to walk the dog FURTHER, ride their bikes, go on family hikes, go for a run, etc. If you are heading to the beach don’t worry about making them “swim in the ocean” to get ready for Short Course, but keep them from being glued to their phones!
- Get inspired! This should be easy with an Olympic year, but watch great swimming… even better watch great swimming with your teammates.
- Reconnect with your friends and family you may not see as often during the busy school and swim seasons.
- Keep up your nutrition and hydration. While there is never a break from a healthy diet, this is a great time to build new habits for healthy eating. It can be as simple as a commitment to eating vegetables every night and stay away from potato chips, or as complicated as a family meal plan to help get everyone into shape.
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Freshman All Over Again
This class of graduated seniors will be one of the last to have been a part of our club from its very inception. Like all graduating classes, it is filled with people we can never replace, nor should we ever want to, but who we will assuredly miss.
They are moving on to swim and study all over the country, from Alabama to Texas, to Massuchussetts, Ohio, Virginia, and Tennessee. This is a class of leaders who will bring value, pride, and honor to their new schools, teams, coaches, and friends. We will miss them for their leadership but be forever indebted to them for their positive example to our next group of leaders.
And while they get to experience being freshmen all over again, they will certainly meet that reality with confidence and charisma. Best of luck Kessler, Patrick, Hannah, Brooke, Rob, Ally, and Christian.
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2021 - 2022 Working Practice Schedule
The planned practice schedule for the short course season can be view using the button below. Our schedule is very likely to follow this format, which is similar to what we did Pre-Covid but has some modifications we made during Covid.
We will split the Stingray group again like we did this past year, having families elect to be in the Monday / Wednesday group or the Tuesday / Thursday group. These young swimmers only need to be at the pool 3 days a week, and putting them into groups like this will help to both serve more swimmers who might move through the program and prevent our youngest swimmers from feeling like they are always at practice.
Any changes to this schedule will be communicated in the coming couple of weeks, but any such changes will not be very drastic.
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Long Course Season Coming to a Close
Like a blink of an eye, the 2021 Long Course season is coming to an end. The growth and progress we saw in the pool not just through time drops but in once again getting to be a team. This summer we got to have group gatherings, large team practices, and meets with spectators!
For many of our teammates, this was the first long course season in two years. Consequently, this was a season of “re-learning” how to swim in a 50 meter pool for many of our Sharks and Dolphins, and an often challenging introduction to our Stingrays. ...And, trust me, when your swimmers get to the 25 mark, they miss having that turn! When your swimmers are at the end of a race, the thought “where is the wall” crosses every one of thir minds.
Senior and Senior 1
Ensworth’s Senior and Senior 1 athletes enter the final stretch of the season with a ton of momentum. After an incredibly successful showing at the Huntsville meet last month, athletes got right back to training with bigger time drops and season ending goals in mind for both the Southeastern and Futures Championships.
The last few weeks have been focused on swimming at high rates of speed, refining racing skills and technique, and building confidence to race at their best against the top competition in our LSC (Southeasterns) and the country (Futures).
Parents can help their athletes by asking less about swimming than all of us want to (I’m a parent!), and just being a support system based on the premise that less is more. Your swimmers are ready to swim FAST for their team. No matter how an individual performance goes, good or bad, the best way to view the response is always, “What will best help the team.” That means celebrate a great performance but never brag (good for both swimmers and parents), and acknowledging a poor performance but don’t sulk (again good for teammates and parents!).
Shark Attack by Coach Bahr
This group of Sharks is ready to go on the ATTACK! They are hard working, fun loving children who bring enthusiasm, camaraderie, and a “can-do” attitude every day to practice. That is why so many are swimming so well! We have gotten much better at butterfly. They have developed into great kickers. They are strong performers from the 50 Free to the 400 Free, the 50 Fly to the 200 IM. And they have gotten there by being positive, supported, and addicted to challenges!
Sharks are also at an age where some children grow while others are waiting to hit that all important growth spurt. Some see huge time drops while others struggle to shave a tenth of a second. What it takes to handle this in a healthy way is patience and a focus on two things:
Be a SWIMMER: That means come to practice with an attitude of doing the best you can on everything that is presented to you. Do not think you are a “backstroker” or “sprinter” (There are no 12 year old sprinters!!!!). Believe in your heart that you are a swimmer.
Be a great TEAMMATE: One of the biggest lessons these kids will take away from this sport is being positive in the face of personal adversity. Not hitting a time is hard, but being a good teammate means finding the ability to still be excited for and proud of a teammate who just had a big drop. The more we are there for others the more we find they are there for us when we need them most!
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3-2-1, Dolphins! Llamas of the Sea! by Coach Skyler
Though the origin story of our land animal likeness is now a distant relic of the past, the 2021 Dolphins competed with toughness, courage, and joy that will rival Dolphin groups for years to come. This group of Dolphins show us time and time again that the obstacles in our way are not to be avoided - because overcoming them is part of the path. Two swimmers competed in *every* single long course event this summer (all 50s, all 100s, 200 free and IM, and the 400M freestyle!): Salem Bahr and Charlie Horne. Honorable mention goes to another four Dolphins who swam all but two events (the 100 fly and 400 free): Virginia Fruetel, Anderson Attmore, Ryan Raissi, Baron McKinney.
Fly like a butterfly sting like a bee… or a Stingray! by Coach Victoria
It’s incredible how much we can learn from our children. If we are able to glean anything from this weekend’s meet it is that big challenges produce big achievement. Without a doubt, accepting challenges is a big part of growth. Facing challenges is just as important as the time on the clock. With that being said, we are incredibly proud of our Stingrays who have stepped up and raced in some challenging events. Naiya Patel, Auggie Stolldorf, and Hal Phillips are some of the newest Stingrays coming from Team Prep 3, but raced confidently in 100 meter events throughout the summer. Arvin Raisi, Carolyn Pruce, Lizzie Sanford, Schuyler Jones, and Celia Bahr capped off their long course season with a true endurance challenge for any 8 year old: the 200 Individual Medley. Not only did they step up; they did it with pride and joy! This is definitely a moment where these kids used their “talents to the fullest!” (Ensworth Aquatics Mission Statement).
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Short Course Meets
This is the plan for the short course meet schedule. Please note that “Likely” means those meets are ones in which our swimmers will participate and we expect to be held on the indicated weekends. Additional meets may be added for our Senior Swimmers as they are added to the USA Swimming Calendar.
- Sept. 18-19 - Invitational (At Ensworth)
- Oct. 8-10 - (At Ensworth)
- Late Oct / Nov - Travel Meet
- Dec. 3 - 5 Holiday Classic (At Ensworth)
- Dec. 10 - 12 Junior Nationals (TBA)
- Dec. 11 - Marshmallow Mini (At Ensworth)
- Jan 14 - 17 - Frostbite Invite (At Ensworth)
- Jan. 28 - HS Region (Likely)
- Jan. 29 - MS Championship (Likely)
- Feb. 11-12 HS State
- Feb. 19-20 - Region Champs
- Feb. 25 - 27 - SES Champs
- March - Age Group Zones
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Ensworth Aquatics Grand Prix Series
Our coaching staff is working on a schedule for what will be a “Grand Prix Series” for our team, inspired in part by the ISL (International Swim League). We will be splitting our entire team into 4 different teams and use selected Saturday practices as “Meet Days.” These will NOT be sanctioned until the final Grand Prix meet. Instead, we will use our practice time (7 am to 10 am for Senior, Senior 1, Junior, and 10 am to 12 pm for Stingrays, Dolphins, Sharks, Marlins) for the coaches and athletes to run the meets. We will keep a running score by teams and the champion will be decided after our final meet.
One goal is to utilize USA Swimming’s IMX and IMR programs to get all athletes to swim all of the events required to earn a score. A second goal is to use the sanctioned, final meet as a fun and exciting opportunity for many of our swimmers to have another chance to earn Southeastern cuts.
We plan to host the practice meets on these Saturdays: September 18, September 25, October 30,
and November 20. We plan to host the sanctioned meet on January 8.
We will provide more information on the meet formats, teams, and scoring towards the beginning of the short course season. We are also looking for Team Names and would like your athletes to be the ones to come up with them. Please have your swimmer use the button to submit ONE TEAM NAME. Once we have enough submissions we will let the swimmers vote on the best names.
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Payment Processing
A quick word on updating credit cards in TeamUnify. When updating credit cards on your account, please mark Use for Fees Associated With Your Account and Use for On-Demand Payments. Also, if a credit card expires or is compromised and you need to remove it from the account, please notify Cissy Fleet at eaqadmin@ensworth.com as it requires an administrator to make that change. Include only the last 4 digits and the expiration date of the credit card to be removed from the account.
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Birthday Shout Outs
Big shout out to our Ensworth Aquatics teammates with birthdays in July and August. We wish each of these fantastic athletes the Happiest of Birthdays:
- Riley Oakes, July 1
- Cici Pryles, July 6
- Kessler Dayton, July 8
- Parker Lynch, July 13
- Riley Wagers, July 14
- Lindy Hunter, July 15
- George Emrhein, July 17
- Sandy Finn, July 17
- Elliot Emch, July 18
- Emma Emch, July 18
- Ally Solomon, July 22
- Christian Trailov, July 22
- Salem Bahr, July 23
- John Roman Sexton, July 24
- Ryan Davis, July 26
- Alp Weitkamp, July 27
- Callie Clinton, July 29
- Mary Margaret Dye, August 1
- June Bryan, August 3
- Robbie Schader, August 5
- Margaret Neff, August 5
- Katelyn Rehse, August 8
- Jenna Matthews, August 9
- Rowan Gause, August 11
- Odette Gause, August 11
- Elliot Darr, August 18
- Morgan Cumbie, August 21
- Alice Perkins, August 23
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GroupMe App
If you have not already joined your swimmers' GroupMe, please consider doing so. Parents, coaches, and staff use GroupMe to communicate last-minute updates, traffic issues, practice changes, lost and found, carpooling, and much more. Each practice group has its own group text, and we believe if you ask any returning team members, they will confirm that GroupMe is an invaluable communication tool as it enables them to ask specific questions and plan activities particular to their practice group. Use this link to download the GroupMe app.
Click on your swimmer's practice group to connect through GroupMe
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Parent Reps
Below are the Parent Representatives for each training group. Thank you to this dedicated group of parents for taking on this special role for the groups.
- Stingrays: Lindsay Sanford and Jessica Dye
- Dolphins: Moe Kolton and Jessica Horne
- Sharks: Fran Spurrier and Marcy Rehse
- Junior: Susan Emrhein
- Marlins: Stefanie Massey & Sheila Thayer
- Senior 1 & Senior: Claire McCall and Margaret Mason
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Social Media
Ensworth Aquatics is on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Use the icons below to connect with the team on social media.
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