Hello Rapids!!

We’re almost half way through the season, and it’s been great so far! We have a total of 122 kids on the team this season, and we have already given out 271 Personal Best Ribbons! We also have 16 kids who have already qualified for All Stars in a combined 38 events. We are so happy to be working with your wonderful kids.

A few housekeeping reminders for mid-season:

* If you ever have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact one of the board members. At the meets, we will be the “all-knowing ones” wearing the neon yellow/green shirts, so we should be easy to spot. If all else fails, ask someone with a green lanyard, and they should be able to point you in the direction of someone who might know. :-)

* Lost and found items are collected at every meet, and will be placed in the laundry room in the club near the locker rooms.

* ALL Parents are hereby given authority to point out or correct bad or disrespectful behavior of ANY child at swim meets. If you don’t want others correcting your kid, make sure you get there first. ;-) If another parent says something to you about your child’s behavior, say thank you and do NOT shoot the messenger, talk to your child! If you have a concern about questionable behavior (child or adult), please contact a board member or coach as soon as possible.

We had a number of incidents lately requiring board / coach / parent conferences and discipline. Serious or repeated infractions can cause your child to be removed from a practice, race, an entire meet or from the team. Some of the recent behaviors could be reported to the League by the host team and cause our team to be fined, put on probation or removed from the league, so it really affects us all.

We are all mortified when our children misbehave, and ALL our children do, we know that all too well. They’re kids, and they make bad decisions sometimes (as do we), we just want them to learn from their mistakes. Our intent is not to point out or embarrass anyone, and we hate to even have to do reminders like these, but we are a TEAM, and we need the entire village to work together to make us the best team possible.

* As a volunteer run organization, we are only as good as the volunteers involved and the suggestions we get. If you would like to make a difference in the team, please contact one of us with your ideas / suggestions / criticisms any time. If you want to make even MORE of a difference, join the board! We will be sending out a survey in a few weeks to collect ideas as well, but we want you to start thinking!

Thanks again for a great season so far, and we’ll see you at the pool!

Elisa Verratti
River Place Rapids President
[email protected]