Good evening Silver and Gold families,

As the summer winds down with some beautiful weather we stand at the bottom of the mountain which is our 2025-26 swim season. A more accurate analogy might be a mountain we climb and then a ridgeline we traverse with a dozen peaks. It's a climb familiar to all of the swimmers in these two practice groups. This year there are new routes available. Silver and Gold swimmers will be more involved with reading the map and choosing their routes. There are more challenges leading to greater rewards. There is more fun planned. Megan will be leading our Social Committee planning this fun. John will be leading our Competition Committee organizing home meets

But first, some housekeeping.

• Kinetix starts the week of September 15.

The daily schedule below for the first week follows the normal published practice schedule with some very minor changes in bold.

Monday—No Kinetix. Silver and Gold, 5:30-7. Most important practice of the year. 30 minutes discussion, 60 minutes swim. Bring shorts and t-shirts. Bring your normal swim practice gear.

Tuesday—No Kinetix. Silver swim 4:30-5:30. Gold swim 5:30-7(not 7:30). Bring shorts and t-shirts. Bring your normal swim practice gear.

Wednesday—Silver and Gold, 5:30-7. Second most important practice of the year. 30 minutes discussion, 60 minutes swim. Bring shorts and t-shirts. Bring your normal swim practice gear.

Thursday—No Kinetix. Silver swim 4:30-5:30. Gold swim 5:30-7:30. Bring shorts and t-shirts. Bring your normal swim practice gear.

Friday—No Kinetix. Silver and Gold, 5:30-7. 90 minutes swim. Bring shorts and t-shirts. Bring your normal swim practice gear.

• Swimmers should always have shorts, t-shirts and running shoes with them. Every day.
• Absolutely no phones on the pool deck. Absolutely no phones in the locker room. Absolutely no phones during Kinetix. We will take them away until practice is over if we see them. 
• Water bottles are required. 16-20 oz. bottles are preferred. No glass.

We will have a season kickoff potluck dinner with a Q & A session at Robin Hood park. Check the calendar. RSVP. Sign up for a dish.

Most of the meets for this season have been listed in the Calendar. Some of the more organized meet hosts have already sent out their event files. This means you can commit your swimmers to those meets. The deadline for committing to swim meets will be a bit tighter this year. For most of these meets you'll need to commit 4 weeks in advance. The two big travel meets this year are in Boston.

We'll be sending as many swimmers as we can to the Big Show; the Y New England Championships at WPI. We'll be packing our relays and scoring as many points as possible to see how the Dolphins stack up against the rest of New England.

Once again, we'll close the season with our annual trip to MIT for the March Madness meet.

We've ended our contract with Arena. There are many new items in our team store. They are much less expensive than Arena's products. I'll be adding more as we go. If there's something you'd like to see in the team store ask me about it. Chances are pretty good others would like the same item.

The website will receive many updates over the coming months. Here's a nice little addition.

The pool is getting filled with fresh water as I type this. It will be ready for us next Monday.

I appreciate the investment you make in your swimmer and our Dolphins community. This summer we saw many families join this community. We have a good thing going on. We'll see more than 10 new families join the team this year. That's a lot. Please introduce yourselves. Welcome them into our community. Help them learn about this sport and how we do things.

Coach Pedr