The swimmers are as young as six, and range on up to 18. This year the Viperfish had 106 young swimmers, the most number of swimmers on the team ever (about 20 more than last year)! Team participation has grown tremendously. We’re continuing to build our success upon the success of the community.
We went 4/4 in competitions this year; our most wins ever. It’s hard to appreciate in our swimming leagues, because even though we have a team this size, we’re competing with teams of 200+ swimmers.
We implemented a new coaching program where we’re trying to develop the kids on our team. We had more junior coaches than ever before. Our head coach has been a swimming coach for a number of years, and she’s helped out by two assistant coaches. These are kids on the team that are age 16 or above, so they’re legally able to work. We see this as an individual development opportunity where they can take a real leadership position on the team.
We’re getting a lot of community support. We had our most number of sponsors this year. Local support is really important, since we’re a non-profit. We had eight local businesses that sponsored us, allowing us to support them with new equipment and invest in our coaches. We created a logo this year, we got some brand new tents, some spirit wear and t-shirts to sell.
Our goal is to keep growing, of course, and investing in additional coaches. But we don’t have a specific number in mind, but we want to continue to focus on the base that we already have. We want to focus on better quality of training for our swimmers and investing in the kids.
Swimming is a great balance between the year-round competition swimmers, and the kids that come through during summer who just want to improve. We did a lot of team events this year, with tie-dye events and pancake breakfasts to get team spirits up and comradery to a new level.
If you’re interested in joining the team or learning more, email us at [email protected] or visit lvviperfish.com.