From the Coaches - End of October Updates

At this point in the season everyone in our competitive program has attended their first
swim meet and we have seen some great performances from everyone. As the season
continues to progress we will have more racing opportunities and chances to showcase the
hard work from our athletes and coaches. Congratulations to everyone that has participated
so far.

FUNdamentals 2
Standout Swimmer: Emilie Landry.
Emilie arrives at every practice with an attitude willing to learn and ready to get in the
water! She is focused on improving her strokes and encouraging her lane mates to do
better. She keeps them on track as we are learning as a group to read and effectively use
the pace clock. 
Standout Swimmer: Diego Calderon.
Diego has taken on the leadership role within the group to quickly learn pace times and how
to read the clock, helping to and start the other swimmers in his lane as well as answer
questions about the set and give reminders. Excellent work on taking leadership in your lane
Diego!
~Coach Christina and Coach Karley

FUNdamentals 3
Standout Swimmer: Freddy Lang.
Freddy is new to the team but not to the sport. He has taken initiative to help other
swimmers during land and pool training when instructions are unclear.
~Coach Christina and Coach Karley

Blue
Everyone in Blue has now had an opportunity to race, either at the Age Group meet or the
NovaTech meet! I want to congratulate all of those who have stood up to race so far this
season, the first meet is always a little nerve wracking, but they all handled themselves with
great composure!
We have been building on our fundamental and technical skills through the month of
October, while increasing our speed and distance. We have spent a lot of time focusing on
our turns to ensure they are legal for our meets. The Blue swimmers had a blast when some
Senior buddies came to practice to teach them crossover turns!
Standout Swimmer: Bella Mongraw. Bella is always ready to help out a teammate, whether
it is with pace times, explaining the set, or passing them equipment, Bella is there to lend a
hand! They are incredibly helpful to ensure their lane is going on the right pace, especially
when there are multiple pace times on the go.
~Coach Victoria

Gold
Gold took on the first meet of the season with excitement and attention to applying training
skills to races! Building swim meet habits and supporting teammates was very well done and
will be important for the 2 November meets building us up for our heats and finals meet at
Candy Cane in Truro. A shoutout to Bridgett Raffi for her 50 back! Her goggles cam off at the
start but that didn’t stop her from having a great race with strong technique. Great tenacity
Bridgette!

Gold has laid a solid technical foundation over the last few weeks and we are now building
strong into our season! Gold swimmers have had a jump in training to really start building
capacity and are excited to head into some longer events at the upcoming meets. This week
has seen a jump in how far we are swimming each practice with swimmers stepping up to
the challenge to maintain their technique and skills with the increased demand.
Standout Swimmer: Lily and Julia always lend a helping hand to clear equipment from the
lanes at the end of practice, often taking a big stack of kickboards and making sure they are
stacked so they dry out - reminding us to respect our spaces and take care of the shared
team equipment. Thank you Lily and Julia!
~Coach Leila and Coach Lauren

Junior
Our training session focus on an overview of key technical components is complete and we
are shifting toward aerobic endurance.  This shift includes building stamina to sustain
effective technique under stress, and building the general endurance fitness that will
support speed work as we move through the remainder of the season.  
Our approach to meet performance is focused on executing best technique at race speed;
see when or if that breaks down; see where current technique carries them to in outcome
time (race time for the event).  We are not targeting specific race times, rather, we are
setting goals to hold specific technical components and see where that takes the swimmer
in terms of speed.  Faster or not, each outcome is a learning opportunity.
One of the timed measures in training sessions that has had a base measure and a repeat
measure is the Timed 25 dolphin kick under water.  On the repeat T25 kick swimmers who
were able to improve their time were: Aoife, Eli, Rylee, Liana, Claira, Brody, Nina, Jane M,
Eric and Lauren. And a shout out to Clark for best squad attendance to date; followed
closely by Jane M and Josh. All standout swimmers!
A general thanks goes out to the swimmers who have helped with activation on Wednesday
afternoon when coach Michelle has been assisting the Playground program, and to all those
who helped with the Pumpkin relays to ensure swimmers at each end of the pool knew
what to do.
~Coach Michelle

Senior
Senior has been moving towards increasing our aerobic capacity by focusing on training our
distance freestyle in preparation for upcoming 800’s at the HTAC Age Group meet. Along
with learning and understanding how to pace distance events we have had an emphasis on
maintaining our technique through harder efforts, especially focusing on winning our walls.
As we continue to train another focus has been on increasing IM efforts, our group has
multiple IM workouts a week where we are working on maintaining smooth strokes and
stroke rate.
Our first meet of the year was a great success with many swimmers seeing some great
improvements either through best times or technical changes.
Although busy with training our Senior Squad has had some Standout Swimmers who have
volunteered their time by assisting with the younger groups. Thank you to Emma, Leon,
Idan, Luke, Alex, Dominic, and Roz for taking the time to teach our Blue group cross-over

turns. And a huge shout out to Alex, Tyleigh, Eric, and Josh for volunteering at the NovaTech
meet over the weekend.

General
Swimmers should have at least 1 team shirt, whether blue or red. It is important to have a
team shirt for swim meets and team events, so we are identifiable as a group. Shirts can be
purchased on the Crusaders website
https://shop.headlinepromotions.ca/collections/dartmouth-crusaders-swim-club.