(Posted November 8, 2000)

The first meet of the season was an A meet in Grapevine. The Mustangs started the season with some surprisingly strong performances, considering how early in the season we are! Congratulations to the following Mustangs who finished in the top 8 individually and scored points for the team: Spin Beck, Kelsey Hendricks, Ashley Rape, Alexandra Weber, Meredith Grubb, Diana Larsen, Alexandra Jennings, Meredith Monroe, Megan Daniel, Candace Blackman, Codie Hansen, Kate Gunning, Erica Saito, Caroline Jennings, Margaret Henderson, Beth Geis, Nicole Keller, Kenley Woods, Sarah Wells, Courtney Patterson, Brittany Miller, Christina Hoover, Michael Carpenter, Brooks Haller, Andrew Hansen, Eric Gusa, Dennis Bowsher, Fabian Toth, Jeff Girard, Matt Knubowitz and Kenneth Wherry.

Next up for the A swimmers was the Plano Pentathlon. In this meet, swimmers are tested on all four strokes and an individual medley to see who is the most well rounded swimmer. Mustangs finishing in the top ten overall in their age group were: Spin Beck (2nd 10 & under), Ashley Rape (6th 10 & under), Kelsey Hendricks (9th 10 & under), Meredith Grubb (1st 11-12), Candace Blackman (1st 13-14), Erica Saito (10th 13-14), Courtney Patterson (2nd 15-18), Kenley Woods (6th 15-18), Sarah Wells (8th 15-18), Kenneth Wherry (6th 15-18), Jeff Girard (8th 15-18) and Dennis Bowsher (10th 15-18).

Our meet went smoothly and we certainly want to thank all the great Mustang volunteers who pitched in their valuable time to support our efforts. Over 130 Mustangs swam in this annual event, which for many swimmers is their first meet ever. The combination of our first-timers and seasoned veterans led to an overwhelming Mustang victory in Division II. We more than doubled the points of the second place team (LAC). Only five kids out of all of our entries did not achieve at least one best time. The following individuals achieved at least one of the time standards listed below. Those swimmers whose names are italicized took first place in either the BB, B, or C division standings in at least one event.

AA Times(s) – Molly Bollen

A Time(s) – John Bannon, Brandon Blakeley, Claire Butterworth, Sarah Costello, David Puelz, and Amy Shyr.

BB Time(s) – Elisa Alleman, Emily Archer, Bri Barfield, Alexandra Barinka, Devon Bowsher, Alexandra Buckley, Callie Butterworth, Cathy Cote, Colleen Davis, Melissa Dominguez, Zak Dominguez, Hannah Ferrin, Arielle Goldberg, Emma Gunning, Clint Hallum, Haley Hatfield, Meredith Higgins, Jun Hirota, Kent Irvin, Becky Jester, Diana Larsen, Mary Larsen, Lindsey Larson, Brooke Louisell, Nicholas Low, Lindsay MacIntosh, Maggie Marshall, Kristin Masters, Annalisa McCormick, Katherine Moncrief, Meridith Monroe, Erin Morrison, Alicia Nicoud, Rachel Pearson, Nicolas Saliba, Jessica Shaw, Maddie Steiner, Katie Updyke, Alexis Vigier, Maggie Wackel, Alexandra Weber, Leah Whaley and Preston Yetts.

B Time(s) – Armin Amini, Gage Anderle, Blake Armstrong, Elliot Blackmon, Derrick Brown, Amanda Costello, Cheyenne Costello, Jenny Davis, Britt Heady, Christie Kimm, Michelle McCloskey, ZiZi Moir, Mizuki Okada, Caroline Pickett, Avery Rape, Will Rogers, Joseph Santaularia, Mclean Shaw, Tom Shyr, Mike Sommerfelt, Elizabeth Watkins and Joyce Yee.

Special congratulations also goes to the following Mustangs for some best (some first) times and fine efforts: Adreanna Alleman, Abbie Allums, Arta Amini, Alethea Atkins, Brian Badger, Courtenay Barclay, Taylor Barinka, Mary Beck, Brian Bell, Tom Blanc, Kristen Blanchard, Madeleine Borg, Jeremy Chiang, Courtney Cox, Amanda Del Rio, Sameer Deshpande, Colt Deutscher, Ann Fenton, Glynnis Garry, Jessica Gillen, Jenny Gommesen, Stephanie Grote, Shelbi Hendricks, Kaho Hirota, Kelsey Hyman, Katherine Kofahi, Christine Lankford, Ann Losher, Will McNamara, Katrina Miguel, Nikki Miguel, Moe Okada, Kelsey Pearson, Beth Pinto, Katie Radford, MaryClaire Ramirez, Becca Roth, Caroline Roth, Samir Saidi, Kyle Savage, Haley Scanlin, Megan Sessel, Laura Shute, Molly Shute, Lou Shuya, Sarah Staples, Brittany Steinman, Caroline Stephens, Julia Thompson, Melanie Tull, Liam Veazey, Rachel Wharton, Jeffrey Wherry, Robert Withers, Elliot Wolf, Jack Wolf, Andrew Wong, Blake Woods and Megan Yoste.

The process of entering your child into a meet can be stressful. Do you know all of their best times? Are they choosing the events, are you, or is the coach? Did you get the information in a timely manner? Did you turn it in on time? Did you fill out the entire form? Are they entered in the right meet? Here are a few tips and suggestions to make your life easier completing this sometime confusing responsibility.

We provide meet entry information and forms at our practice locations. The information is sent to us directly from the host team and we "modify" each form to list our deadline which allows us time to enter each team member, put the entries on a floppy disk, and get it to the host team. Sometimes teams do not get us the information in a timely manner which makes the turnaround on the entry forms that much more difficult. The "non-modified" meet information is available for you to download from the North Texas Swimming Website. From our site (dmswim.com), click on "friends and affiliates." Choose the North Texas Swimming hyperlink and go to "meet information." If you have Adobe Acrobat (a software program) on your computer you may download the information. If you do not have AA, then either get it or just check the bulletin board at the practice pools if you have questions regarding the meet. Remember that the entry forms go to us, not to the contact person listed on the "non-modified" meet information sheets.

Each meet has been designated as an A, BB, or B/C level meet. In the meet information sheets there is a section called "eligibility." This will spell out whether your child needs the appropriate time standards in one, three, or all events to swim in this particular meet. If they have ever done a time that has exceeded the existing time standards, (i.e. faster) they may not swim that event in this meet. Conversely, if they have not achieved a listed minimum required time standard they may not swim the event in question. It is not only wrong to fudge entry times, but unethical. If you have ever shown up at a meet and wondered why your child is not swimming a particular event, sometimes it is due to the meet director taking them out due to a time standard issue. When filling out your child’s entry form, make sure to check the column labeled "faster than" or "slower than." If you have achieved an age group time standard in the summer (meters) but have not yet achieved the short course (yards) time standard, then you may enter the event at the cutoff time only. We do not convert times to seed people even if they had a dramatic improvement in the previous season.

To check if your child is entered in a meet, check the bulletin boards at our three different pool locations. Prior to the meet we post a copy of the early entries and another copy of the meet information sheet for your review. If your child is not listed due to our error, your child will need to be late entered at the meet at the clerk of course table (assuming they take late entries). Your child may not be listed in the psyche sheets, but if the meet requires a positive check-in (check marks by swimmer’s name during warm-up), then they will be seeded on the basis of their entry time, not when they signed up for the meet. In rare instances where a heat sheet is printed with lane assignments, the late entries are placed in the unassigned or no-show lanes. Make sure you contact a Mustang Coach ASAP to assist you in getting your child in the proper events if there is a problem. A psyche sheet lists all the available entrants and their entry times. A heat sheet assigns them to a particular heat and lane in which to swim their events.

Open tryouts are held at Loos and Highland Park Pools from 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. and at CFB from 4:30 – 5:30 p.m. Remember, if a swimmer recruits another swimmer to the team, he/she receives $50 in Mustang bucks to apply towards the next quarter’s dues installment!

Congratulations to Christina Hoover for being selected as a National Merit Semifinalist. Christina is a senior at Ursuline Academy.

As most families now know, I send out email messages regarding upcoming social events and other information that is pertinent. For the most part, I am simply the messenger and not the contact person for most team events. In the body of the messages is usually a hyperlink or telephone number of the person to contact regarding the message. Although I understand that it is easy to simply hit the "reply to" button this may not get your information back to the correct person in a timely manner. It creates more work for me, as I then have to forward it to the correct contact person. All this is to say please pay careful attention to the information in the message and reply to the appropriate person. Thanks very much!

Wendy Begg - Newsletter Editor

Yes, it’s that time of the year again - the High School meets have begun to invade Loos. Fortunately, these meets do not prevent us from having workouts at Loos. However, they do make practices extremely crowded since we are forced to use only one end of the pool for all of the groups. Therefore, if your child is only coming two or three nights per week, it would be a good idea to plan weekly workouts around the following High School meets at Loos:

November 7th DISD H.S. Meet

November 14th DISD H.S. Meet

November 17th TISCA Meet (We won't have any w/o at Loos)

November 28th DISD H.S. Meet

December 5th DISD H.S. Meet

December 12th DISD H.S. Meet

December 13th DISD H.S. Meet

January 17th Jesuit H.S. Meet

January 24th H.S. District Meet (No DM w/o at Loos)

January 25th H.S. District Meet (No DM w/o at Loos)

January 27th Jesuit H.S. Meet

February 9th H.S. Regions (No DM w/o at Loos)

November 10th – 12th BB/B/C Invitational hosted by LAC at LISD Natatorium

November 13th Team photos at Loos

November 14th Team photos at H.P.

November 17th No Loos practices – all groups at HP (N,G,S 4:30-6, B 6-7)

November 18th & 19th Northlake "A" meet

November 19th North-South All Star Meet in Sugar Land, TX

November 22nd All groups regular time except HP Silver 4:30-6

November 23rd No practices – HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

November 24th & 25th G & S 9-11 HP, N 11-1:30 HP

November 29th No HP practices – all groups at Loos (G 5:30-7:30, S 6-7:30, B 5:30-6:30)

December 1st – 3rd BB/B/C meet GCISD Swim Center

December 8th No Loos practices – all groups at HP (N, G, S 4:30-6, B 6-7)

December 8th – 10th COR Winter Classic "A" meet

December 16th & 17th BB Championships