Good Afternoon Fall Conditioning Families,

It has been so exciting for us to welcome the swimmers back to Fall Conditioning! Welcome back to both new and returning swimmers, we look forward to a great Fall season with everyone! Hopefully your swimmers have enjoyed workouts with our new head coach, Alana. We added two assistant coaches, Kate (coach Kate's bio below) and Travis (Coach Travis's bio below) to help Alana with Fall season. I will also continue to help as much as possible when I'm not busy with other GMCA tasks. We are excited to have Kate and Travis on the coaching staff, we believe their aquatic/coaching background is a great fit for GMCA. Please feel free to introduce yourself before or after practice when you can! Please find a few updates and reminders below:

1. Pool Closed and Practice Canceled Friday (9/3):

The pool will remain closed though tomorrow (9/3), then reopen at 5:30am on Saturday (9/4). Friday practices are canceled, Saturday practices will run on normal schedule. Our filters are older and they do not make laterals (laterals are pictured here) which fit them any longer, the techs now have to modify our new laterals to fit the filters.

2. Notes About Air Quality:

We will continue to assess the air quality on days with poor air, considering whether it is safe to hold swim practice and, if not, canceling. The coaches will make our final call by 2 pm; If we deem it unsafe, parents will receive an email notification via Swimtopia canceling swim practices for the day. If it is safe, there will be no email sent out. In other words, the assumption will always be that practice is happening unless we cancel via email! We use many different air quality online measuring tools-- AirNow.gov and Purple Air most of all. If we see that the air quality has surpassed 150 (marked “unhealthy for all groups”) we will cancel practice. We will also cancel if the forecast shows the AQI surpassing 150 during the afternoon swim practice times. The pool will remain open unless the AQI reaches 190-200. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to Alana or myself.

3. Coaches Bios:

Travis’s Bio:

Swimming is a lifelong sport. From lessons to masters swimming, competitive to recreational, there is a place for everyone in swimming. Learning to swim allows you access to this wonderful sport that you get to do for the rest of your life! My history with swimming began at Los Ranchitos Cabana Club where I swam for 5 summers. While circumstances didn’t allow for me to continue, it gave me confidence when in the water. My love for swimming really came from my own journey with exercise and weight loss. When I got into personal training it opened my eyes to the importance of swimming. Swimming is one of the few sports where you are really taught how to move. In other sports I played I began to realize the lack of technique and movement coaching. Swimming provides this and later in life it pays dividends in your ability to learn other movements. I got back into the swimming world in 2013 when I started teaching lessons at Santa Clara Swim Club. The next summer, I got to coach my old swim team which I would continue to do through 2019. Back at Santa Clara I moved my way through and eventually lead groups of all ages during my time there. Through my time coaching competitive swimming I realized the most important thing is to just keep swimming. In my free time you can catch me working on my photography, driving my tiny car in the mountains, and riding all kinds of bikes.

Coach Kate’s Bio:

My love of the water and swimming began at a young age. My parents had such a hard time keeping me out of the water, that love turned into an 8-year competitive swimming career. Over those 8 years I spent 4 years on a year-round swim team known as The Wave Makers, 3 years on a summer team called Killarney Farms, and 1 year swimming for Branham High School.

Those years of experience equipped me with the skills necessary to lead and instruct lessons at Waterworks Swim School where I taught kids as young as 3 years old as well as teaching adults for a year and a half!

My personal strengths and what I excel in are endurance races, swimming medley relays, 500 relays, and 800 relays. My strongest strokes are freestyle and backstroke. I take pride in teaching kids the proper techniques for the swim strokes but am of the mindset that swimming should be fun, and I want to instill within them a love of swimming and the water. My hope is that my students will one day join a swim team if they wish and maybe someday, they will teach their own kids to love the water as well.

4. Contacts:

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to any of the coaches:

Coach Caleb Fenner
[email protected]

Coach Alana Ezrre
[email protected]

Thank you and see you at the pool!

Coaches Caleb Fenner and Alana Ezrre