Hello Swim Families!

Thank you for all your feedback on this years end of season survey! It was overwhelmingly positive. Thanks to those who took the time to write out some thoughts, ideas and kind words of appreciation. Below we have addressed some of the written feedback we received. Hopefully this will help in the future and clarify some things. If you have any further questions/thoughts, please reach out to us via email! Always remember to check out the FAQ and parent handbook on our website!

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Suggestions for Registration process: This seemed like it worked for everyone. Regarding the Mini registration; we do not open this link to the public. Anyone who is interested in registering for the mini program must contact us via email and let us know.

Comments/Suggestions regarding improving the volunteer process: At the parent meeting, when volunteer jobs and commitment are discussed, we share that it is always the goal to give everyone one meet off. However, if you are already going to be absent for a personal reason, then that will count as your "non-working week". Also, if we have too many families out at one time, it may cause us to need everyone else to cover all areas. Spouses can trade jobs or swap spots, with the exception of Stroke and Turn judges. We don't care which parent works, as long as one does. We schedule one person per family. 

Comments/Suggestions regarding team suits and other apparel: Most all team suit issues are avoidable if swimmers come to one of the two suit fittings during pre season. We are looking at shifting the fitting schedule to make it more conducive to your schedules and putting it closer to the registration date. 

Competition suits can be pricey. However, Maple Ridge does not require any swimmer to purchase the team suit in order to be on the team. Feel free to find your own suit as long as it's one piece, fits well and is a racing style. Anything blue and black will do (or whatever you can find)! We also encourage families to suit swap and pass on to others what no linger fits your swimmer. 

As far as the t shirt color. It was our desire to branch out this year; to pop! It is not always the goal to have our shirts match our team colors. We strive to be creative/different with it each year.

Comments/Suggestions regarding coaches, coaching process: We understand and agree that the coaching aspect of our team is of most importance! Each season we spend time looking at your feedback and thinking of ways that we can improve! We will be discussing how the coaching staff can make the most of the swimmers practice time and strive for improvement in every swimmer throughout the season!

Comments/Suggestions for improvement regarding awards/motivation activities: Regarding Manta Ray in Motion, we will make it a point to have coaches discuss what this is with all the age groups at the beginning of the season, so they are aware and can be motivated by it! 

Regarding ribbons, we removed giving out participation ribbons for swimmers over 10 years. We know that these are more exciting for our younger swimmers and will keep that going. We as a team choose to give Personal Best ribbons because we know one of the greatest accomplishments is beating your own time! As fare as place ribbons(1st-6th), these are provided to us by the league at no cost to us. 

If you know your swimmer should have received a ribbon for an event and did not get it, please let us know asap. The ribbon stickers are printed in mass during the meet and sometimes a glitch happens and one might get missed. The sooner we know, the easier it is for us to go back in and re print for you. 

Comments/Suggestions regarding practices: There has been some desire for a "shake up" of the practice times and which age group practices at each time. We are looking into this to see if there is a better way to do this. However the desire to keep it as is vs. to change it is about 50/50. 

We are so glad so many are able to take advantage of our evening practices! There are not many teams who offer evening, and it makes it impossible for many families to be part of teams due of that. We are grateful to the Maple Ridge HOA for allowing us this time for so many years. The reason we have swimmers choose morning OR evening is due to lane space and man power. We have a smaller coaching staff in the evening and more age groups in the water at one time due to a shortened time frame. We work together with the the Maple Ridge HOA to discuss/decide when the team can "have the pool". We are grateful we were able to add an evening 6 and under practice time to the schedule! We know this helped many! We do not intend to add a third evening practice due to the availability of the pool and coaching schedules. 

Thank you again for taking the time! If you have any further thoughts or questions, please email us! 

MRST Admin