A New Season Begins

A new season of RACE that is. I spend a good bit of my entries on here talking about cross racing, but my real job is coaching. I coach triathlon and cycling with Neal Henderson at Apex Coaching and spend the majority of time on the pool deck coaching the USA Swimming club team RallySport Aquatics.

For the last 12 years RACE has been the driving force in my life. My wedding was and my honeymoon will be planned around the season and many a 5 am has been spent on the deck in snow boots and a parkas. My wife Breeze is even intricately involved in every aspect of the team, sadly, whether she wants to be or not. I love this team. I love the kids the other coaches (Rob Putnam, Allen Gardner and Cam Dye) and I love a new season.

The 2010-2011 season saw RACE graduating 18 seniors, many of who were part of our Sectional and National teams. They went off to schools like Denver University, Kansas, Carnagie Mellon, Minnesota and Northern Colorado just to name a few. We have had to work to reload this season and we have. We have added over 20 swimmers and many of them are young. Rob, Cam and Allen have worked hard to rebuild a 12 and under squad that was in need of attention and they have. We start the season with 11 Sectional qualifiers, 2 Juniors qualifiers, 1 Nationals qualifier and as of yet no Trials cuts. We are going to change all of that.

The 2011-2012 campaign starts this weekend in Lakewood at the Foothills Fall Open. RallySport Aquatics will be trying to follow a great year where we were 9th overall at Spring Sectionals and 7th in the Summer meet with the boys taking 3rd. They are big shoes to fill, but I'm confident we have the right kids.

Stay tuned as the team works from the Fall season, through Juniors in December to Sectionals in March and Olympic trials in July. I'll keep you all updated right here.