West Coast Aquatics
Early Summer Edition
In This Edition
*Message from the Head Coach
* West Swim Lesson and Public Swim
Information &Locations
* Calendar of Events
*Super Swimmers article by Coach Kristin
*West Age Group Gold article by Coach
Mary
Senior Swimmers
showing some West
team unity!
*”Everyone’s A Winner; Baby, That’s A Lie”
by Thornton McCamish
*Age Group Silver article by Coach Ryan
Message from the Head Coach
This is a great time of year to be a swimmer!! We enjoy a sport that is
really celebrated in the summer months. This is when families get to enjoy going
to the local pool for a fun afternoon picnic and pool time, or to the beach to cool
down and get out of the heat. We are fortunate to be teaching our swimmers a
life- long activity that is also a life-saving skill.
For the competitive swimmer this time of year is known as long course
season. This is a time when the majority of our swimmers focus on their long
course or 50 meter times. More specifically, concerning our senior swimmers,
they have just concluded their short course and high school seasons with great
success and are ready to move on to long course season. The Senior Silver and
Gold groups have now started double practices swimming long course in the
morning and weights and short course practices in the evening. This allows these
athletes to prepare for trials and finals meets.
The Senior swimmers opened their long course season swimming at the
Santa Clara Grand Prix meet and the Pleasanton Senior meet. At the Santa Clara
Grand Prix, a top USA swimming meet, where attendees included many college
teams, many Olympians including Nathan Adrian, Ryan Lochte, Allison Schmitt,
Cullen Jones, Natalie Coughlin, and Missy Franklin; our swimmers competed in
several relays and individual events. Our West Mens’ 400 Free Relay placed 9th
overall and our Mens’ 400 Medley Relay placed 7th overall. West Grand Prix
team members included Ryan Richardson, Andrew Bui, Darren Maxwell, Ian
Ordes, and Paul Huang.
The Seniors then moved onto their first travel meet of the long course
season competing in the Summer Sanders Invitational in Roseville, a three-day
trails and finals meet. There were many great swims at this meet. The following
swimmers all had best times at this meet; Cassie Nguyen, Darren Truong, Minh
Nguyen, Christopher Ruiyantoro, Tiffany Pham, Paul Huang, Priyanka Singh,
Brandon Nguyen, and Ian Ordes.
continued on page 2
*West Bronze Groups article by Coach
Shannon
*West Birthdays & Photo Gallery
“The difference between a
successful person and others is not
lack of strength, not a lack of
knowledge, but rather a lack in
will.”
-Vince Lombardi
Gabby Carbonel with Missy
Franklin at the Grand Prix
West Coast Aquatics Newsletter * Early Summer Edition * Page 1
continued from page 1
Some of the stand out swims from the weekend were Ian Ordes' 100 Breaststroke finals swim with a time of
1:07.56, which gave him a Junior National bonus qualifying time, Brandon Nguyen's 100 Breast with a time of
1:14.77, Christopher Ruiyantoro's 200 Back with a time of 2:19.84, Minh Nguyen's best time in the 400 Free for a
time of 4:53.16, Cassie Nguyen's best time in the 100 Fly with a time of 1:09.8 and Paul Huang's 200 free finals
swim, where he came back at night and dropped 2 seconds from the morning swim. There were many great swims
at athis meet when the Seniors were swimming very tired and working very hard in practice, so to see great swims
where the athletes are being tough and showing lots of heart is very exciting and gets everyone motivated for the
long course season. We are looking forward to the later part of the summer and our championship swim season at
the end of July and beginning of August. Go West!!!
Coach Danica
NOT READY FOR SWIM TEAM? TRY SWIM LESSONS WITH WEST!
The Summer is about to begin full swing at all of our locations. This year we have locations at Evergreen HS,
Silvercreek HS, Independence HS, James Lick HS, and Fair Swim Center. Registrations are now being accepted at
Evergreen High School's pool deck M-F 3-7pm and Saturday & Sundays registrations are accepted at James Lick HS
and Evergreen HS from 9:30am-1pm. Below, are the upcoming sessions:
EVHSJune 17th-July 12th MWF 3-7:30pm (Closed July 5th)
June 18th-July 11th TTH 3-7:30pm (Closed July 4th)
June 17th-June 27th MTWTH 9:30am-1pm
Silvercreek HSJune 17th-July 12th MWF 3-7:30pm (Closed July 5th)
June 18th-July 11th TTH 3-7:30pm (Closed July 4th)
June 17th- June 27th MTWTH 9:30-1pm
Public Swim: M-F: 5-7pm, Sat: 1-4:30pm
June 17th-Aug 10th (Closed July 4th-July 7th)
James Lick HSJune 17th-June 27th MTWTH 9:30-1pm
June 1st- Aug 10th Sat 9:30-1pm
June 2nd- Aug 11th Sun 9:30-1pm
Independence HSJune 24th- July 12th MWF 9:30-1pm & 3-7:30 (closed 7/5)
June 25th- July 11th TTH 9:30-1pm & 3-7:30 (closed 7/4)
June 24th- July 2nd MTTHF 9:30-1pm
June 22nd-Aug 10th Sat 9:30-1pm (closed 7/6 & 8/3)
Fair Swim Center
Once a week classes and public swim are offered
Lessons:
June 17th-Aug 5th Mondays
June 18th-Aug 6th Tuesdays
June 19th-Aug 7th Wednesdays
June 20th-Aug 8th Thursdays
June 21st-Aug 9th Fridays
June 22nd-Aug 10th Saturdays
June 23rd-Aug 11th Sundays
Public Swim: $5
M-F 1:30-3:30 and 6-8pm
Sat & Sun 1-4pm
(Closed July 4th-7th)
Ashley Cam, Claire Phan, Andrea Morrone, Allison Bui, and Dominique
Duong enjoying the events at the Santa Clara Grand Prix
West Coast Aquatics Newsletter * Early Summer Edition* Page 2
Calendar of Events
Wednesday, June 26th:
Dual meet vs QuickSilver
@ Gunderson HS
warm-ups 3:30, meet start 4:30
June 29th-30th:
LC Age Group Open-Race to JOs
@Gunderson HS
Tuesday, July 2nd:
2nd Dual Meet
@Independence HS TBA
July 4th:
No Practice
Saturday, July 6th:
Breaststroke Team Clinic
from 10am-12pm @Independence
July 11th-14th:
Super SwimmersA huge welcome to the new Summer Team swimmers to Super Swimmers! I
look forward to the positive growth in our group, and hope that it will
continue to Year Round Team. It is fantastic that the past 6 months we have
been able to maintain two groups with two coaches allowing for extra
attention and smaller lane ratios.
I was very proud of Nicholas Chin for swimming his first A time in the 100
Breaststroke at Morgan Hill Last month. Madison Piasai also challenged
herself by swimming successfully a 200 meter Freestyle! It is always so
amazing to see our swimmers accomplish great things.
All of our swimmers need to participate in both dual meets and the SBSL
League Championship meet this summer. Remember you must swim in a
dual meet to qualify for the Championship meet. It is a team scored meet, so
we need to show our WEST pride and show up with all of our swimmers.
Please help encourage everyone, even Pre-Competitive swimmers to swim
in meets this summer. It is never too early to begin competing as long as we
make it fun, and inspire a healthy competitive spirit!
Clovis Senior Meet @ Clovis, CA
July 12th-14th:
LC JOs hosted by Orinda Aquatics
@ Soda Aquatic Center, Campolindo
HS, Moraga
July 16th:
Get ready for a busy, productive, and inspiring summer!
Coach Kristin Fific
WEST AGE GROUP GOLD-
Team Picture Day TBA
July 18th:
Team Spirit Day & Relays, TBA
July 19th-21st:
The swimmers in Age Group Gold are growing up! Congratulations to Mark
Brogan, Antonia Gibbs, Don Le, Hubert Phan, Nicholas Vo, Denise Tabilas,
Diane Tabilas, Leon Hsieh and John Nguyen. All 9 of them graduated from
the 8th grade and are moving onto high school in September.
SBSLs @ Valley Christian HS
July 26th:
End of Summer BBQ @6pm
July 27th:
Last Day of Summer Team
July 30th-Aug 4th:
LC Far Westerns @ Indy
“Dream big and
dare to fail.”
Age Group Gold has transitioned nicely to the Long Course season. We look
forward to being back at Independence High School and can begin training
for Long course JO’s and Far Westerns.
Most of the AGG team attended the Monterey Swim Clubs Youth Team
Challenge Cup held in Salinas, CA. All of our swimmers qualified for finals.
There were many fantastic swims and best times. However, the highlight of
the meet was Abida Diep’s 200 Backstroke. Abida took 2 seconds off of her
best time and is continuing to chip away at getting her first 11-12 Far
Western cut. Go West!!!
Coach Mary Malone
-Norman Vaughan
West Coast Aquatics Newsletter * Early Summer Edition* Page 3
Everyone’s A Winner; Baby, That's the Lie
By Thornton McCamish
THE AGE (Melbourn, Australia, Daily Newspaper.)
IN A WORLD WITHOUT LOSERS, WHERE EVEN PARTY GAMES ARE RIGGED WITH REWARDS FOR ALL, ARE
OUR CHILDREN BEING CHEATED OF THE RIGHT TO FAIL?
They don't play pass the parcel like they used to. Go to a kid's party these days and you'll see that the host parent has
rigged the parcel so that each time the music stops and a layer of wrapping comes off, a chocolate frog pops out. It's a fiddle.
Every child wins. By the time the real prize is revealed, the orderly circle has disintegrated into a chaos of smeared chocolate
and the screaming of sugarized toddlers.
As I recall it from 25 years ago, pass the parcel used to be a strictly one-winner affair. And it's not just pass the parcel
that's gone soft. There are blatant rorts of the pinata, too. I've seen toddlers held up and given a free hit at the donkey. And
aren't you supposed to wear a blindfold? It dawned on me recently, as I watched a roomful of fathers sweatily whaling away at
a pinata, that childhood has changed.
It's the grown-ups who've done it. We seem to have cancelled competition. It's not just parents either. "Improvement
in performance," say guidelines on coaching juniors published by the Federal Government's Australian Sports Commission,
"should be measured against individual past performance rather than against other children." Prize nights drag on into the early
hours now that everyone gets one. It's the rule of modern-childhood: you only have to be in it to win it.
When I was a child in the 70s, our district was so short on kids old enough to hold a bat, the only way we could make
up a cricket team was to enter us all in the under- 14s competition. Our opponents were often twice our size. We waddled out to
the pitch in leg pads that came up to our ribs and batting gloves that swallowed the entire forearm. We lost all the time. I
remember year after year fielding on the boundary, while St Colemans' opening batsmen filled their boots with runs.
There's no surprise ending to this tale: we just kept on losing. And I'm not sure that I learned much from this overgenerous lesson in defeat except that while it might be nice to win some time, it wasn't going to happen until we were good
enough. Perhaps we developed a sort of precocious stoicism to cope with each Saturday's thrashing. We certainly learned that
none of us was going to play for Australia. Not until we grew, anyway.
Somewhere along the line we've become squeamish about exposing kids to competition that might include failure. In
Kanga cricket, losing doesn't come into it. One school's coaching policy for Kanga cricket spells this out: "Because all children
are not identical in size, strength, ability and personality, game co-coordinators should adopt a flexible attitude to enable every
player to have success."
When did we decide that competition was too tough for kids?
I remember my father telling my brother and me when we were eight or nine that he didn't care what we did in life.
We could be garbos, nurses, explorers or rocket scientists, whatever. What mattered to him was that we were the best at
whatever we did. As a way of encouraging kids to aim high, that was probably a bit heavy-handed, even by the standards of the
late 70s. But an equally devoted parent probably wouldn't say that sort of thing now. We've become afraid of exposing our
children to the possibility of not measuring up.
Now we pretend that comparisons are irrelevant; that every kid is the best at everything. Now that I'm a dad, I find
myself doing it too. Last week was my first experience of a school concert-type event, at my kids' day-care center. Our children
performed a song with their classmates. We took pictures, cheered; when it was over we raved about how great they were.
I guess nothing fudges the facts like love. In truth, they had both flubbed it big-time. One fled the stage in panic before
his song had even begun. The other hid behind a classmate with fingers in mouth and eyes shut, as if she could thus make
herself disappear. But still we raved about how brilliantly they’d performed. All the parents did.
In fairness, these are very young children. At this age, the kid-glove approach seems to come from deep in the DNA.
God knows, you don't want your child to form a haunting early memory of being useless at thrashing a paper-mache donkey.
But how far should the "everyone's-a-winner" ethos go? Is sheltering children from the reality-check of competition particularly in schooling - the best way to prepare them for life?
Brendan Nelson doesn't seem to think so. One of the conditions the federal Education Minister attached to the latest
Commonwealth education funding package was that states put in place a "quartile" ranking system in which students are
graded from the bottom to top 25 per cent of their class. That was the sort of plain-speaking information he told Jon Faine on
774 ABC Melbourne, “which most parents consistently have told me they would also like to know.” His critics called the idea
continued on page 5
West Coast Aquatics Newsletter * Early Summer Edition * Page 4
continued from page 4
"educationally unacceptable", "back to the '50s" and even nonsensical, given that the bottom quartile of a class at, say,
MacRobertson Girls' High School, which has selective entry, might well be the top quartile of a class at a school that takes all
comers.
Nelson backed down from his threat to cut funding to states that wouldn't submit to his diktat. But not before, in the
view of The Age's Education section, "deriding the education community as ideologues who have hijacked the education bus".
Of course, assessing educational performance is all about ideology. Why go out of your way to rank students against
their classmates - as distinct from statewide benchmarks -unless you believe that a competitive atmosphere in the classroom is a
good unto itself ' "The nature of life itself," Nelson told Faine, "is that all of us are being compared to one another."
The way we think about competition in schooling reflects deeper views about the individual in society. To the Tory
mind, firewalling kids from the rigor of competition and comparison is just slack liberalism, the sacrifice of excellence for
participation. What disturbs lefties, on the other hand, is the prospect of publicly consigning some kids to a dummies' gulag at the
bottom of the class.
To me, an educational approach that broadens the categories in which students can achieve, and is supple enough to
recognize a range of qualities, sounds like a great leap forward over the dux-to-dunce approach that pertained when Nelson was
at school.
But the flare-up over the "quartile" ranking idea reveals a genuine unease about the messages we're giving children.
We're not being entirely candid with our children when we shelter them from the reality of competition. Because the
world they're growing up in is competitive, and becoming more so. In governance and economics, the word "competition" is
itself a synonym for vigor and health. To describe something as "competitive" - a game, an environment, a race, a jobs market is to praise it as honest and lean. Heck, humans love competition. It's in the gut of the species. Magazines and newspapers print
lists of the week's winners and losers, as if there's nothing in between. Comparisons may be invidious, but they're a lot of fun. If
Gore Vidal was wrong when he said "whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies", it's only because there's a fragile
splinter in all of us that quails at anyone's success.
Pretending the world is otherwise is a beautiful lie. Or a snow job, depending on your point of view.
What's strange is that it's a fib we adults seem to be telling for our own benefit. Kids seldom need to be told how they're
doing: they know already. Another kid is always going to be better at catching; someone will have a cooler backpack. Even in an
egg-and-spoon race, several people are going to come - how shall we put it? - non-first. Besides, for many of us, the first and
most lasting experience of competition is with our brothers and sisters. "The hideous complexity of sibling rivalry," as the writer
Paul Theroux describes it; "struggling like crabs in a basket."
So why are we so chary of letting kids risk winning or losing in structured competition? Perhaps because losing, and
even winning, seem properly to belong to the register of adult experiences, like sexual relationships, drinking or managing a
credit card.
But children have to try it sometime. The ones who've never struggled to achieve something difficult are easily spotted
on, say, the audition rounds of Australian Idol. They're the ones who come in, sing in voices that could crack glass, and then sob
indignantly when they don't make the cut. You can see the violated sense of entitlement on their disbelieving faces.
Perhaps failure wouldn't hurt so much if they'd had a chance to experience it a bit sooner. Since they're going to be
doing so much of it as adults, why not let children practice winning and losing? The Australian Sports Commission guidelines on
junior sport might seem a little over-protective, but they still acknowledge that "competition can be extremely motivating and
help children feel good about themselves". In his book Secret Men's Business, children's author John Marsden argues that it's
important that a boy eventually beats his father at something that matters to them both. "By defeating him you free yourself to go
on and achieve the great things that life holds in store for you," he writes. Sure you might lose. But it's a risk worth taking for the
exhilarating experience of finding out what you're capable of.
What impact will shielding kids from losing have on them? It's probably too early to say. What's certain is that if we
take real competition out of schools, children will learn about winning and losing from the culture. And Australian culture has a
monomaniacal focus on winning.
This wasn't always true. I grew up in the 70s thinking of the country's sporting status as pretty much in parallel with the
fortunes of my under-14s cricket team: we usually lost. When an Australian won an Olympic gold, when Australia II pinched the
America's Cup in 1983, it was like a happy miracle.
After the Montreal Olympics of 1976 Australia's sporting nadir - the government decided it had had enough of losing.
We got the institute of sport in 1981, and the cricket academy in 1987. The government paid for sporting excellence, and got it.
Soon we were winning all sorts of stuff.
But did we lose something? Now the back pages are so thick with the latest gold-medal victory that there's hardly room
for the more subtle, complicated story of the runners-up; the team or athlete who trained their guts out and still didn't win.
continued on page 6
West Coast Aquatics Newsletter * Early Summer Edition * Page 5
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Winning's great. And Australia is rich in gracious, inspiring winners - Pat Rafter, the women's swimming team, for
example. But if winning's all there is, it's no wonder that losing feels so damning and bitterly personal, as it obviously does for
those Australian Idol wannabes.
Our narrow focus on winning misses a richer sense of the full story of competition itself. For a society powered by
unsentimental competition, we don't like to dwell much on failure. When it happens, it usually gets spun into something else.
Take the spectacular self-immolations of John Brogden and Mark Latham: Brogden's demise we smoothly pathologized as
depression - inscrutable and too private to contemplate; Latham's we put down to a meltdown in dignity.
Why can't we get our minds around failure? In the quote beloved of modern self-help gurus and manuals, inventor
Thomas Edison once remarked: "I have not failed 10,000 times. I have successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work."
That might be useful if you live in a laboratory. But using this kind of thing to cheer up flunked adults is just sophistry.
I've lost count of the number of times I've heard AFL coaches say something like: finals is the reason we play the
game. It may feel true to the coaches when they say it -they're talking a good game for sponsors and supporters - but it's not.
To say that football is only about winning is to ignore the guts of the contest. Every game is a rich experience: the crunch of
bodies, the pies in the grandstand, the struggle, the glory, the boredom. It's what sport, and competition, is.
Recently I was at the football with my father. In the Auskick match, the mum who was umpiring took the ball off a
big kid who had taken a clear mark and handed it to a little girl who was nowhere near the contest. "What was that for?" I
muttered into my pie.
"Maybe," Dad observed, "she's thinking everyone should get a kick before they go off."
Well, quite. We want our young people to grab the excitement of competition with both hands; we want kids to taste
success, and to learn that failure isn't the end of everything. But first we've got to teach them that it's fun just to be out on the
ground, or in the circle, passing the parcel. They may not win the prize, but with any luck, there'll be a chocolate frog in it.
Age Group SilverWe have had an excellent start to our summer long course season thus far. Swimmers have either
improved their best times in the Long Course Meets we’ve competed in this summer or have swum in their first
Long Course Meet ever! A great meet for our group this summer was the Youth Team Challenge Cup in
Salinas, CA. This was a Trials and Finals meet where swimmers had to be one of the fastest 16 swimmers to
qualify for Finals. Those swimmers who qualified for Finals received priceless experience and got a look at
what swimming at the next level is all about. All championship meets are swum in this format and swimmers
need as much practice and experience as possible in these situations. Additionally, nearly every swimmer that
competed in the Finals session improved their time from their morning swim! Congratulations to all swimmers
who qualified for Finals!
Isabelle: 100, 200, and 400 Freestyle, 100 Backstroke, 100 Breaststroke, and 100 Butterfly!
Alvin: 100 Backstroke and 100 Butterfly!
Justin: 200 Freestyle, 100 Backstroke, and 100 Butterfly!
Ryan: 200 Breaststroke and 100 Butterfly!
Andrei: 100 Backstroke and 100 Butterfly!
I look forward to even more time drops as the summer continues and we get closer to the Championship
Meets of the summer. JO's, SBSL's and Far Westerns are all big meets that WEST will compete in and hope to
qualify as many swimmers as possible!
Coach Ryan Richardson
West Coast Aquatics Newsletter * Early Summer Edition * Page 6
West Bronze GroupsBronze groups have been off to a wonderful start for this Summer season. Swimmers in both groups
have been hard at work correcting stroke technique and the smaller (and yet the most important) things like
streamlines, flip turns, and open turns. We have also been attending meets in and out of the Greater San Jose
area.
At the Morgan Hill IM Extreme meet, Michelle Komet received “A” times in the 50 Freestyle, 50 and
100 Backstroke; and JO times in the 200 Freestyle and 100 Butterfly! Kaiden Ly, who just aged up to the 9-10
age group, received “A” times in the 50 Breaststroke and 100 Butterfly and his very first JO time in the 100
Breaststroke. Catherine Ly and Chengau Hsieh also had some good swims at this meet. (sorry, if I forgot
anyone!)
The next meet was the Youth Team Challenge Cup in Salinas, CA. The Bronze groups also had some
swimmers make the trip and swam some great swims with new best times. Michelle Komet received “A” times
in the 50 and 100 Breaststroke and 50 Butterfly; and JO times in the 100 Freestyle and 200 I.M. Derek Tang
swam his first meet in months after breaking his wrist and received “B” times in the 100 and 200 Breaststroke;
and a new “A” time in the 50 Breaststroke. Supriya Mula swam 8 events over the course of the meet. Way to
go, Supriya! The Nguyen Brothers, Andrew and Jonathan, swam their first meet of the season receiving “B”
times in everything they swam! Jamie Laudencia and Catherine Ly also made the trip to Salinas and did some
awesome swimming while they were there.
The last meet so far this summer, that Senior Bronze swimmer Chengau Hsieh attended, was the
Summer Sanders Invitational in Roseville, CA. He attended this meet with other West swimmers from Senior
Silver and Senior Gold. Chengau swam the 50 Freestyle, 200 Breaststroke, and 100 Butterfly; receiving “B”
times in all 3 events.
Being that it is the Summer season, we have welcomed new swimmers to both Bronze Groups. I’m very
excited to be coaching Mai-Khanh, Sydney, Maianh, Catherine, and Alessandro in Age Group Bronze. Senior
Bronze has exploded with new faces, I’m happy to welcome Matthew, Christopher, Michelle, Terrilyn, Travis,
Justine, Hilary, Anuj, Joshua, Antonio, Harrison, Javier, Erick, Allen, Jennifer, Shena, Jessica; and welcome
back former year-round swimmers, Gabby, Akshay, Timmy, Marizza, Mariella, and Linda. (sorry, if I forgot
anyone!) I look forward to our duals on June 26th and July 2nd to see where all these swimmers will begin their
season and then be able to compare how much they will improve by SBSLs at the end of July. Here’s to a
successful Summer Season!!!
Coach Shannon Dmoski
West Birthdays
May
Justin Luu
Hillary Nguyen
Dylan Taylor
Thomas To
Evan Wu
Alex Yi
Victor Lin
Ethan Luc
Denise Tabilas
Nicholas Vo
Tiffany Pham
Emily Zhao
June
Aditya Garg
Max Hsieh
Julie Ly
Axel Matagne
Mary Shenouda
Diane Tabilas
Isaac Liu
Ryan Miyahara
Supriya Mula
July
Hubert Phan
Xavier Liu
Megan Nghiem
Curtis Nguyen
Isabelle Osuna
Paul Huang
Ashley Cam
Claire Phan
Takaya Tantiyavarong
Derek Tang
Michael Welder
Frida Jimenez
Misha Garcia
James Savella
Vivian Le
Varun Naik
West Coast Aquatics Newsletter * Early Summer Edition * Page 7
Photo Gallery
West Coast Aquatics Newsletter * Early Summer Edition * Page 8