Welcome to the 2024 CCH Sharks Swim Season!
Hello Sharks families and welcome to the 2024 summer swim season! We have a lot of new exciting changes for this upcoming season….
Swimtopia and Team Registration
The biggest change for this season is our new website!
Based upon a number of issues experienced with TeamUnify last season we switched to use Swimtopia this season. Not only is Swimtopia a more modern and intuitive experience, but it has been trending with other pools within the NVSL, with 85 of the 102 pools in the league already making the switch.
All historical times and accounts have been imported, but there are a number of changes you will notice:
- Each parent will have a separate account, both linked to your swimmer(s).
- Parents will be able to volunteer anyone within their family for events.
- Volunteer positions requiring training will be restricted to those parents who have received the training.
- Swimtopia has its own app for times and event and volunteer signups - OnDeck will be retired along with TeamUnify.
- The Swimtopia app receives push notifications for teamwide announcements. However, TeamSnap will still be used for two way communications.
In anticipation of opening up team registration around March 18, I will be phasing in the Swimtopia account transitions in the next few days. You will be receiving an email titled ”CCH Sharks Account Activation Instructions”. Follow the instructions to activate your account. Once your account is set up, please feel free to play around with our Test B Meet to become familiar with the volunteer sign up process.
Also, please note, while the conversion process was relatively easy, it was not perfect so expect some hiccups. The biggest bug I have noticed is depending on the number of emails associated with your TeamUnify account, some parent accounts will be duplicated. If you experience this or any other issues please email [email protected] and I can work on resolving it.
NVSL Division and Team Schedule
Another change this season is our move to NVSL Division 10. Our division assignment and schedule was announced on March 3. See the attachment for our current team schedule including NVSL and development league meets, along with Time Trials (June 8) and team photos (June 20).
One interesting note regarding our division this season is we will be having an away dual meet at Holmes Run Acres, which is one of the few teams in the league with a 50 yard pool instead of the 50 meter pool. Times for this meet will be multiplied by 1.1 for official NVSL times.
Unfortunately due to the layout of the holiday and NVSL schedule this year we will not be holding the FDL Relay Carnival this year. Don’t worry though we have plans to incorporate those fun relays this season in other ways.
Calling all Volunteers
Finally our biggest change is within many of our primary volunteer positions. After many years of service, Doug Cox has retired as the Social Chair and Eileen Davidovich has retired as Volunteer Coordinator. We thank them for their years of dedicated service.
Jill Manguikian will be taking over as our volunteer coordinator and is currently looking for one or more people to take over the Social Chair role. Additionally, Jill is currently looking for someone to fill in our A Team Head Timer role.
Team Representatives
Our team representative for the 2024 season are as follows:
Chad Barry
Katie Hermann
Emily Burrell
In addition, Amit Hickman will be providing administrative assistance in addition to her role as team registrar.
Historically, the team representative roles have been a 2 year commitment. With that said, we are looking for team rep candidates to shadow us this year as we all are at or exceeding our two year marks. As those families before us, our kids are aging up and it is important to start training up younger and newer families to fill this and other key roles in order to ease the transition. Please reach out if you have any questions or are interested in this crucial role to the continued operation of the swim team.
That’s all for now. Keep an eye on your inboxes for Swimtopia account set up emails and as always, if you have any questions do not hesitate to ask.
Go Sharks!
Chad Barry
Katie Hermann
Emily Burrell
Amit Hickman