the Fish

Registration Information for the Summer and the Fall

2012-05-11T09:25:43Z

All registration information was sent out to current FISH swimmers this week via email. If you have not received an email containing

registration forms
summer schedule (if applicable)
individual improvement sheet and the
top-100 improvement sheet

please contact Monika Paris. Be sure to send in your registrations before June 1st to assure a spot on the team and to take advantage of the discount for returning FISH Swimmers.

Thank you!

2012 LC FISH Derby - Thank you!

2012-05-08T00:17:33Z

What a great meet! A big thank you goes to all the FISH parents how donated food items and volunteered their time to make this a successful meet not only for all the FISH swimmers who participated, but also for all of our guests. Best times swum at the Derby.

Results for Our Fish 2012 Swim-A-Thon

2012-04-29T14:56:10Z

Our 2012 Swim-A-Thon is officially over but the fantastic support and thanks our swimmers showed for their team this year is truly remarkable. We are proud to announce that we were able to raise $18,000 for our team. As a non-profit organization this is such a valuable fund raiser which will benefit everyone on the team.

Many of our swimmers did an extraordinary job raising money for their team and we sincerely thank each and every one of you for your immense support.

Below we have our top earning Fish from each group. These top earning Fish really showed their team spirit raising a combined total of $4,477! Way to Go FISH!

FISH Group	Team Member
Awesome	Felicity Hicks
Incredible	Alexander Cramer
Terrific	Xenia de Cazotte
Advanced Age Group	Fiona & Flavia Carcani
Age Group	Gigi Silla
Mini	Lillie Paris
Wakefield	Joseph Schaefer

And our top overall earning FISH this year is once again, Lillie Paris, who raised over $3,000 for her team. Lillie has rightfully earned the amazing opportunity to swim with our team Olympian, Kate Ziegler.

Once more, a heart-felt thanks goes to all of you who worked so enthusiastically to help support your team.

Christina Ewing

Swim-A-Thon Chair

2012 NASA Showcase Classic Recap

2012-04-19T14:04:20Z

written by Coach Steven

This year marked the FISH Swim Team's 3rd appearance at the NASA Showcase Classic in Clearwater, Florida. The NASA Showcase Classic is a very selective travel meet which is unique in the fact that it is single age group. This, along with the pool being 1 of 3 indoor 50-meter pools in Florida, provides for some great competition and fast performances. The meet is growing & getting faster every year, just like the FISH that attend. The FISH Swim Team posted some impressive statistics this year with only 13 swimmers:

Girls:	Boys:
Madelyn Donohoe	Oliver Bernasek
Molly Ellor	Leo Goldblatt
Allison Goldblatt	Mason Greenblatt
Jillian Johnson	Ben Sharrer
Isabella Rongione	Nicholas Spicer
Claire Wolff	Casey Storch
Veronica Wolff

]]> Normal.dotm 0 0 1 13 78 the FISH 1 1 95 12.0

Team Score: 6th Place

Number of Swims at Finals: 78

High Point 12 yr Girls: Isabella Rongione

Just like last year, the weather in Clearwater was great, the swimming was fast, and we all had a great time. Everyone made it back to finals with at least 1 best time, which is hard to do following JO's, Zones, and Spring Break. Here is the link to the best times report, which includes a few team records, and a lot of fast swimming:

Best Times Report

Our FISH swimmers took over the dance floor at the DJ Party following the meet, which was a great time to relax and socialize with the Canadian National Team and other teams from across the country. Also, many of us went to Adventure Island on Sunday after the meet and had a blast. Lazy river & wave pool tag, giant cupcakes, and Wahoo Run were just a few of the highlights. Keep working hard in practice, and hopefully you can join us next year in beautiful Clearwater Florida!

Come back soon to read a story written by one of our NASA swimmers!

2012 SWIM-A-THON

2012-04-13T18:17:47Z

It's finally here... the FISH Swim-A-Thon ....

Support Your Team & Show Your Thanks; Come Swim

This coming Saturday April 14th and Monday April 16thall swimmers who have worked hard to collect donations and/or pledges are invited to come swim at this great event. The Swim-A-Thon will take place at Spring Hill on Saturday morning from 6:15 am till 8:45 am and Saturday evening from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm. On Monday, at Wakefield. we will begin at 3:30 pm and end at 5:30 pm. Swimmer registration will open at 6:00 am and 5:30 pm on Saturday and 3:15 pm on Monday at Wakefield. Please come early to register and be prepared to stay the whole time. This will be a great event with all kinds of fun things throughout the evening.

Please remember there is no regular practice Saturday morning; only those swimmers participating in the swim-a-thon event will be admitted.

What you need to register:

· Please bring pledge form(s) or the USA swimming envelop with donations to the pool with you Saturday evening to provide at registration. You may also drop off your USA Swimming envelops with your donations or provide any pledge sheets with per lap pledges prior to the event. (Simply drop in folder marked for Swim-A-Thon).

After the Event:

· If a swimmer has donations and submitted their USA Swimming envelop prior to swimming in the event there is nothing that needs to be done after swimming in the event.

· If a swimmer has pledges for each lap they swim, the swimmer will need to contact their pledge sponsors to let them know the final lap total. All swimmers will know their total lap count by the end of the event. All pledged funds need to be returned to the swimmer andsubmitted to the FISH no later than Wednesday April 25th. All funds should be submitted in the USA Swimming Folder and can be dropped off in the designated folder at the pool.

· Within the weeks following the event, all swimmers who complete 100 or more laps will receive an official pin from USA Swimming

Thank you to everyone who has already shown their support of this wonderful fundraiser. We really appreciate all the generous donations and pledges.

It will be wonderful seeing all the swimmers coming together for their team and their coaches!

If you have any questions please feel free to contact our Swim-A-Thon chair, Christina Ewing at cewing@gmail.com or 703-851-4345.

GO FISH!

FISH of the Month: Johnny Bradshaw

2012-04-13T10:25:27Z

written by Coach Andy

March was a FAST month! The Junior Olympic swimmers had one of the best starts of the meet in FISH history, and at the Mini Championship Meet our swimmers did a fantastic job. One of the standout swimmers who participated in both, Mini Champs and Junior Olympics, is Johnny Bradshaw and he is the FISH of the Month for March.

Johnny Bradshaw has been with the team for two seasons, starting out in Mini FISH last year as a seven-year old, where he quickly progressed to Lane 3 Minis, and then moved on to join Age Group this season. Johnny exhibits the behaviors of excellence by doing his best at every chance possible. Last year, he saw his older brother, Chase, compete at Junior Olympics and he decided then that he would like to make the Junior Olympic Team in 2012. Over the course of the following year, Johnny attended extra morning and long course practices which gave him confidence and endurance to perform at a much higher level. Johnny has worked diligently to become a well rounded, fast swimmer.

Given his dedication over the 2011-2012 season, Johnny not only participated in Junior Olympics, he qualified for 6 events in the 10 and Under Category as an 8 year old! He was one of three 8 year old boys participating in the meet and swam right on his best times. In addition, Johnny also had a great impact at Mini Champs, helping his team come in second two years in a row by winning five events.

Congratulations Johnny and good luck for your upcoming season with the FISH.

Nutrition: 30 Healthiest Foods

2012-04-12T11:16:56Z

Compiled by Liz Welch and Lindsey Funston

Starting today, we will provide you with interesting nutritional information that is valuable to swimmers and parents. We try to keep it simple so that it easy to remember.

In this segment we are introducing the 30 healthiest food you should incorporate in your daily diet. Eating these foods will make you stronger, help you recover and keep you healthy.

"To adopt healthy eating strategies, start by incorporating these foods into your diet."

If you have any interesting nutritional articles you would like to share, please send them to mparis@pvfish.org.

2012 Junior Olympics - the FISH win 3rd Place!

2012-04-02T11:22:41Z

written by Coach Matt.

The atmosphere was electric right from the start, as a HUGE wall of posters donned the team area for the FISH. We started off the first night with a bang, with swimmers going best times in the distance events by huge margins. The momentum kept up the next morning when our relay teams swam beyond our expectations, and the insane time drops continued. Even our younger kids got in on the action, swimming faster than they had ever swum before! The FISH kept the energy high throughout the entire meet, and we had a great final day of the meet.

The team atmosphere was the best I've seen from our kids since I've been here, with swimmers up and cheering for their teammates at every opportunity. There was so much positive energy coming from our team, and everybody was in on it. Thank you to our swimmers for being so awesome, this was truly a highlight of my FISH career so far!

You have all been part of a tremendous end-of-the-season performance, the best in the history of the FISH! Evaluation and analysis on how you got to this point are extremely important for sustained progress and success. The FISH system works. The program that you are a part of has a history of yielding some tremendous results. The coaching, the blend of practices, the structure of the sets, the philosophy of training, the development of strokes, the refinement of mental skills - this, and countless more, should give you the confidence that what you are doing works, and will continue to work in the future!

A big CONGRATULATIONS is in order to all the FISH Junior Olympic swimmers on getting 3^rd Place winning a convincing 1862.5 points! This was our highest finish in 9 years, and is the result of all your hard work and dedication to the team. Your coaches couldn't be more proud of you!

Individual Event Winners

Best Times

Mini Champs - Second Place Overall and 18 Individual Event Winners

2012-03-25T17:43:10Z

Written by Coach Meredith

The FISH scored a total of 1409.5 points securing 2nd place overall for the second year in a row. We want to congratulate all of our Mini FISH swimmers on getting second place at Mini Champs! This is a great accomplishment and a testament to all the hard work we put in this season. There are many reasons behind the success of our Mini FISH at Mini Champs. One of the most important reasons is the high attendance our Minis have had all year. 78 of our 88 Minis had 80 percent or better attendance at the time of Mini Champs. This dedication to coming to practice created a group of committed Minis who were very ready to swim fast when Mini Champs rolled around! We want to personally thank the parents for getting their Minis to practice - we realize it isn't always easy but you helped your swimmer to become the best he or she could be! Having high attendance helps our Minis to have high focus and to strive for perfection in practice. We were very impressed all year with how hard our Minis worked to do everything their coaches told them. They took advantage of having their coaches in the water and getting immediate stroke corrections leading to solid stroke mechanics. Our Minis' great attitudes at practices and at swim meets throughout the year turned them into spectacular swimmers. All the coaches here at the FISH are so proud of them and encourage them to continue working hard this summer to get ready for the next level.

Event 8: Boys 7 Year Olds 25 Yard Freestyle:

J.T. Ewing - 15.09

Event 12: Boys 8 Year Olds 50 Yard Backstroke:

Johnny Bradshaw - 35.77

Event 14: Boys 7 & Under 50 Yard Backstroke:

J.T. Ewing - 42.24

Event 15: Girls 6 & Under 25 Yard Backstroke:

Tatum Evans - 24.20

Event 17: Girls 8 Year Olds 25 Yard Butterfly:

Hannah Arndt - 16.89

Event 20: Boys 7 Year Olds 25 Yard Butterfly:

J.T. Ewing - 17.47

Event 22: Boys 8 Year Olds 50 Yard Breaststroke:

Johnny Bradshaw - 41.27

Event 23: Girls 7 & Under 50 Yard Breaststroke:

Kathleen Modder - 50.57

Event 26:  Boys 8 & Under 100 Yard IM:
Johnny Bradshaw - 1:19.70

Event 27: Girls 8 & Under 100 Yard Medley Relay:
The FISH 'A' - 1:12.34  1) Tennant, Skylar M 8             2) Rongione, Natalia D 83) Arndt, Hannah E 8               4) Heilbrun, Emme Cate C 8

Event 31: Girls 8 Year Olds 25 Yard Breaststroke:

Hannah Arndt - 20.84

Event 34: Boys 7 Year Olds 25 Yard Breaststroke:

Nicholas Arndt - 22.56

Event 37: Girls 8 Year Olds 50 Yard Freestyle:

Natalia Rongione - 31.98

Event 38: Boys 8 Year Olds 50 Yard Freestyle:

Johnny Bradshaw - 31.01

Event 44: Boys 7 Year Olds 25 Yard Backstroke:

J.T. Ewing - 19.27

Event 48: Boys 7 & Under 50 Yard Butterfly:

J.T. Ewing - 37.77

Event 51: Girls 8 & Under 100 Yard Freestyle:

Natalia Rongione - 1:12.29

Event 52: Boys 8 & Under 100 Yard Freestyle:

Johnny Bradshaw - 1:09.33

CONGRATULATIONS! CONGRATULATIONS! CONGRATULATIONS!

Meet Coach Eriko Mitsuya

2012-03-25T16:23:49Z

Coach Eriko started swimming at a young age and has been involved in swimming ever since.

She started teaching swimming as an assistant in 1995 and as an instructor in 2001. During her time as a swim instructor she has taught all ages from infants to adults. She started coaching in 2003 as an assistant coach at Wolverine Aquatics (now part of Club Wolverine) in Ann Arbor, MI. After graduating from the University of Michigan in 2005, she moved to Tucson, Arizona and coached at El Dorado Aquatics Club where she worked as their age group coach. During the summer of 2011 she worked as the Head Coach of Indian Ridge Swim Team, a summer league team in Tucson.

Coach Eriko lives in Alexandria with her husband and son, and their dog and three cats.

Meet Coach Simon Morley

2012-03-20T18:00:02Z

Prior to arriving at the FISH, Coach Simon was an Assistant Coach at Lindenwood University. In his last season there, he was helping the Lindenwood team win the Men's Liberal Arts Conference and break numerous team school and conference records. Over the years he has acquired a wealth of knowledge coaching with, YMCA Sarasota Sharks in Florida, Palatine Park District in Chicago, and West Suffolk Swimming Club in Haverhill, England.

]]> While swimming in College, Coach Simon was a four time All-American between 2008-10 in the 100m and 200m backstroke. In his senior year he captained his team to third place finish at nationals, and he left Lindenwood University with a degree in Sports Management. Before that, he was a two time Illinois State Champion while swimming for Palatine Park District Swim Team. Growing up in England, Coach Simon started swimming at the age of five for West Suffolk Swimming Club, made numerous National cuts and he captained his team to the Speedo League final.

Outside of swimming, Coach Simon has fun being active and trying new things. Coming from England he is naturally a huge soccer fan and loves to play the game he played for 10 years of his life.

Announcing the 2012 FISH Swim-A-Thon

2012-03-19T14:23:21Z

Our Swim-A-Thon® is for the benefit our entire FISH Team!

Support Your Team & Show Your Thanks; Come Swim!

Please join us on Saturday April 14th at Spring Hill and April 16th at Wakefield for our 2012 Swim-A-Thon® ...where your energy and enthusiasm will really make a big difference for the TEAM and COACHES. For more information click here.

Fo questions, please contact our Swim-A-Thon Chair Christina Ewing.

Mini Champs Results are in -- the FISH takes 2nd Place once again!!!

2012-03-11T22:42:11Z

Congratulations to all Mini FISH Champs swimmers, you secured the 2nd Place spot for the second year in a row. Not an easy task, but all your hard work has paid off!

Check out all the best times that were swum!

Go FISH!

2012 Chicagoland - What a Trip!

2012-03-06T00:17:39Z

The pictures speak for themselves......the Chicago trip was a great success for the FISH team. Thank you Coach Ray for making it all possible and putting this meet on our Meet Schedule.

The credit for these wonderful pictures goes to Rob Greenblatt.

And here is why Haley Bergthold liked the trip so much:

Haley's Top 5 Chicago Memories

#5. Exciting trip out - our flight was cancelled at Dulles and while we waited for it to get straightened out, Coach Ray played War (the card game) with us. It was an exciting end when we took a bus to Reagan and barely made our new flight. We enjoyed a lot of Mentos, Icebreakers, and Warheads on the flight.

#4. It was magically snowing when we arrived in Chicago and took our first bus ride to the pool. By the way, Chicago really is the "Windy City" and my hair froze.

#3. We ate most of meals in a special room in the hotel with everyone from the FISH. It was great sitting all together and getting to know some of my FISH friends better and making some new ones.

#2. Sitting under the diving board during finals with teammates to watch and wildly scream for other FISH swimmers during their events. I was hoarse for three days after I came home!

#1. Eating at the Golden Corral with the whole team. The dessert isle was awesome and the medium rare steak was great. Smorgasbords are the best and even better without your parents.

FISH of the Month: Annalise Cornett

2012-02-28T19:51:17Z

Written by Coach Casey

Congratulations to Wakefield swimmer Annalise Cornett, January's FISH of the month! In just half of a season, Annalise has come so far that she rivals some of the strongest age group swimmers on FISH. Annalise's work ethic, amazing attitude, and great sense of humor made her an easy choice for FISH of the month.

]]> As a 9 year old, this is Annalise's first season with The FISH, and we couldn't be happier to have her on the team. Her positive outlook and tough mindset at practice is one that a coach can only dream of. Annalise does everything her coaches ask of her and she always comes to practice with smile, ready to work hard. She never complains even during the most difficult practices. One of Annalise's best qualities is her attitude. She has such a great attitude that it spreads across the pool deck becoming an example for other swimmers, even to those swimmers who are older. Annalise also has a great sense of humor and the coaches very much enjoy the comic relief she provides. Annalise is turning into a great role model for the other swimmers in Age Group!

Even though Annalise boasts nearly perfect practice attendance, she also finds time to enjoy other activities. Outside of excelling in the pool, she also likes to keep busy practicing piano, doing gymnastics, and dancing.

With her first season of winter swimming nearly behind her, we look forward to Annalise's next season with the FISH - we know it's going to be a good one! Congratulations Annalise and keep up the good work!