Written by Coach Steven

Congratulations to Nick Spicer for earning the FISH of the Month for December!  December was a great month for Nick with a stellar performance at Christmas Champs, and at every single practice over Winter Break.  However, this is not a new trend in Nick's tenure with the FISH, one built upon by hard work, attention to detail, and sacrifice.

On Friday evening the girls 800 free relay -  Isabella Rongione, Elena Marsilii, Michelle Owens, and Megan Murphy placed 14^th.

Jason Fu swam a strong 100 breast in a time of 1:02.63.58 at finals and placed 18^th.

On Saturday our FISH swimmers continued to show a strong performance swimming a lot of best times.  Here are the best times:

Event 3 - girls 200 free: Michelle Owens - 1:58.93 (4 seconds faster)

Event 4 - boys 200 free: Chris Murphy - 1:47.68

Event 6 - boys 100 breast: 

• Jason Fu - 1:02.63 (3 seconds faster)
• Matt Eshleman - 1:04.25 - (2 seconds faster)

Event 8 - boys 100 fly:

• Ian Russiello - 56.99 
• Chris Murphy - 56.53 

Event 9 - girls 400 I.M.: 

• Michelle Owens - 4:44.53 - (6 seconds faster)
• Veronica Wolff - 4:42.83 - (9 seconds faster)

Event 10 - boys 400 I.M.:

•  Chris Murphy - 4:20.74 - (4 seconds faster)
•  Matt Eshleman - 4:24.98 (3 seconds faster)

Event 13 - girls 200 fly:

• Isabella Rongione - 2:08.64 - (2 seconds faster)
• Veronica Wolff - 2:15.60

Event 14 - boys 200 fly:

• Matt Eshleman - 2:04.78
• Ian Russiello - 2:02.19

Event 15 - girls 50 free:  Isabella Rongione - 25.40

Event 18 - boys 200 breast: 

• Jason Fu - 2:16.53  (3 seconds faster)
• Matt Eshleman - 2:21.41 (2 seconds faster)

Event 20 - boys 100 back: Chris Murphy - 55.37

Event 21 - girls 500 free:

• Isabella Rongione - 5:06.01 (2 seconds faster) 17^th place
• Michelle Owens - 5:13.33 (4 seconds faster)
• Veronica Wolff - 5:15.47 (3 seconds faster)
• Megan Murphy - 5:24.95 - (3 seconds faster)

Event 22 - boys 500 free:  Ian Russiello - 5:03.16 (2 seconds faster)

Congratulations!  Go FISH!

Written by Coach Matt

In my year and a half with the FISH, plus my years of experience coaching summer league, I have never had a more coachable athlete than Molly Ellor.  I define a coachable athlete as someone who is committed to her or his own development, who is hungry for feedback, and open to anything that may improve him or herself.  Molly's drive and desire to learn and get better, coupled with her maturity, and her continued dedication to the FISH swim team, make Molly a very worthy FISH of the Month.

Congratulations on a spectacular Christmas Champs.  Huge drops in time!  Lots of best times!  Many amazing swims!  I personally think this might have been one of the best meets in the history of the FISH, in terms of percentage of best times, and average time drop!

Take time to reflect on how much you have improved since the fall season began.  I challenge you to show the same improvement between now and your Championship meets in March.  If this is the logical middle of our season, let's also make it the half-way point of our progress!

Take this opportunity to evaluate what you have accomplished, how far you have come towards meeting your season goals.  Some of you might have already accomplished them; they need to be reset!  Some of you might be a lot closer; you're on the right path!  Some of you may need to become more diligent!

You will have plenty of opportunity to work towards meeting those goals with Holiday practices just around the corner.  These can go a long ways towards your success in the spring.

Coach Emily has been swimming since she was two years old. But she only began to swim competitively for her summer team the "Langley Wildthings," when she was nine. She swam with them for a winter season before moving on to swimming year-round for two winter seasons. Her freshman year she joined another Langley team, the Langley Saxons Varsity swim team, and plans to join them again this winter season.  Emily's favorite strokes are butterfly and freestyle. Emily is a sophomore at Langley High School, and when she's not coaching or doing her homework you can usually find her reading.

Ben Paris started swimming with the Fish at the age of 8 and continued up until his freshman year in high school. He was a member of the Mini Fish, the Age Group, Advanced Age Group, and Terrific FISH. He received one varsity letter, swimming his freshman year, at McLean High School.

However, his love for playing soccer finally took over and he had to leave the FISH to concentrate on his soccer career.  He enjoyed playing soccer at McLean High School where lettered 4 years.

 Upon his high school graduation, Ben moved to Berlin and studied at the Technical Universität Berlin, where he also continued to play soccer and reinvigorated his drive for swimming by joining the Berliner TSC swim club.

After living one year in Germany, Ben decided to return to the US.  He is now a full-time student at George Mason University and a member of its Division 1 Men's soccer team.

Ben will be working with the Minis.

Congratulations to all the FISH swimmers who competed at the Swim and Rock Meet this past weekend!  This meet was very exciting and a great experience because it was a prelims/finals meet and gave our swimmers a chance to swim both in the morning and at night.  As a result, we saw a lot of fast swimming and time drops which led to many races being won by FISH swimmers.  Please follow this link to see the great results of this weekend.  This meet shows how much progress our swimmers are making as a result of their hard work and training.  

Go FISH! Keep up the good work!!

BY CHRIS ROSENBLOOM, PHD, RD, CSSD

From Thanksgiving to New Year's Day there will be a lot of media stories on weight gain during the holidays. Dire warnings will be issued about high fat and high calorie holiday dishes. But, what receives less media attention is the abundance of healthy foods that appear on mom and grandma's table from November to January.