Weekly Message

Good Afternoon MAST Families,

Thanks for all your hard work!

First Week of Swimming:  The first week of swimming at Oasis went very well.  All the swimmers did an outstanding job cooperating with the different rules and practice structure required by proper physical spacing. Thanks to all the parents and coaches who stepped up and did extra to help get the team in the water and already making progress. 

Learning to swim without lines on the bottom of the pool is a bigger challenge than most expect but after a couple weeks of this, our swimmers shuld adjust and will learn to rely less upon visual ques and more upon stroke balance and stroke symmetry in order to swim straight. This adaptation is a good thing and we will be better off (because overall stroke mechanics will become more efficient) when we get into a regular pool.

Return to swimming after travel: There are still some questions about how we are going to handle return to swimming for those who travel.  I am asking you to be as patient as possible while I try to get good answers to those questions.  On Monday I plan to try to contact the Health Department to find out what those restrictions are, or if they are still in effect.  The most current information I have comes from an article published in a Chillicothe newspaper that seems to suggest that self-quarantine following travel to known hot-spots is no longer in effect.  But, please do not act on that information.  In the best interest of everyone involved we need to get an official statement.

I appreciate the concerns everyone has about missing swim practices but we must continue to weigh the desire to swim against the overall welfare of the entire group. This past Friday I listened to Governor Dewine talk about the self-quarantine issue and, frankly, it’s was hard to know what was being recommended for our environment (competitive swim training).  The Governor said that Hamilton County had been holding steady (in number of Covid cases) but the cases this past week have quadrupled and Hamilton Co. now meets five of the seven indicators.  We will, as soon as possible, confirm government guidelines before adjusting our team policy. It is likely those guidelines may continue to change, possibly many times, over the next few weeks.

I am sorry for the hardship and/or disappointment any swimmer and his/her family may experience but, again, our first duty is to the safety and welfare of all participants. Currently "what we know... (to quote the governor) is that outside is better than inside when it comes to keeping people safe."  When the governor talks about restaurants he does not ask those bars and restaurants to check the recent travel of patrons.

An update will be published as soon as possible.  Thanks for your patience.

Looking ahead:

The plan (for now) is to continue practice at Oasis until the end of July then move to Milford High School for the first two weeks of August (assuming that MHS opens on time).  We will continue summer practices until August 14 then take a break until after Labor Day.  This plan, of course, will be subject to pool availability and the continuing compliance with all State of Ohio and Health Department guidelines.

Have a safe evening, see you tomorrow morning.

Monty