Friendships made on the network pool can regularly last a lifetime. Just ask a person at the Westminster Stingrays Swim Team.
Now celebrating the team’s 30-yr anniversary, crew individuals reflected on its history and all of the friendships born on the water.
“I suppose it definitely is [about] the friendships that the swimmers on the team have advanced through the years,” team coach Alex Hanson said.
The nonprofit Westminster Stingrays Swim Team started in 1989 and has grown exponentially to a team of over one hundred fifty swimmers, competing inside the Central Maryland Swim League and imparting a robust swim lesson application for the network.
Hanson said the team — whose home base is the Westminster Municipal Pool — is for both experienced and summer-most effective swimmers.
“We awareness on stroke paintings. We do everything we can hold it a laugh,” he stated. “With pep rallies on Fridays, [we] get the children cheering for each different in the course of meets and feature a pal machine to get older and younger kids cheering for one another as well.”
Team consultant Morgan Muse has been a member for 6 years, with four years on its board of administrators.
“We practice Monday via Friday, starting the day after Memorial Day, and [we] run through the quit of July,” she stated. “We have dual meets each Saturday and a few greater invitationals and qualifiers for the duration of the season. In addition, we take part In the Central Maryland Swim League, which’s made of 50 teams. They have nine divisions this 12 months, and we are in Division Three.”
Muse stated maximum of swim meets inside an hour pressure. The crew has hit capacity beyond years, with 30 humans on the waitlist this 12 months.
“We love that everyone desires to be part of within the summer amusing,” Muse said. “We are constantly thinking of new methods to make room for more swimmers.”
Muse spoke of ways they have changed over time.
“We usually chortle approximately the way we used to need to run the meets,” she stated. “When the swim team began, the whole thing turned into on paper. Now we use the computer to run the meets, and it tracks the whole thing.”
For Muse, one of the excellent things approximately the crew is the age variety of the swimmers.
“We have 5-year-olds and 18-year-olds at the equal team,” she stated. “The little children look up to the huge youngsters, and the big youngsters are capable of getting worried about helping at exercise and swim training. I have three children in unique age organizations, and it’s the only recreation where all my kids may be in the same group. I also love that we have a wide range of capacity. We have swimmers who can barely make it the duration of the pool and one swimmer who is headed to swim at a Division 1 university inside the fall.”
In 1989, Linda Kephart started out the Stingray Learn to Swim Program, with 3-morning instructions for every age and skill.
“The software grew to consist of each morning and evening training,” Kephart recalled. “Lesson instructors have been the Stingray team coaches. Interested crew individuals had been educated as lesson volunteers to help the lead instructors. Over the years, masses of children participated in the program, and lots of swim team members were skilled to be teachers. The lesson application keeps and continues to be going strong.”
Kephart’s daughter Brianne (then a 7-yr-old) joined the Westminster Stingrays in 1990, followed via her youngest daughter Kelsey in 1993 at age five.
“Both girls swam till they graduated from high college, and each became head coaches of the team at some point of their college years,” Kephart said. “I began volunteering with the crew in 1990, became an assistant educate in 1993, and took over as head coach for several summers. We have been worried about the crew through 2011. The group has become a family hobby and a laugh way to spend months of every summertime. Lifelong friendships for the swimmers and mother and father developed over time.”
Beth Serbian stated she joined the crew in 1997, just earlier than seventh grade. Now, her youngsters are crew members.
“I started out swimming because I didn’t make the tour soccer team, which have been my sport up until that point. The summer swim team quickly has become the spotlight of my summer season.
