Don Schaefer
An unusual middle of the week swim meet in South Tucson at Clements Swimming Pool was on the schedule for 15 members of the SaddleBrooke Swim Team. Clements Pool is located not far from the Pima Air and Space Museum on the Pima C.C. East Campus. Swimmers came from Sun Lakes, Green Valley and all points in-between. The 25-yard seven-lane pool is what we might call a friendly ‘senior warm!’ This was a low-key meet that allowed swimmers to work on all of the new stroke and turn techniques the coaches had been teaching for the past two months and to see where their fitness level might be early in the competitive season. We were all glad to see the sun come out after a cold and windy spell earlier in the week. We had one new swimmer in her first Senior Olympics meet, Kelly Reuter, who had not swum in a meet since grade school and just came on board a month ago. Kelly joined us with the goal of qualifying next month for the 2019 National Sr. Games in Albuquerque. She brought River, her friendly dog, who quickly was adopted as team mascot for this meet. Times for the meet were representative of early season training. Everyone seemed to be encouraged by their early season times. It was also great practice to see how our turns and starts were during race conditions. Some swimmers liked the new breaststroke kick whereas others not so much. Most of us agreed we could have used the new breaststroke fins. The officials were all volunteers, youth lifeguards from the Clements Pool and others in the Tucson system. A very friendly group and helpful as they called out the times to us after we recovered at the pool edge and also gave us a helping hand to get on the starting blocks. Coaches Phil Simpson and Lyn Moreno were on hand to help the 14 SaddleBrooke swimmers (Jill and Jack Fritz, Ann Lowry, Don and Linda Merritt, Lyn Moreno, Harold Peter, Karen Poortvliet, Kelly Reuter, Don Schaefer, Craig Shaffer, Ed Thompson, Lynne Vieth and Al Worth) and give us encouragement. Everyone in attendance medaled, which makes for happy swimmers and coaches. Overall a fun starting meet for the season made even “sweeter” by the wonderful cookies brought by Karen Poortvliet.