Many of the graphics on CMS swimming pages have been provided by www.swimgraphics.com

.

2007-2008 Swim Season:
The 2007/8 swim season will begin with an interest meeting in August (currently planned for Monday the 20th). It will be held in the cafeteria at Cleveland Middle School at 7:00 p.m.. At the meeting, questions will be answered, as well as tryout sign ups. Small group tryouts will be held later that week. A parent meeting will be held Thursday the 30th @ TLC. Before school preseason practices will begin after Labor Day. After school preseason practices will begin in the middle of September, depending upon pool availability. Regular season practices schedule will begin after the fall break in October. The last meet will be around the last week end in January.

Information about the Cleveland Middle School Swim Team:

Season Length:
The swim seaon begins with tryouts near the beginning of school. They have traditionally been in the fourth week of August after an interested swimmer/parent meeting at the CMS cafeteria during the third week of August. Practice begins in Septemember. The season continues through the last meet (around the first week in Feb.) There is practice over Thanksgiving and Christmas Breaks for swimmers.

Meets:
Meets begin in late October, continuing through the end of the season. The meets typically occur on Tuesday, Thursday or Friday evenings as well as Saturdays. Meets are either dual meet format, or an invitational meet format. The starting times on school nights is generally as early as possible, with dual meets running approximately 2 hours including warm-ups. Invitational meets normally occur on Saturdays, with the duration of the meet depending upon the number of schools attending (4 to 6 hours plus about 2 hours for warm-up). Meet times also depend greatly upon pool availability when traveling to other pools.

Practice: Practice has traditionally been after the highschool practice, at Raider Pool. . Typical practice time has been 5:00 - 6:45 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday., 4:15-5:30 on Wednesday. Practice over school holidays is typically held in the mornings, unless it is a teacher workday. If school is closed due to weather, practice is cancelled. You must be present in school for over half a day to participate in practice or a swim meet. Swimmers are expected to attend all practices unless prior arrangements have been made with the Coach. If you are present at school, you must attend practice. Swimmers may miss no more than one practice per week with prior permission.

Physicals & Permission Forms:
All students must have a current physical on file at the school before trying out. All students must have a completed parent permission form on file with the swim coach before trying out.

Tryouts: have consisted of small groups (about 4) where each swimmer swims for 5 minutes nonstop, or with as few stops as possible. At the end of that time, swimmers will complete a 50 as fast as they can go in eachof the competitive strokes. Knowing all competitive strokes, as well as competition starts, before tryouts is recommended, but not required. In order to tryout each student needs to be able to swim at least one lap of the pool after jumping in the deep end of the pool without stopping. After that, names will be posted for a second round of tryouts (if needed). During these tryouts, swimmers will be swimming and working out as a group. Athletes in fall sports need to make the first round of tryouts (done by appointment around their fall sport schedule). After that they will be informed if they need to complete their second round of tryouts after their fall sport ends or not. Students that are in a fall sport are welcome to tryout for the team. If a student has made a winter sport/activity or plans on participating in one, they need to decide what they want to focus on before tryouts.

Costs:
The basic cost for team suits(only for meets), T-shirt and cap has been approximately $65 for girls and $45 for boys. Some equipment may need to be purchased depending on what the swimmer already owns. Other team apparel is available at an additional cost. Any swimmer is expected to participate in any fundraisers that the team does. The 2006-7 swim season had fundraising/doantion requirements of $50. Parents may elect to donate directly to the team instead. Additional costs that exist are travel (for buses), meet entry fees, and the end of year banquet.

Other:
Any questions can be addressed to Lars Hondorf, Email Coach Hondorf, or by calling Cleveland Middle School and leaving your name and number for coach Hondorf. Additionally, you may look at the current swimming web pages located @ http://www.clevelandschools.org/~lhondorf/Swimmain.htm. Practice schedules, Meet schedules and other team information is located at these pages.