Good evening everyone. Welcome to the 2009 swim team dinner. If anyone is in the wrong room, now would be a good time to leave. As we bring to a close another successful short course season let me say that whoever came up with the phrase “never a dull moment” certainly knew what they were talking about. I'd like to start off with a few thank you's. First, thank you to the NG's for making and donating our new team hats. Thank you to the parents. You have extended yourselves as usual, getting your kids to practice, working at swim meets, working behind the scenes and supporting your children in a way that has allowed them to grow both as swimmers and young adults. Thank you to the alumni, who's success out of the pool has shown our current group what they can accomplish with continued work and dedication in and after college. Thank you to the Y Staff and executives who continue to support us and honored us with an amazing dinner in November, thank you to my fellow coaches, who are really the nuts and bolts of the operation and keep us together, they have grown tremendously this year mostly due to their own initiatives, a special thank you to the New York rowing team who reserved the mini gym next to the weight room every day but never used it so we could do our dryland exercises there this year, thanks to our amazing chaperones at Nationals, our webmaster, our captains, my family who still puts up with the crazy schedule, the families of my co-coaches and of course thank you to the swimmers who day after day continue to work hard, sacrifice and do what it takes to achieve their goals. I congratulate all of you on your success as we recognize you this evening.

We have some special guests that I would like to recognize and thank them for their support: Rich and Verne McCluskey and Annie and Harry Fosteris,

It is very difficult to pay proper tribute to so many of you in such a short amount of time but we will do our best.

Before I go any further we would like to give special recognition to two very important people for their long time contributions to our team and the YMCA. The first is Karin Guelly. Karin and her family came to the YMCA about 10 years ago. They immediately helped in any way they could. Karin has gone on to become a top official, Co-President of the parent committee, an amazing chaperone and generally helps out anywhere she is needed. The second is Tom Mammano. Tom has also worn many hats for the club. His family spans over 15 years on the team. Without Tom's expertise we never could have run all the successful meets and State Championships that we have run, we couldn't have made all our trips to Nationals and we wouldn't have had the great computer team that we have today. I'd like to read and present these now: With sincere appreciation for all your volunteer efforts on behalf of the Flushing YMCA and Flushing Flyers Swim Team we thank you for your many years of service. We never could have made it to 23 without you.

Our swimmers continue to demonstrate the YMCA values on a regular basis and for that I am proud. I'd like to start off with our attendance awards – 90% and over. Your accomplishments this year are a reflection of your hard work and dedication. Please come up to get your award –

For Shirley's group – Sara D, Sarah W, Olivia, Rebecca M, Douglas and Isaiah

For Jonah's group – Justin and Julia

For my group – Jennifer, Sally, Dan C, Matt C, Billy and Cody

Some of our highlights this year include 5 swimmers with 22 top 10 rankings in Metropolitan swimming (Jennifer, 11 including 5 firsts, Olivia, 7, Maria, 2, Felix, 1 and Douglas , 1. We won 7 of 8 age groups at Y Cities and 3 out of 10 at States. We had 6 individual State Champions winning 10 events – Olivia, Jennifer, Kirsten, Danny C, Danny G, and Felix. We added 15 silver medals - and 12 bronze medals with Ryan, Matt, Irene, Daniela, Mateo, Amy, Kenny, Matt Li, Ellie, Cody, Douglas, and Maria contributing to those totals. Out of 22 relays, we won 5 and had 10 more finish second. Jennifer set a team and State record in the 200 IM which she then went on to smash at Zones two weeks later. Jennifer won the High Point, Olivia and Matt second and Felix, third at the Big Apple meet. At the holiday meet Matt finished 2 nd , Jennifer. Olivia and Danny 3 rd for the high point and we finished 3 rd out of 18 teams. Jennifer won High Point at the Fran Schnarr Sprint meet, Diana and Danny G finished 2 nd and Olivia, Amy, Jeff and Ryan finished 3 rd . Kirsten, Danny and Matt qualified for Sectionals this year. Jenifer had 1 first, 2 seconds, a fourth and a fifth place finish at Zones. We continued to be a force in High School swimming throughout the City and part of Nassau County . I won't read all their names but all 48 of our High School swimmers were stars on their High School teams. Caity, Jane, Keara, Kirsten, Kellyn, Allen, Danny, Ryan, Adam and Cody qualified for the High School State Championships. Townsend Harris with Ashley, Melisa, Andrea, Laura, Kellyn and Kirsten placed second in the girls City Championship this year. The Bayside boys won the Queens Championship led by Allen and Billy. The Stuyvesant boys finished 2 nd in the City. Kirsten won the Heisman-Wingate award given to the Outstanding PSAL female swimmer. In February, after three long years of pain, operations, healing, physical therapy, a tremendous amount of courage, determination and hard work, Andy Lao returned to the swim team. We had 18 swimmers at Long Course Y Nationals and 10 at Short Course Y Nationals. We won Y States for the 23 rd year in a row.

We have some Alumni here tonight and I'd like to give them a warm welcome, Deirdre, Maeve, Lillian, Priscilla, Kevin and Michael .

And now for a short poem (Any similarity of characters in the poem to actual people is purely coincidental.)