Good evening, Tulsa swimmers!!

Lloyd Landreth & I met today with two Jenks Public School administrators to discuss having a Saturday morning workout at the high school pool. Good news-- they are very receptive to the idea. They are looking ahead to the new facility opening next year and Masters Swimming, including a coach, is definitely part of that picture. They agree with Lloyd & I that now is the time to start establishing our presence there.

In order to do this now (and in the future) our swimming program would be set up under their community education umbrella. Therefore, we become part of the Jenks system. They do not 'rent' any facilities to outside groups, this is our way around it.

The pool would be ours alone on Saturday mornings. A time hasn't been discussed yet, but I think we can do whatever we want. Someone (me, most likely) will be in charge of the key. They've proposed a $10 per month fee for Saturday swimming. As more pool time becomes available with the new pool, the fee of course would have to increase. All swimmers will be required to be USMS members in order to swim in the designated Masters workout, which is the same as swimming at McClure and at BTW. They can set it up so we will be able to "enroll" on line, saving me from trying to get you to pay me! :)

This is a step in the right direction to make sure Masters Swimming is part of the program at the new pool in Jenks. I don't intend for it to take the place of the BTW location. I think we can still be one team and swim at 2 different pools. Hopefully, having a south Tulsa location will pick up people who aren't willing to drive north to BTW, and vice versa. At some point, we may need to consider hyphenating our name, possibly Tulsa-Jenks Masters Swim Club in order to recognize and advertise the new facility. That is an issue that can be addressed later in 2010.
Let me know your thoughts, interest, comments, concerns by Wednesday, January 13th. Lloyd and I will meet again with the Jenks people to finalize the arrangements. I will update everyone as appropriate. We'd like to get the Saturday workout started as soon as possible.
In the mean time... keep swimming... renew your USMS membership (www.usms.org) ESPECIALLY if you are currently swimming at BTW!!!

AND one more thing... we are working on a new website for TMSC. Please check out www.tulsamsc.blogspot.com to test it out. Colin Drysdale is my webmaster. We need to get a few hits on it so we can test it out & so that it will come up when someone does a Google search on Tulsa swimming.

Thanks for your time!

Denise Smart
(918) 749-2253