WELCOME

The Stillwater Starz is a developmental summer swim team and a member of the Naperville Swim Conference (NSC). A volunteer-driven 501(c)(3) nonprofit, our mission is to develop confident, capable young swimmers and foster a love of competitive swimming in a safe, supportive, and fun environment.

Our swimmers range from 4-18 years of age, and most are residents of the Stillwater subdivision and other nearby communities in southwest Naperville, Plainfield, and Oswego. For our youngest swimmers, their time on the Starz is often their first experience with competitive swimming. It’s also where many of our returning swimmers, some of whom now swim year-round in club and school programs, got their start. Join us this summer, and find out what fun you can have when we shoot for the Starz together!

Starz Roundup: Thursday, June 26 and the South Side Invitational at Ashbury (TONIGHT)

Lea Fortkamp

 

Early Good Morning, Starz Families!

 

Are we tired yet? This has been a long, uninterrupted stretch of Thursday/Saturday/Tuesday/Thursday swim meets. Just one more this week, and then we can take a quick breath. You’ll find more details on tonight's South Side Invitational at Ashbury at the end of this email (including its earlier-than-usual check-in and warm-up times), but first, a thank you.

Thanks for everyone’s help last night at our home meet vs. Centennial Beach. Given the spotty weather, we felt fortunate to complete as much of the meet as we did. While we'll typically try to restart a meet following an adverse weather delay, our 30-minute out-of-the-water hold resets with each new instance of lightning/thunder. The lightning that ultimately ended the meet last night would have pushed the restart time to 9:20 p.m. At that point, there would not have been enough evening left in which to continue.

The good news? Last night marked the Starz’ fourth meet win in a row! Congratulations, and thanks to our swimmers for their hard work and amazing personal gains!

 

STARZ TIPS

  • It takes a village, folks! We all know that even great kids make unwise decisions sometimes. At the very least, they’re not always skilled at predicting the consequences of their actions. If you see an athlete—yours or someone else’s—making an unwise or unsafe decision at a practice or meet, please don’t be afraid to gently but firmly redirect them. To this end, let’s make sure our kiddos stay off the tennis courts during meets. The courts are for playing tennis, and they’re very slick when wet. There’s a reason the gate has a combination lock! We had an unfortunate face-to-hardcourt accident last year with one of our returning 7/8’s. I guarantee that he would rate the experience 0/10, and not at all worth revisting!

 

  • Again, if your swimmer cannot make a meet that you’ve committed to due to an unforeseen emergency or unavoidable conflict, please email Head Coach Mary. We’d like to minimize these last-minute scratches as much as possible, but if it truly can’t be avoided, a little bit of notice can avoid unnecessary confusion and work in the busy minutes leading up to meet start. Keep in mind, an unexpected absence can deny other swimmers the chance to participate in relays, so please try your best to keep your meet commitments if you can.

 

TIME DROPS

Congratulations to the following Starz who each had one or more new personal bests at yesterday’s home meet vs. Centennial Beach!

 

NEW CITY QUALIFIERS

The Starz list of City qualifiers continues to grow! Our meet against Centennial Beach, incomplete though it was, brought **17** new City qualifying times! Find the updated list HERE; new times from yesterday’s meet appear on the list in red. These new times are:

Chloe Dela Cruz (50FR)

Zoe Fortkamp (100IM)

Holly Kaminski **New City Qualifier** (50BK)

Alisha Magomedova (50FR)

Emily Murphy **New City Qualifier** (50BK)

Arden Spychala (25BK)

Emi Yu (25FL)

Kegan Johnston (50FL)

Avyan Kawdia (100IM)

Hunter Li (50BK, 100IM)

Oliver Li (50FR, 25BK, 100IM)

Lucas Nadtochiy (100IM)

Sachin Sivakumar (100BK)

Charlie Yu (50BK)

 

TONIGHT’S MEET:

THE SOUTH SIDE INVITATIONAL at ASHBURY

403 Lawrence Drive

***PLEASE NOTE THE EARLY CHECK-IN AND WARM-UP TIMES***

 

4:00 P.M.  Positive Check-in Opens **EARLIER THAN USUAL***

4:15 P.M.  Positive Check-In Closes ***EARLIER THAN USUAL***

4:30 P.M.  Stillwater Warm-Up (Lanes 4-6) ***EARLIER THAN USUAL***

5:10 P.M.  Timer Meeting (by the sand)

5:15 P.M.  Officials Meeting (by the slide)

5:25 P.M.  National Anthem

5:30 P.M.  Meet Start

Please CLICK HERE to review the complete meet packet for critical details on timeline, meet format, concessions, and MORE!

 

DECLARED SWIMMERS:

SOUTH SIDE INVITATATIONAL AT ASHBURY (TONIGHT)

The following swimmers have been declared for this meet. No swimmers can be added at this time. Please do not leave the meet for the night unless you have checked out with Coach Mary, Hannah, or Gabe to ensure that all your events are complete!


The following swimmers are members of relay teams in addition to their individual event entries and MUST stay until the conclusion of the meet. Successful completion of these events requires your swimmers to be present! 

 

PARENT WORKERS:

SOUTH SIDE INVITATATIONAL at ASHBURY (TONIGHT)

Bull Pen 
Prabakaran, Arul
Raghavan, Prasanna
Cornbleet, Jon/Nicole
Samy, Vinod/Vidya
Raghavan, Tanuja
 
Floater
Samy, Vinod/Vidya
 
Head Clerk/Bull Pen Chief
Murphy, Melissa
 
Meet Runner
Ramachandran, Ranjith
 
Officials (stroke and turn)
Cummings, Dan
OToole, Kristen
Ponnada, Deepthi
 
Ribbons 
Jules, Desiree
Nadtochiy, Alesia
 
Scorer
Lagankina, Daria
 
Timer
Masood, Faria
Puzakov, Viktor (Vasilisa Nekhorosheva)
Solomon, Sharlene (Prean Reddy)
Pichkova, Valeriia
Zakharova, Kateryna
Prabhakar, Ajay
Parker, Brian/Heather
Toktosunova, Aliia/Amir
Reed, Sara
Vakharia, Kaushik

 

That’s it for now! Have a great Thursday, wish the storms away, and let’s show the South Side just how brightly the Starz can shine tonight at Ashbury!

 

Lea

Stillwater Starz Parent Board