Returning Stingray Families,

As we begin the 2017 swim season, we wanted to send a note updating you on the state of our team.  The Spring Cypress Stingrays is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, so as members you are the “owners” of this team.  The Board appreciates your support and the trust you’ve given to us to operate your swim team.

 

Last year brought many changes to the Stingrays.  Many changes were due to the fact that the size of our team was much smaller than it had been at its peak.  This required us to find more cost effective ways to conduct business while maintaining the quality of the swimming experience and maintaining the essential core values of the team.  There will be more discussion on the key issues related to this later in this letter.

 

A very significant change last year was a new coaching staff.  We are excited that both Coach Elise and Coach Dore will be back with us again this year.  If you observed any part of our practices last year you know that these two coaches are not only highly qualified, but even more importantly they care deeply about the kids they coach and about the sport of swimming.  Coach Elise lives in Longwood and has been involved with the Stingrays as a parent and/or coach for over 10 years.  Coach Dore also coaches the Cy-Fair High School swim and water polo teams so many of our 15 and over swimmers are familiar with her.  So both coaches have important connections to our team in addition to being exceptional coaches.

 

This year we will also be adding a third coach.  He is Daniel Jestes and he will be introduced more fully at the parent meetings.  The bottom line with our coaches is we believe strongly that they give the Stingrays a solid foundation going into this swim season, and we believe that they can provide you and your children with the best possible swim experience.

 

As noted above, you probably noticed that our swim club was smaller last season.  This trend has actually been occurring for the past few seasons, with total swimmers going from about 275 four years ago to 179 last year.  There are several reasons for this, some of them as simple as demographic changes as our neighborhoods mature and families with younger children make up a smaller percentage.  Also, swimming is a cyclical sport, with interest always at a high point in the year after an Olympics.  With the 2016 Olympics occurring late last summer, we were coming into the last year in the cycle as we registered swimmers in the spring of 2016.

 

One specific change the swimmer reduction brought to us is that our team was reassigned to a different NWAL division last year.  NWAL has a very objective tool to grade teams and assign them to divisions with other teams based on size, geography and competitiveness.  This fosters parity in competition.  For the 2017 swim season, the East/West/Central format of years past was eliminated.  We have now been assigned to Red Division 3.  We have some new teams we’ll be swimming against this year, and we’ll have more information on that at the parent meeting.

 

Having said that, the Board is confident these membership trends will soon reverse.  We are already seeing signs of that in 2017.  It’s clear looking at the registrations to date that there is a great amount of excitement for the 2017 Stingrays season.  With our excellent coaching staff and with a tremendous core of parents that volunteer and make this team go, we believe the Stingrays are in a great position to build our team and be competitive in whatever NWAL division we compete.  

 

We’d like to wrap up this update with a word about fundraising.  The majority of our budget is received through family dues and sponsorships, without adding fundraising fees or commitments to each family.  We want you and your kids to associate summer league swimming with fun, exciting, swimming-related memories, not memories of going door to door selling popcorn or candy.  So we build our team budget around this model.  While we generally are able to generate enough revenue from our swimmer families and team sponsors to operate the team, we still have a small portion of our budget that is funded through other revenue.  With the decrease in swimmers over the past years, this part has grown from about 5% of our budget to 10% of our budget.

 

So beginning last year we did a few things differently in order to help reduce costs and raise additional revenue in a manner that didn’t involve door-to-door fundraising.  We used the Longwood Bend pool for our home meets rather than paying for an outside pool.  We expanded the concessions function to start cooking our own food at meets instead of catering.  We also transitioned to the new SmugMug site for photo sharing which generates a small amount of revenue.  We know that many of you enjoyed the free pictures and have deliberately continued to provide free watermarked downloads through this site.  The high-quality prints and high-resolution images that are available for purchase through SmugMug have been priced with a very narrow profit margin.  Again, we have tried to find a way to further fund the team that did not require outside fundraising and that allows us all to focus our participation in ways that directly benefit our kids.

 

So please know that when you buy concessions at a home meet, Stingray-themed merchandise via the Team Store, or photos through our SmugMug site, you are supporting your swim team and helping your kids have a positive experience free from involvement with fundraising.

 

We can’t wait to get started on the 2017 swim season and registration is now open!  We hope to see all of you at the parent meeting on April 8! New families meet from 3-4pm, returning families 4-5pm. D&J sports will be there with suits and fins. Our team store will also be available with Stingray merchandise and goggles!

 

As always, you may contact any Board member with questions, comments, concerns or ideas.  We value your input and we’re thankful for every Stingray family!

 

Lesley Hawley – President - [email protected]

Curt Morgan – Vice President - [email protected]

Jamie Roberts – Secretary – [email protected]

Tom Lightfoot – League Rep - [email protected]

Holly Eubanks – Volunteer Coordinator - [email protected]

Gretchen Hinojosa – Registrar - [email protected]

Brian Smoker – Treasurer - [email protected]