This Just In... Campus in July.... Still green!

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Memories of Graduation

We’re past summer’s midway point for college students and thoughts turn solidly toward fall—a new school year, a new season. But, we stay connected to our just-graduated seniors as they embark on life’s next big adventures.

Our AD, Clark, led a toast to our senior athletes back in May at our annual gala the night before graduation outside Pamplim Sports Center.


I'm gonna say this is Scott making his way to across the stage. He took his time and savored every step of the way!

A Swim Coach’s Summer Vacation Wish List

• A great past season to reflect on and build from
• Spectacular returning athletes to take us forward
• Team captains with a passion for our program and their teammates
• An incoming class of fun, excited and motivated freshmen who will bring so much to us as they learn what it means to be a Pio
• Some quiet time to plan for another amazing season in Pioneer Swimming

Check, check, check, check... and check.

Campus is beautiful yet quiet, with a few of the team here in Portland this summer for work, summer school, or internships. A coach is free to plan for travel and training, prepare for swim camp, (relax?), and feel the excitement build for next year. Everything is in place for a magical season in 2010-‘11.

Alumni News: Owen Kenton from Tanzania

Owen, class of ’08, is several months into his Peace Corps placement in Tanzania. He shares these pictures of his home, his friends and his surroundings.

Owen's first day at his site.

A trip to Lushoto

Owen's house.

Good luck during finals!

Spring Term is coming to a close and this week Pioneer swimmers are wrapping up final exams, papers, projects, and presentations. Graduation is Sunday and this weekend is a celebration of what our seniors have accomplished and all that they have ahead of them.

April looks like summer at L&C

Warm weather and bright blue sky has campus in a happy vibe today. People are camped out on the grass studying, eating, dozing, or yoga-ing. It’s a great Northwest afternoon.

Rachel, Kim, Kaitlin, and Steven took their weekly Thursday lunch date to the grassy knoll outside the pool. Kim requested an immediate posting of their picture…

Campus Blossoming

Spring Break is here and with it some splendid spring weather. Tuesday was warm and sunny with a gentle breeze through campus. This amazing tree is equidistant from the Frank Manor House, Templeton Student Center, and the chapel.

Remembering Fall: Stevie and Matt at a home football game

Funniest campus sighting of the day

I just returned from an innocent stroll to Watzek Library to pick up an inter-library loan. Little did I know I’d be treated to a live show. As the student employee scanned my book for check-out, in walked a muscle bound man in tight T-shirt and long hair of the professional wrestling persuasion (think pay-per-view, not Greco-Roman). He wore a guitar and carried flowers and a mylar “Happy Birthday” balloon.

Needless to say, I stuck around to see what transpired.

Someone named Eileen was summoned from the depths of the library and the muscular gentleman presented her with flowers and a balloon from her husband for her 40th birthday. And a song: “Light My Fire”

By the second verse, most of the library had come to the lobby to check out the commotion (Watzek could generally be described as subdued). Students and employees lined doorways and the second-floor landing in time to join the serenade for a heartfelt “Happy Birthday.”

Pioneer Swimming (coach) goes to the Winter Olympics!

A week after L&C’s Conference Championship and the best racing of the season, I travelled to Vancouver, B.C. with my wife and two friends to see winter sports on their greatest stage. We got to town in time to see the flame and explore downtown before watching Olympics on our hotel TV and turning in early for our big day the following morning.

Our Olympics day started with a 5:45am alarm. As a swim coach, I nailed this part. I had one slice of leftover pizza and one piece of homemade banana bread before we drove fifteen minutes to a makeshift bus depot. Many friendly folk in bright blue winter jackets directed us. There was free coffee and hot chocolate and my friend Chris and I each went for the chocolate. One young woman appeared to have the sole responsibility of smiling, holding a can of whipped cream upside down, and asking if you'd like some on your chocolate. I would like some, thank you.

Everyone is so friendly. The staff, the tourists, the volunteers. It's The Olympics... We boarded a charter bus for a two-hour drive to Whistler. Hundreds of buses were making this trip, all with the Vancouver 2010 logo and four Olympic critters in decal form on the sides. One critter is the Sasquatch. Another we learned was a rare, endangered Vancouver Island marmot and this made sense.

This left the one we had come to call "Skunk Kitten" and another that had a bear face and bird wings. We had no clever name for him. While waiting in the short line for the bus, my wife asked a young woman in the snazzy parka that screamed “I’m a volunteer” what the animals were. She explained that the hard-to-identify ones were actually native spirit-animals. Problem solved! Skunk Kitten was actually one creature on land and a whale in the water. Skunk Kitten is black and white and the thing we took for a tuft of black hair on her head did look just like an Orca’s dorsal fin. And the learning continued…

Our first event was the ski jump. Gigantic hill with people flying through the air, just like on TV. Or more like a gliding, controlled fall, I guess. This was actually the men’s Nordic combined, in which Team USA went on to win the silver medal.

From here we hustled about a kilometer through the forest to see the Women’s 4x6km Biathlon Relay. Skiing with guns and target shooting. In a relay. Amazing. I think the most impressive thing about the Olympics was the international energy. So many patriotic Swiss, Russians, Norwegians, Germans, Canadians, etc.

Big excitement! My wife had done some internet surfing so we’d have a clue about biathlon. After the event as we were leaving, she pointed and said, “That’s Sarah Studebaker!” We met Sarah and she signed our tickets and took photos with us. At one point she said, “I have fans!” This speaks to the anonymity an American professional winter biathlete maintains, as compared to some other nations.

Later that same day, back in Vancouver, we took in women’s curling. Simply fascinating. It was also striking how much more focus curling has globally than in the U.S. Crudely put, I would describe curling as shuffleboard on ice. In reality, it was pandemonium with four separate matches happening all at once, the banners waving, the Swiss singing and ringing cowbells on big leather belts, the Japanese chanting in unison, the Canadians going ballistic each time their country’s stone smacked another stone out of the circle, and the Americans looking around trying to figure the whole thing out. Glorious.

Our trip was magical. In swimming, the U.S. Nationals was star-studded and fun, but coming together with thousands of fans from across the globe all descending on a city for Olympic sport felt like a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Now I hope I can get tickets to London….

Best homework of the week

Claire and Kim just burst into my office after psychology class to tell me about their homework. They were on their way to the fitness center to do some research. “Disguised” in gym clothes, they will observe unknowing patrons and count the number of times they self-focus attention looking in the wall-to-wall mirrors.

I implored them not to wear swim team paraphernalia for their creepy experiment involving staring at someone for ten straight minutes while tallying behavior.

The results are in—In this instance, guys looked at themselves more than twice as often as women. One guy looked at himself 31 times in 5 minutes. One woman looked at herself 10 times during a conversation with a friend.

Magical weekend, amazing people

How to sum up our weekend…. Spectacular! We see a LOT of races and do a LOT of cheering through six sessions of a Conference Championship.

Claire got our night started off right with her Finals swim in the 1650. She undertook quite an unusual feat, breaking both our mile school record and our 1000 freestyle record on the same swim. She was six seconds under our 1000 record at that split and we knew she was on the way to a big swim. Later, Claire said she sensed things were going well during her race because one of her coaches was running along the side of the pool jumping up and down waving at her during the last few hundred yards. [Guilty as charged.] What a swim to begin the last night of Finals!

Josh followed-up with a lifetime best 1650 to keep our momentum going. And momentum is what we have as Cat jumped in for her 200 backstroke She made good on her top seed from the morning and absolutely ran away with the heat for the win!

We rolled along on the wings of these great swims right on to the end.

In the most highly contested placing of the meet, our women were holding a three-point lead over Whitman for 3rd going into the last relay. Describing the mood as electric as our relay team marched to the blocks would be an understatement. I very much had the sense everyone knew what was on the line. Our girls put together a phenomenal relay performance and locked in our team’s 3rd place finish in the Northwest Conference Championship.



After the meet, the men’s team serenaded Dave with a special rendition of “You’ve lost that loving feeling” a la Top Gun. Quite moving.


On the way home we swung by Dairy Queen to wave farewell to careful eating with the meet behind us. So many great ways to donate change to a good cause, and Josh and Rachel tried to find each one.

In a sly moment of inspiration, the team bought me an ice cream cake to celebrate as Women’s Coach of the Year. It was delicious. On the one hand it had worms on it, but on the other hand it was ice cream, so I don’t know if I should read into it. The writing was kind of a rush job and we enjoyed the “Congrates” the harried employee managed late on a Sunday night shift. Mostly I think it was a really nice gesture at the end of a long, long, fun-filled weekend. Also, I’ve eaten ice cream cake the last three nights after dinner. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.

Forward we boldly go

Night two and no signs of slowing our pace. Rachael held onto her top spot in the backstroke with a commanding win in an even faster NCAA “B” cut than this morning. Here she is with co-finalists Kaitlin and Kallie after a major backstroke podium event for us.

These guys are a portrait of calm intensity.

Our women’s 200 Medley Relay sprinted to a commanding bronze medal place and our men’s 800 Freestyle Relay came in a surprise 5th overall. Josh lead off with a new lifetime best in his 200 freestyle. And Kim does a little thing we like to call representin'.

School Record before brunch…

Caz gave us the most dominant swim of the day with her school record performance in the 100 backstroke and she’s the top seed going into tonight’s final in a couple hours. She’ll be joined by both Kallie and Kaitlin in the final heat, while Catherine is just behind in the consol. Our most impressive event so far for the women. Zach Hixson is our top-seeded guy at 4th in the 100 back. Steven Carreno made consols where he plans to move up, as well. Also earning second swims were Gail, Cat, Isaac, Noah, Susie, Walker and Steven Klutho.
We started our day with another round of the Marriott’s killer breakfast buffet before our trip to the pool. In our team meeting we celebrated the great swims we had yesterday and handed out the Pio Inspired Racer Award for each session. Rachel Levitsky for lighting up her 500 in the morning and Zac Hixson for his inspiring finals IM.
What’s great about recognizing an inspiring swim is that nearly every person might choose a different teammate as the one that inspired him or her. This is when you know you have a good thing going.

Hannah's 50 freestyle in consols

We put up oodles of good swims today, but I find I can only muster the patience this time of night to upload a nice, short race like the 50. Here’s Hannah climbing two spots from prelims in her consolation final!

Points on the board!

We had big races tonight in finals! Cat took silver in the 200 IM and was downright ecstatic about the results. I enjoyed her genuine delight over this first day of racing. Zac slashed another second off his lifetime best in the last 200 IM of his collegiate career. Josh and Sam posted new bests in their 500 swims. Hannah went one tenth faster, but bumped off two more competitors. Caz held onto her fourth place seed and is our second highest finisher so far.

Last night was Olive Garden so tonight we hit the Chipotle after finals. Chips and guacamole were on the house for our group. Who can turn down free chips? After dinner some of the team did some… window-dancing… while we waited for the bus to pull around. The fun never ends with this group.

I love to watch this team race!

What an amazing first session! I love starting a meet off well. Our team has shown once again we are habitual fast starters, beginning with great 500s, a slew of good 200 IMs and wrapping up the morning with strong 50 freestyle performances.

Positive energy was in large supply this morning. I had flashes of last year’s euphoria as I watched our team riding the wave of their teammates’ great swims and rushing around the deck to hug them after their races.

The best kind of morning is the one where you have a hard time highlighting great performances because of the sheer volume of good swimming going on. Rachel “Legitsky” Levitsky lopped about twenty seconds off her lifetime best in the 500 while Abbie Hebein and Claudia Ramirez cut approximately ten seconds apiece off their best 500s.

Kira McGieson took 1.5 seconds off her best 50 (how is this done???) and Hannah Frank dropped nearly a second to land solidly in the consolation heat tonight. Kaitlin Smith shaved a full second off her 50 time, as well, and now is looking forward to turning over and racing her 100 and 200 backstrokes the next couple days.

Our top seeds for tonight are Rachael Cazden in the 50 freestyle, Claire Jordan in the 500 and Cat Menkel-Lawrence in the 200 IM. As the top seed, Cat is busily choosing the music her final heat will march out to. To the prelims victor go the musical spoils.

Our men were no less impressive. We put five guys in the consol heat of the 200 IM. Two seniors, a junior, a sophomore, and a freshman! Who to root for? Doesn’t matter as long as he’s a Pioneer.

Freshmen Josh Spegman and Sam Smith are each preparing for second swims after their great 500s this morning, too.

And with Finals come the relays. Tonight we blast into action with the 200 freestyle relay and wrap the night up with the 400 medley relay.

A season of great memories sees us off to the Championship

Yesterday before our last workout in Zehntbauer everyone signed the Memory Board, many with favorite quotes and memories from the season so far.

The team called on Abbie for her artistic prowess to start the board off with the requisite “LC 2009-1010”.

And then the fun begins…! Class by class, seniors to freshmen.

With the Memory Board signed and the shortest practice of the year in the books, there’s one thing on our collective mind. Fast racing starts Friday morning and we are ready.