TX Challenge Cup Preview, LISD Story, and More
Catching up after quite a few weeks. We have a big tourney this weekend so let’s cover that and more.
Texas Challenge Cup
First, we’ll cancel all training this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, March 4-5, since such a huge crowd of us will be competing in North Texas.
As always we’ll try to share all the details regarding the tourney on the Event Page. When in doubt, bookmark that page and check it out. On it includes the schedule, rosters, notes on travel, entry fees, and much more.
Notes on Rosters
- AQTX 10u will be coached by Longhorn Coach Magaly and maybe our new coach Savvy. Make sure you are meeting with Coach Magaly 30 minutes before your games. (Coach James will be there too if not coaching the 14s.)
- Longhorn 12u: Ilay can choose to play with the Longhorn 12u team if he wishes.
- AQTX 14u mixed will be with Coach James. Meet him one hour before your first game each day.
- AQTX 18u mixed will be with Coach Alon. Same thing: meet him one hour before your first game. Corina and Noelle, your priority is with your 18u girls team; Cash and Rocco, you will focus on the 14u boys team. If and only if you want more playing time then you can play on the 18u boys team; you are not expected to.
- Longhorn 18u girls will be with Coach Sydney (I believe). Meet 45 minutes before game time, Corina and Noelle. As Thunder has pointed out, please notice that some 18u girls games are at Northwest ISD in Justin each day. Check the schedule!
Requests of our Families
Desk Workers
According to Thunder, the hosts, the tournament has gotten so big they are going to require one worker assigned by each participating team to work the desk. Luckily we have plenty who helped at Spin Lob, whether an athlete who’s not playing in that game or a parent, so we should be covered. We may send out a signup sheet like with did for Spin Lob so please keep your eyes open for that.
Videographers
Starting with this tournament we’d also like every AquaTex game recorded on video so we can review them during Monday training sessions. So if you’d like to give it a try, or have experience doing it, please let Coach James know. For those who might help us with video recording, a couple notes:
Get your zoom in and out ready. What we want to see (and hear) as coaches is:
- A view of the front court offense in its entirety as tightly viewed as possible while still containing all (or nearly all) of the players. The view should be of one-half of the pool. Close-ups on individual players or pairs are rarely helpful.
- A view of the entire pool as a team counterattacks. Upon the turnover, zoom out to show the entire pool as both offense and defense convert to the counterattack. You may be tempted to focus on the goalkeeper as he/she holds the ball prior to passing it. Please don’t! It’s exponentially more important that we see what’s happening on the counterattack than what the goalie is doing with the ball.
- A view of the front court defense in its entirety viewed as tightly as possible while still containing all the defenders.
- Optional but very helpful: call out the goals and exclusions by cap number kind of as you would if working the scoresheets at the desk. It should be as simple as “Dark 9 goal,” “11 white exclusion,” “2 Dark penalty.”
AQTX, LISD Athletes on KXAN
Check out this KXAN story that features Cash Brown and many of his LISD compatriots who are, along with their parents, working hard to re-instate UIL water polo at Vista Ridge, Cedar Park, and Vandegrift in 2023. Since we have several athletes already or soon-t0-be competing for one of these three schools, we support completely every effort to reverse this silly decision.
You already know AquaTex’s position on the issue: cancelling water polo is as short-sighted a decision a district could make especially after a season in which three schools fielded teams for the first time. What an amazing letdown! I’ll be writing about it more on TXWaterpolo.com in the coming days. Until then, check out these cheerful faces and, if you’re a resident of the LISD, perhaps you could let the administration know you want your UIL Polo back!
Spring Break
We’re consulting as coaches about training during Spring Break, between 11 and 18 March. It is likely that if we have training it will include all groups simultaneously or something like that. Stay tuned.
Lake Creek
Mainly for our newer members, April is approaching which means that the Round Rock ISD will shut down Micky Krebsbach for 2-4 weeks so they can clean the pool, paint the locker room floors, and some other stuff that never seems to include replacing old poorly functioning electrical outlets, installing more storage space, or much at all that directly helps us as an aquatics program (one can be grateful and annoyed at the same time!). But, as usual, we’re not entirely certain when our eviction will take place let alone how long the repairs will take. Just get ready for the jaunt to the East Side: Lake Creek Pool! (And yes, of course we’re hoping the RRAC might be available).
JOs Meeting part Deux
We need to have another online meeting about JOs this summer. I’m going to pencil in on the calendar Friday, March 24 at 7:00 PM online. Let me know what you think. By the way, I created this cool flowchart to help anyone understand how we decide to go to California or Dallas. More links and details forthcoming.
Milestones
Welcome
It’s been a while since we updated the list of our newest members. Thanks to all of you for coming to us and welcome to AquaTex, Rein, Melia, Keegan, Remy, Noelle, Colton, Jake, Emeric, and Ethan, let alone the several who have given us a try but haven’t signed up yet. We hope they will.
Birthdays
And finally, some belated and some forthcoming birthday best wishes. Happy Birthday!
- Remy, 2/21
- Aaron B, 2/24
- Ilay, 2/28
- Elliott, 3/10
- JP, 3/24
- Molly, 3/28
See you on the deck.