Advertisement

GCSTO Chosen As Local Partner in USA Swimming's Make a Splash Campaign

Make a Splash is a national child-focused water safety initiative created by the USA Swimming Foundation. It works by aligning the nation’s top learn-to-swim resources in an effort to save lives. Make a Splash educates parents through a national awareness campaign, saves lives by joining forces with grassroots learn-to-swim programs and reaches thousands of children through wide-reaching in-school materials. CLICK HERE to read more about how Make a Splash helps our communities! 

GCSTO Achieves Level 3 Status in USA Swimming's Club Recognition Program
GCSTO was recently achieved Level 3 in USA Swimming's Club Recognition Program for leadership and club development. To find out more about this program please CLICK HERE.  We want to thank all of the coaches, parents and athletes for their help in this achievement and we look forward to working on qualifying for the final level in the prestigious program. 

Spring Team Waiting List Started
 We are now accepting names for spring swimming and will place these athletes on a waiting list for that spring session. If you would like to secure a spot for tryouts for spring swimming with GCSTO please contact coach Nye at stevenye@sbcglobal.net with your name, your athlete's name, age, telephone number, email address and any other information that you feel pertinent. THANKS!  

  GCSTO Selected as Winner of NICKELODEON'S PARENTS' PICK AWARD
GCSTO's Swim School was recently named the winner of this award as the best in our class in the central Ohio area. You can go to PARENTSSPICK and see more on this and other award categories. Note that we are honored to have received this award and will continue to strive to make our programming first class and programming of which you are proud to be a part! Creating the Difference!

                                                                                                        
The Club Excellence Program: This program deals with the performance levels of the older athletes on the team in comparison to the rest of the nation. Of the thousands of clubs in USA Swimming, only 200 clubs were screened for such recognition. GCSTO was first recognized in 2007 as a Bronze Medal Club in USA Swimming, repeated in 2008 and has qualified, once again, in 2009. Click on the icon for more information about this program from USA Swimming.

          
USA Swimming’s Club Recognition Program:We have now qualified for level 3 in USA Swimming's Club Recognition Program! Recognition at this level deals with club administration and organization and it is no easy task to achieve. Congrats to all of our swimmers and coaches on this achievement. CLICK HERE for more information about this program from USA Swimming. 

Toyota Virtual Club Championships:This system of ranking the thousands of clubs in USA Swimming is based on overall team performance in relation to the rest of the nation. Last year GCSTO made the top 100 on this list (as 100th) with 157,104 points. This year, the team is sitting at 87th with 164,514 points.  Click on the icon for more information about this program from USA Swimming.

    The state champs drop their Hillshire Farms ad.

Announcements  

GCSTO Last Ditch Meet - Friday & Saturday Events A GO For Feb. 12 & 13

We will be holding the Friday events of our Last Ditch Meet that was canceled due to snow on Feb. 5 on THIS FRIDAY, February 12 at Columbus Academy. Warmup times will remain the same. We will hold Saturday's, Feb. 6's canceled events at St. Charles this Saturday, February 13 to get those events in for everyone. Please contact entry chair, Brian Tann at irelander1848@gmail.com for more information. New entries are being accepted as long as it does not put us over our 4 hour time limit. All entries will be accepted through Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. and we will reseed the meet from there.   
Participants should not try to contact us directly about the meet as we simply will not be able to answer individual questions as we'll be spending all of our time working on meet preparation or adjustments.. Your clubs will be contacted and then will contact you. Anything that they receive will also be placed right here so keep an eye out if you would. THANKS! 

Spring/Summer Team Information Is Almost Complete
You can click on our "Swim Team Information" tab on the left to see our updated spring/summer practice schedule now! New swimmer application accpetance starts February 15, 2010.
 
Spring/Summer Stroke Camp Registrations Are Open
On line registrations are now open for our spring and summer stroke camps. Simply click on the tab there on the left of this page entitled "Stroke Camp Information" to see this camp information and to register.  

Spring Life Guard Courses Available
Please click on our "Certification Course" tab to the left to get this spring's LG course information. We have our first class set up now and will be finalizing the dates and times for our second class shortly.

Upper Arlington To Host FITTER & FASTER TOUR

On Saturday, April 10, 2010, Arluck Promotions will bring their nationwide “Fitter and Faster Tour" to Columbus. Upper Arlington High school will be the site of this exciting opportunity for your swimmers to meet, interact and swim with two-time Olympic Gold Medalist Mark Gangloff, Olympic Medalist and 2009 NCAA Woman of the Year, Lacey Nymeyer and World University Games triple gold medalist and GCSTO ALUM, ADAM RITTER. During each of the separate 3 hour sessions, swimmers will have the chance to learn from the best, hear their stories, hold their medals, and of course RACE the Olympians. The athletes will also take pictures with the participants and sign autographs! All participants receive a gift bag with a Speedo t-shirt, event program, TYR swim cap, and samples from great companies like Powerbar and Chocolate #9! Parents and supporters are also encouraged to attend for free with their swimmers participation. Visit www.swimchampions.com for more information. There are only 75 spots per session and will be filled on a first come first served basis. Swimmers must register directly with www.swimchampions.com.

New Entry Acceptance System Instituted
Please note that due to the recent sizes of all of the central Ohio swimming meets we expect this meet (and quite possibly all of our winter meets) to close out, as well. As such, we are now instituting an entry acceptance power point system for all GCSTO Meets. Instead of simply accepting entries on a first-come-first-serve basis whereby someone who could have been coming to our meets for decades could possibly lose their spot in our meet simply due to their entries arriving to us 1 day later than someone else's, we will begin to accept entries into our future meets based on this power point system. This system will award points to teams based on the history of their past attendance at our meets. As a result, those who have demonstrated the most consistent attendance over the past will end up with the greatest number of points and will be at the top of the list for acceptance into our meets. We do not feel it wise, nor fair, to allow simple chance or simple "timing" to override the years of loyalty that we have seen from these teams thus the reason for the institution of this system. Once those teams are taken care of who have been coming to these meets consistently in the past it will be the other central Ohio teams that are taken care of next. Everyone is encouraged to get their entries in early for our remaining meets regardless. Here is that list of acceptance based entirely upon attendances of our meets in the past:

Gold Level Acceptance (first group of teams to be accepted)
Blaze
DCST
Upper Arlington
WAC
WOR

Silver Level Acceptance (second group of teams to be accepted)
Bobcat
Buckeye
Columbus Hilltop Y
Delaware
Liberty Township
New Albany

Bronze Level(third group of teams to be accepted)
All other central Ohio teams. 
 
Thanks! 

USADA Research Study

The US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in partnership with Discovery Education has requested our sport’s participation in a research project. Your thoughts and views are critical to this study. The aim of this USADA project is to enhance their education program by conducting comprehensive research that determines society’s view on the impact of sport. A key objective of this research will be to capture sport’s impact in particular on youth participation and activities, and youth attitudes and values. Please CLICK HERE to find out more about this.

Keeping Pool's Clean
We'd like our athletes to read a good article on how they can help to keep our pools clean and sanitary AND how they can help with the air quality at each and every one of our pools! Please CLICK HERE to read this important article.

GCSTO's Home School Program Started October 5, 2009
  If you are home schooled and are looking for a daytime swim team program please contact coach Brian Tann at 614- 312-8323 orirelander1848@gmail.com to get more information on our program.CLICK HERE for an informational brochure and to CLICK HERE for an application on the program.


Team Outfitting Information
Here's our our team outfitting information and all!

Team Outfitting Picture Page      Team Outfitting Order Form