Early this year we learned that the City of Piedmont took over management of the Piedmont Swim Club (and it's pool of course) under the insistance of securing "hazardous materials insurance."

Tim Rood, the former swim club president and an urban planner, has announced his is running for City Council. We don't know Tim but we certainly like his platform as described in the Piedmont Patch ("robust planning process" and facilitating "robust public dialogue.") Read more »

Swimmers need to be experts at just "hanging out." At swim meets, there is a lot of time to burn in between events and kids need a good way to pass the downtime.

When I was a swimmer in the 1970's, hanging out between events was my favorite part about swimming in general. I was the guy with the jambox playing all the music the parents hated…. Rush, Zeppelin, Skynyrd, and so forth. That kept our hangout area mostly kids-only. Pretty fun. Read more »

A Fundamentals of Water Polo camp for 12-and-under kids has just begun in Alameda and is open to newcomers.

Classes are from noon to 1pm on Monday/Wednesday/Friday at the Harbor Bay Club and each session is 2 weeks (6 classes.) Members and nonmembers are welcome but as you might suspect.... campers should already be decent swimmers. Read more »

Alameda Islander and AHS swimmer Ben Krause competed against some of the best swimmers in the world at last weekend's Grand Prix in Santa Clara.

Krause qualified in 3 events: 400 meter free (4:22.04), 400 meter IM (4:54.07), and 200 meter fly (2:10.66.) These were not his best times but the Grand Prix didn't line up with his training schedule. We might see him in the Grand Prix finals one of these days though.

It's a small venue so it must have been very exciting to see so many Olympians compete up close.

Here is a video of the 200 meter fly finals: Read more »