POOL CUES - View Ridge Swim and Tennis Club

View Ridge Swim &Tennis Club
August, 2009
POOL CUES
What a Day!!
About every 14 years we are asked to host the All City
Championships for the Seattle Summer Swim League. This summer
we celebrated the 50th year of our club's involvement in
this group of summer pools. This event is enormous and a great
challenge. Around 2,000 swimmers, parents, grandparents, and
other fans spend a few hours swimming and yelling. This year
we were able to provide a larger pool and gave two more swimmers
and relays a chance to participate. This also increased the
size and needs of the crowd. (To see photos of this event and to
get an idea of it's scope, go to www.vrstc.org and click on the
links to Steve Moss' and Leo Santiago's efforts at capturing the
day.)
By all accounts we did a spectacular job! Our goal from the
start was to make it a great meet, give spectators a chance to see
their kids, and get kids closer to the action. Our beautiful facility
helped us meet our goals - for many All City Meets the kids end
up a long way from the pool, usually on the tennis courts.
But none of this would have happened without the incredible
efforts of many, many members! First to congratulate is
Rachel who headed up the planning. Her vision gave us all the
direction we needed. You might not know that Rachel has also
served as league president for many years and grew up as a
View Ridge swim team member. Summer swimming is part of
who she is and you could tell this in how she helped us create a
memory for so many kids and their families.
Thanks also to Gail Moss for her help, especially in organizing
the meet and running the concessions. There were a lot of
hungry people and she and her staff took good care of them!
Hi,
I just wanted to commend your club on
how well you ran the All-City meet on Tuesday.
You have a beautiful venue and your new
facility is perfect to host this caliber of meet. I
appreciate all the volunteers who helped run the
meet smoothly. We hosted All-City in the summer
of 2006, and believe me, it takes a village to
pull off this size meet with close to 1000-1200
combined athletes/coaches/spectators. I was
especially impressed with how well the parking
was managed, from dropping swimmers off in
front of your club to directing us to across the
street into the bigger parking lot.
Your pool deck space and seating was
ample and I loved how you had all the swimmers
on the grass in the shade. It made for a
memorable swim meet with very fast times.
The pool temperature felt perfect, as I dipped
my foot into the deep end during warm-ups. I
felt everyone who volunteered did their job and
did it well. The shaved ice was awesome!
Thanks, again, for hosting a fantastic
All-City. It will be one that I will remember
forever. My daughter swam great and she
went out with a bang, since this was her last
All-City.
Please share this with your other volunteers
who helped run a great All-City!
Kim Gansneder, parent
Olympic View Swim Club
A vision is made real by the hard work of many people.
Jeanette Whiting took on the job of volunteer coordinator - and coordinate she did! We will never forget her in
the middle of 77th directing visitors to drop off points and parking - many from other clubs said they loved the
way they were greeted and made comfortable.
We can't list everyone who helped out. The days became so fast paced that much became a blur. We'll list
a few: our All City Committee who helped with the overall planning, the View Ridge Staff members for their
for many crucial roles, Jeff Grose for coordinating the meet officials, Alan Humphrey for creating our meet web
continued inside

Showers - Please Watch the Water
Our campaign to reduce the length
of showers is moving in the right direction.
Members report less cases of
kids camping out under the shower
heads. Parents seems to be more aware where
their kids are when they are at the pool. Haven't seen
Billy for a while Maybe check the shower. We'll continue
this effort next season.
Although not as bad as the beginning of the summer,
we still have a few boys who not only stay in the
shower and waste water. They play with the soap.
There have been days when we've had to fill up the
dispensers with a gallon of soap. Almost every time
we hose the dressing room, we have to wash down
the wall opposite the showers to get read of the soap
that's been thrown. We're sure this problem only involves
a handful of boys. To these boys - please stop.
Be a bit more respectful. Avoid a suspension and find
some other way to have fun at the pool.
POOL CUES
View Ridge
Swim & Tennis Club
5815 N.E. 77th
P.O. Box 51079
Seattle, Washington 98115
524-3500
vrstc@vrstc.org
www.vrstc.org
Board of Trustees
Mary Ruckelshaus.................... President ................................... 528-9879
John West................................. Vice President............................ 525-2839
Eric Zimbelman......................... Past President............................ 523-5619
Richard Pelly............................. Tennis......................................... 522-4953
Gail Alverson............................. Social.......................................... 524-6254
Heather Curtis........................... Secretary.................................... 361-0294
Richard Pulkrabek.................... Grounds...................................... 522-6491
Jane Fields............................... Swim Team................................. 524-7368
Drew Kelly................................. Treasurer.................................... 525-0542
Joel Delman.............................. Membership................................ 525-2528
For billing inquiries.................... Laura Finlon................................ 985-7880
Manager
Composting Pilot
We have 4 cubic yards of garbage and 4 cubic
yards of recycling hauled away from our facility
each week. Some members have wondered about
composting. We don't have the dumpster space for
a far-reaching effort and most serious composting
requires a great deal of supervision - but we can take
some small steps.
We will be dedicating the garbage can under the
clock by the bleachers as a composting bin. It will
be lined with the required compostable liner. Please
only put compostable material in this bin.
In addition if you want to compost those pizza
boxes - and how we love our pizza at the pool - remove
the liners, collapse the boxes, and place behind
this garbage can. We'll take these to the composting
tote each morning. (Remember, pizza boxes can't
be recycled and take up a lot of space in the regular
garbage.)
We'll see how this pilot goes and determine if we
want to keep it or increase it in the future.
Questions and concerns about your bills
can be sent to Laura, our bookkeeper extraordinaire,
at:
vrstc_lf@comcast.net
Peter Klein
Tom Evans Awards
The Tom Evans Award is given to a member
of the club to acknowledge his or her extraordinary
contributions. Clubs like ours just
couldn't exist without the effort and talents of
the members.
This year we were lucky to have two recipients,
Susan Lansverk and Eric Zimbelman.
Susan served on the Board through the
remodel, but continue to contribute when
her time was officially up. She was one of the
architects of the financing plan that made our
remodel possible - serving as our CFO at a
crucial time.
We have also been lucky to have a "corporate
attorney." Eric also was a long-time Board
member - several years as president - but was
still with us when his "official" time was up. He
helped steer us through the legal issues with
the remodel and recently is involved in working
with the developers north of the parking
lot.
Thanks Susan and Eric for all you've done
and continue to do.

site, and all the other members who helped out.
from front
We rented quite a few bleachers for this event. They came in pieces. The rental company said to plan on
4-5 hours to assemble. They obviously didn't know about our members! We had them up in about 2 hours and
down after the meet in about half that time. Bleacher volunteers - you were awesome!
We've had many people from other clubs say, "Why don't you just host it every year." Besides the obvious
(it's a lot of work) - these comments kind of miss the point. All clubs need to go through these experiences from
time to time. Our club is not buildings, tennis courts, and pool. It's a collection of people creating a special
place for their families. Working together on a project like the All City Meet brings us closer together and creates
memories to share for years to come.
Again, thanks to everyone who made this a very special day!
September
Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
1
Early
Morning
Swim
6:00 am -
8:00 am
Open Swim
12:00 pm -
9:00 pm
2
Early
Morning
Swim
6:00 am -
8:00 am
Open Swim
12:00 pm -
9:00 pm
3
Early
Morning
Swim
6:00 am -
8:00 am
Open Swim
12:00 pm -
4:00 pm
Water Polo
Pool Closes
@ 4:00 pm
4
Early
Morning
Swim
6:00 am -
8:00 am
(last day)
Open Swim
12:00 pm -
9:00 pm
5
Open Swim
10:00 pm -
9:00 pm
6
Open Swim
10:00 pm -
9:00 pm
7
10:00-7:00
Labor Day
No Parties
8
4:00-7:00
No Parties
9
4:00-7:00
No Parties
10
4:00-7:00
No Parties
11
4:00 - 8:00
No Parties
12
10:00 - 8:00
No Guests
13
10:00 - 6:00
No Guests
Last Day
How do we decide on the closing date
We often get asked about the closing date of the pool. Why can't it stay open longer to take advantage of the typical
nice Seattle fall
The closing date is largely a function of staff availability. As older staff members go off to college, more and more
responsibility is shifted to high school aged kids whose hours are restricted by state laws concerning student workers.
Many of our high school kids are also involved in after school sports. The new pool takes a lot of guards - fitting all the
puzzle pieces together comes increasingly impossible.
It is also difficult to keep the pool in top shape when no one is there during the day. Peter cleans the dressing rooms
and checks the chlorine on the way to his teaching job, but there is no one there to monitor chemicals for most of the day.
If a tank runs out and we open at 3:00 - we've got problems.
Pool usage also naturally drops off when schools begin and the evenings do get much colder. The increased cost of
heating the pool for fewer and fewer swimmers is also a factor in closing.
We know you love your pool, but all good things must end - but just for the season - we'll open again for another
great summer next May!