Good Morning Frog Families,

We hope this note finds you well. Kay and I have had some long discussions over the last few weeks regarding swim team this year, and we have made the decision not to move forward with having a Frogs Swim Team. With Oldham County returning to LSA (many of their swimmers came over to FS during their hiatus), coupled with the new pool ownership, we have lost a significant amount of swimmers. We have been struggling to get the right number of swimmers since COVID and each year it’s become more and more difficult. Last summer we had this same conversation and decided that if we could get 50 swimmers, we could manage. We got 50 and barely survived. We struggled every week to get volunteers and often “ad libbed” in order to make sure necessary spots were filled. Many families had to have two parents volunteer just so we could hold the meet. We had kids in events where we knew they didn’t have legal strokes, just to make sure we had some Frogs swimming. That swimmer would end up getting disqualified which begins to break confidence. We had relays that could not swim due to swimmers not coming to meets when they signed up and we didn’t have the numbers for replacements.

I could go on, but the bottom line is that at some point the you have more bad weeks than good weeks. When you get to that point, you have to do what’s best for the team and for the league. We are well past that point. Forest Springs needs to be able to compete with the other teams in our division. We need to be able to supply volunteers at swim meets and not rely on other teams for starters and computer people. We need to be a functional team and we believe that we have reached a point we were aren’t able to keep up with the rest.

We truly believe that once the transition to HOA owning and running the pool gets to a comfortable place and are settled into a routine that there could be room for a swim team again. If that’s the case, we will need more people on the board, more kids ready to swim, and plenty of parents willing to volunteer. Swim teams take a lot of work and Kay and I will always be here to support and help get a new and improved Frogs ready to swim.

We hope you can understand how we came to this decision. Both of us have children that have been part of the Frogs for over a decade, so please trust us when we say this decision was not made lightly.  

Thank you for understanding and as always, thank you for supporting us the last 4 years.  

Emily Robinson and Kay Staebler