THE LEADOFF LEG
The Newsletter of St. Andrew’s Aquatics
July, 2024
I hope this newsletter finds you well amidst a summer full of family, fun, and restoration. For some time, I have wanted to get into the storage closets at the Genereaux Aquatic Center and begin to recycle, upcycle, and remove the items we are no longer using or those that have, frankly, stopped working. In doing so, I came across something I did not expect to find - the season-by-season records kept by the first swim coach in St. Andrew’s history, Coach Bill Wallace. I have greatly enjoyed culling through these records and turning them into PDFs, in order to allow for us to recount Saints Swimming from the very beginning. In the words of Coach Wallace, “the objective of this newsletter is to inform parents, alumni, trustees and friends of St. Andrew’s about what is happening in aquatics here at school.”
Coach Wallace wisely stated, in his first newsletter, that “goal-setting, skill improvement, personal accountability, tradition, balancing success and failure, conflict resolution and competitiveness are essential objectives... for these young student-athletes to learn.” There is no better time to sit back in awe of all these lessons, commitments and sacrifices at their best as we prepare to watch the world’s most accomplished athletes put their hearts on the line in graceful competition during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Every athlete we watch began somewhere - not unlike the Genereaux Aquatic Center at St. Andrew’s. Each athlete’s story begins with one decision they made, which took them one step closer to becoming the person we will see in the coming days. That first decision led to another, and then another, and another. We intuitively know there were struggles on each path - which makes it that much more inspiring to see fellow human-beings who model the capacity to fight through failure and adversity and, in most cases, do so with humility.
This season, we hope to build on the history of St. Andrew’s Aquatics programs that have come before us and to infuse everything we do with the lessons we can learn from these Olympic athletes. We believe that by adhering to a set of shared values, we can be better teammates and, therefore, rise to become the best possible team on the pool deck. By caring, being competitive, remaining committed, exercising camaraderie, and being capable of telling our teammates anything, we will come as close to being as perfect as a team can be - recognizing that individuals will make mistakes and need support along the way. These bedrock principles will define us and how we approach each season, each meet, and each practice.
Look forward to more editions of the Leadoff Leg in the coming months!
Sincerely,
Gregory M. Guldin
Head Coach, St. Andrew’s Aquatics
