It's been a wild ride so far...

To begin, let me give you a short summation of our travels yesterday. We boarded the plane in Milwaukee at around 5pm. And this was no ordinary plane, this was a tiny jet with two seats on either side, with hardly any leg room or shoulder room. With all this cramped space Amanda was so lucky to be squished against the window because of the obese woman sitting next to her. This woman not only took up the entire Row 7 seat C, but about a third of Amanda's row 7 seat D...thank goodness it was only a flight from Milwaukee to Chicago.

Once we switched flights in Chicago , we were headed to our destination of Knoxville. Upon landing, we went to gather our luggage. Everyone's luggage was claimed except for Ben's. Turns out it was still in Chicago and United said it would be coming on the 9pm flight and arriving around 11:30pm to our hotel, which it never did. (It was Rhode Island this morning). The coaches each have a rental car: Ben and Andrew with mini-vans/soccer mom cars/ grocery getters, while Beth was lucky to have the Kia Soul, or the hamster mobile (you know the commercial?).http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ-CDE_r_wg

Anyway we arrived at our hotel to check in, however things did not go accordingly. The hotel didn't have us arriving until the next day, and there was no way they could accommodate our 15 person group with only 2 open rooms. So they paid for us to stay at the Hilton for the night. Below is a little video to capture the moment. Enjoy!

Get Ready for some Tall Tales from Knoxville....

Welcome to the Lady Reds National Team's Blog for 2011. From left to right we have: Michelle Pelka, Jensena Paul, Kayla Orendorff, Amanda croix, Natalia Bialecka, Amy Mueller, and Ember McCoy.

Get ready for some fun!

Fall Swimming Lessons

There will be two sessions of swimming lessons this fall. Registration for both sessions will open at 9 am on Wednesday, September 1st. The dates for the first session are September 13th-30th, with the option of Mon/Wed or Tue/Thur lessons. All lessons are half hour sessions, running from 6-7:30 pm. The second session will run from Oct 4th-21st. If you have any questions, please email Beth at bdelarosby@carthage.edu

Master's Swimming

Master's swimming will resume at Carthage on Wednesday, September 15th. Practices will be held every Monday and Wednesday from 6:15-7:45 pm. If you are interested in joining please contact Stacey Kiefer at stacey@kiefer.com or 847-872-8866 x622

Boxing + Swimming= Boxmming....or a lot of laughs

This is not a reunion. It’s a swimming competition!

Bring on the storm....

Well it’s been a few months since the last blog, but We’ve come a long way since our fabulous trip to Fort Lauderdale. We had a great month of training in January and definitely benefited from the whole J-Term experience. With only taking one class everyday, the Lady Reds surely got their napping time in between homework and practices. But, not only did the Lady Reds enjoy the much-needed downtime during January, but they also started to really prepare and pump themselves up for the CCIW Championships.

After losing and coming in second by a small 17 points last year, the Lady Reds were determined to show how bad they wanted the title this year. The conference shirts said it all: “Bring on the storm”. Quite frankly the girls were ready to face anything! After the 3 days of prelims on finals, it was bittersweet ending. The Lady Reds came up short second place by a measly 3 points. Even though we didn’t win the Conference title, the ladies put together a bouquet of many victories and accomplishments. There were many personal bests, broken school, meet, and pool records; B cuts, A cuts, CCIW Swimmer of the Meet and Year Awards, and not to mention a Coach of the Year Award as well just to name a few.

With all these accomplishments we ended up qualifying two relays as well as two individuals for the NCCA Swimming Championships, which are in one week from today! Last year, the Lady Reds finished ninth overall in Division III! We hope to have repeated successful performances again this year. We will continue to keep you updated while in Minnesota. Look forward to the awesome blogs to come in the next week!