Hello Johnnie Swim and Dive fans and alumni, I hope you are all doing well! The season has started and we are well into our training for the 2024-2025 season. The guys are working hard and preparing for our first meet on October 18th against University of Minnesota Morris. This coming weekend (Friday Oct 11 and Saturday Oct 12) is the annual Red vs. Blue Intersquad meet. The CSB and SJU teams are divided into two, a red team and a blue team; this is always a close and fun meet, if you are in the area and would like to come and cheer on the teams the meet starts at 5:00 PM on Friday, and 11:00 AM on Saturday.
I would like to thank all the alumni who came to the annual gathering/meet. It’s always great to see so many former swimmers and divers back in Collegeville. We had a great brunch at the reef and then a fun swim and dive meet, where surprisingly the won again in convincing fashion! 😊 After the meet we had a great gathering at Bad Habit Brewing.
The weekend after the alumni meet we had another great get together as Luke Vestrum was inducted into the J-Club Hall of Honor. Another great showing of Luke’s family and former swimmers came to celebrate over that weekend as well! We are so proud of Luke and all he has done for Saint Johns swimming and diving! A big congratulations to Luke for his amazing accomplishments as a Johnnie swimmer and alum!
After this weekend’s alumni meet we begin our actual competition with Minnesota Morris. They are a new team (started in 2022) and will be a good warmup for the guys as they then get into the meat of our conference schedule. We will follow up UMM with Macalester in St. Paul, St. Olaf (going to be a tough meet) in Collegeville, and Hamline in St. Paul.
A new tradition that I would like to start this year is having alumni come to our home meets to be an honorary captain for the meet. This would entail coming to the meet and giving a “pump-up” speech just prior to the start of the meet. This is a great way for alumni to connect with our current team, and to give new energy and excitement to our pre-meet talks. Our home meets are the following dates:
vs. UMM Saturday, October 19th @ 1:00 PM
vs. St. Olaf Saturday, November 1st @ 1:00 PM
vs. St. Cloud State, Saturday, January 18th @ 1:00 PM
vs. Gustavus, Saturday February 1st @ 1:00 PM
If you would be interested and available for any of these weekends we would love to connect with you. You can reach me at bgill@csbsju.edu or call or text 920-277-6571.
In the meantime, enjoy the beautiful fall weather, and we look forward to seeing you at the pool soon!