FREEPORT — The Casco Bay YMCA Stripers swim team is scheduled to start its 14th season on Sept. 24.
This will be the 10th season with Dan St. Pierre as the head coach.
“Thus the slogan, ‘A Decade With Dan’ is born,” said St. Pierre. “I am very proud of where this team has come from since I started here in September of 2003. My first year here there we 60 swimmers on the team. The spring before I took over the team finished 14th out of 16 teams in the YMCA League.
“Since then, the lowest the team has finished was 10th and last year was the highest with a sixth-place finish out of the 16 teams.”
The Stripers also won fourage group championships in 2008; they won the 11-12 boys age group championship; in 2010 they won the 8-and-under girls championship; and in 2012 they won the 8-and-under and the 9-10 girls championship.
“This year we need to break the jinx of not winning one in an odd year.” Says coach St. Pierre. “I think our best shot just may be in the 13- and 14- year-old boys age group, but you can never rule out the 8- and-under girls that always seems to have a large number of athletes.”
In the past, the team numbers have reached as high as 140 between the ages of 7 and 18, or a senior in high school.
The last two years the numbers have dropped, but St. Pierre is not worried because of the “Olympic Spike” in the swimming world.
“Every four years we get two free weeks of promotion of our sport. Every child wants to come out and swim, like the Olympians. So enrollment goes up, then slides down for the next three years. This year the Stripers expect to be over 140 swimmers strong.
“A large part of the success of our team can be attributed to our assistant coaching staff. I feel I have the best assistant coaches around.”
Tom Green has been with the program for eight years and has many years experience as a head coach, as well as an assistant coach for YMCA teams, club teams and high school teams.
Pattie Drew also has 11 years experience as a head coach for the Seacoast Swim Club in Cumberland and worked for Fluid Mechanics before that.
“I was lucky, she had her first child and stopped working in Cumberland to be a stay-at-home mom,” said St. Pierre. “As her son got older, she started to bring him to the Casco Bay YMCA to use the warm pool to get him in the water.
“She happened to be looking for an excuse to get out of the house a few hours a week, and, wow, what an addition to our coaching staff.”
Mary Estabrook does not have any previous experience as a coach, but has been working with the program for three years.
“Her claim to fame is in the summer of 2011 she competed at a meet in Montreal and missed the world record for the short course 50-meter butterfly by .04 seconds,” lauded St. Pierre.
The Casco Bay YMCA Stripers offer a two week free trial, but preregistration is required.
Registration is ongoing at the Casco Bay YMCA by either stopping in at the front desk or by going online at www.cumberlandcuntyymca.org
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