The Annual Fund: Help NBA Swimmers Achieve Excellence

Today kicks off one of three fundraisers our team hosts every year.

We start with our Tuna Thon in the spring, which involves our swimmers raising money, swimming laps, and us hosting a mini get together at the pool for families to come down and hang out with the coaches and athletes.

Later in the year the masters part of our team, most specifically Coach Don and Board member Andrea Salmi, run the Angel Fund. This money goes towards scholarship needs like travel trips and training fees so we can ensure any kid that wants the North Bay experience can have it.

Our third and final fundraiser is the Annual Fund. What is it and what does the money go towards? Hopefully this email sheds light on that

December of 2022 at Junior Nationals we brought quite the team. 12 Tuna in total, 10 swimmers plus Don and I. The van we rented was tightly packed on the way to the airport. The third night of the meet was the 200 Free Relay, with Max Matthews, Marre Gattnar, Micah Sher, and Bryce Roberts. When Bryce finished the scoreboard read 1:20.96, just under an average of 20.25 per swimmer. It broke a team record and set a new Pac Swim record. The old record? North Bay Aquatics, March of 2022.

I knew the December 2022 record would be broken eventually, but I wasn’t ready to see that last week at winter juniors it was not only broken, but obliterated. 1:20.12. Almost a full second. Even worse, the team that broke it had nobody over the age of 16. More to come from that crew I am sure.

None of the boys from the December 2022 team know that record was broken. I’m sure they would care, but frankly they have all gone on to do things much, much, much more impressive than break that record.

Max is currently on the UCLA water polo team. They just won NCAAs a few weeks ago. He would pop in and out of North Bay to train for polo, but when he made juniors was all about going down there with us to score some points. Loved the way he showed up to workouts, no frills, just wanted to get some work in and get faster.

Marre is a freshman at Harvard. He was back home for Thanksgiving, defended his 25 Free World Champ title, and was telling us about his ankle injury at school. Marre goes with ankle injuries like a duck to water, though when he is in California, it is from surfing. Boston it happens in the weight room on box jumps. He was national champ in the 50 freestyle last year, North Bay’s second ever National Champion.

Micah is a sophomore at Bowdoin, was on some relays at NCAAs last year. He also had a lead role in a play at school recently and was noticed by a talent scout who is talking about a movie this spring he wants Micah to be in. Problem is it gets in the way of NCAA prep, so Micah is scheming how to make both work. Those of you that know Micah will find nothing about that surprising.

Bryce is at MIT, loves the team, was an NCAA finalist last year and won his conferences freshman of the year last year. He was back home last summer and I never saw Bryce not smiling. Bryce is a methodical kid, especially when it comes to swimming, so to see him relaxed and just enjoying being in the water getting some work in was memorable. Last I heard he was in a competition building a robot for a poker tournament. Like I said, methodical kid at a school whose mascot is “The Engineer”

Would those boys be off to great things without North Bay? I’m sure of it. Would those boys be where they are without North Bay? I would be lying if I said yes to that.

I plan on this team breaking many more Pac Swim Relay Records in the coming years, but even better we plan on being a part of more stories like the ones above.

So, back to the original question. What does this money go towards? I could go on about pool and weight room costs, the size of our team is small but mighty, with lofty goals, all true, but the reality is there is so much more.

It goes to supporting more of those stories. Supporting our team, community, coaches, and swimmers. In short, continue supporting our mission statement:

North Bay Aquatics Coaches Character & Excellence through competitive Swimming.

Thank you for the support of our program, coaches, and one of my favorite Don quotes, “This community carefully disguised as a swim team.”