The Southeastern LSC hosted a leadership summit for 27 athletes this weekend in Huntsville. Sponsored by the LSC Board of Directors, the conference was run entirely by our athlete representatives and other youth facilitators over the two day format.

We started the event by exploring Don Lowry’s True Colors leadership style test and working through each participant's strengths and weaknesses. After we broke for the day, we headed to Dave and Buster’s for some food, community and high energy entertainment.

Day 2 was centered around LSC Governance, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Athlete participation at the LSC level. We finished the conference with a panel discussion which offered insight from two NCAA athletes and a current SES Coach.

Excel Aquatics was a huge presence as two facilitators (Zoe Summar and Nicole Caruso) and two participants (Matthew Amodio and Sammy Ibrahim) and a coach (Benji) were all in attendance. While this was the first SES leadership summit that was held in person, we are confident that it will grow in the immediate future as it is actively fostering the next generation of leaders in our conference!

Every year, there are athlete representative seats that open up so if you have a swimmer who would like to consider serving within the Southeastern LSC, please contact Coach Benji for more information.

This week marked the beginning of Excel Aquatic's outreach lesson program. We've partnered with FrankTown Open Hearts, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving the lives of Franklin residents through mentorship programs, to teach swim lessons to both elementary and middles school aged children. The lessons are being taught entirely through volunteer efforts of our own swimmers and staff members.

While the children that we serve vary in abilities, our main goal is drown-proofing and overall water safety. Beyond that however, many of our new friends have begun to successfully use kick-boards and fins, learned how to streamline and some are breathing to the side on freestyle.

"Watching these huge smiles on little faces made my whole week!" said Kacey McDonough, one of our instructors who swims in the Senior group at Brentwood. "It's been fun to see their excitement as they discover an activity that has been such a huge part of our lives too."
The lessons run through Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week from 10:40-11:20 and 1:20-2:00. If you would like to join us in sharing our sport with a new generation of enthusiasts (and they are very enthusiastic) please feel free to contact Coaches Benji, or Daun to sign up.