A thank you from Mission Viejo

Dear SCS and Board of Directors,

I'm writing to bring the news, we all were hoping wouldn’t come, but came. The Orange County Health Authority and the City of Mission Viejo has made the decision to cancel all events that are over 250 people.

 I would like to put out that Mission Viejo Nadadores, as well as Rose Bowl Aquatics, were proud to host this year’s Spring Junior Olympics. With speaking with Rose Bowl Aquatics, they put MONTHS of work into the meet and we had less than 40 hours. Both facilities and teams were willing and to put together structurally, an incredible swim meet and experience for all of our Southern California swimmers. So, from our hearts, thank you for giving us this opportunity to host and we hope we did this meet proud.

I would like to address what Mission witnessed in the last 40 hours. It’s been so overwhelming and has moved me multiple times to tears. Multiple teams came forward to offer up help in putting this meet together. We had visiting teams bring tremendous amounts of food for hospitality with assurances of more coming, signups on our website for jobs (I.e. marshaling, head timing, runners) and we had teams drop off canopies for admin and coaches’ row. We had offers of help in setup, with one family from a neighboring team helping for 6 hours in setting up of our facility for this meet. The amount of “Thank yous” and gratitude from people dropping off team tents was unending throughout the day and well into the night, last night. We had vendors and restaurants offering up food and asking for help with volunteering. It was truly amazing!

Regardless of our differences, this community pulled together and had an amazing outpouring of love and support to host a meet for the kids of Southern California Swimming. We don’t regret putting our facility out there for them and we’d do it again to provide an equal opportunity for all of our athletes and provide a place for awesome racing! We were so proud of the way everyone pitched in and helped!

Thank you for the opportunity and good luck out there!

Mission Viejo Nadadores