The MVN Awards Banquet will be held in March, 2010 (final date TBD). All athletes in the novice, 8&u, 10&u, and 11/12 will receive participation awards.  Beginning in 2010, the Mission Viejo Nadadores Swim Team will begin recognizing our athletes with the following awards.  

The Mission Viejo Nadadores athletes achieve many significant accomplishments during any given year.  This past year, for example, we had swimmers make the USA World Championships team, win a gold medal at the World University Games, set a new National High School record, and several who were named to the USA Swimming National Team and Youth Team.  Our age group swimmers won the Spring older JO’s as well as the Women’s, Men’s, and Combined team championships at Summer JO’s.  We had a number of swimmers who made the National Age Group Top Ten for their age and others who competed at the North American Challenge Cup, representing Southern California Swimming in an international all-star setting for age group swimmers.  We are proud of all of these accomplishments.  As coaches, however, we take the most pride in the steady improvement and development of each of our individual athletes.  We believe that the highest level of accomplishment in our sport is built on the training and skill acquisition achieved each and every day in practice.  Becoming a champion in our sport is not something that happens at a particular meet or in a particular race, but is the result of a process that takes place all year long in our daily training sessions.
In the past, at our awards banquet we have recognized our swimmers’ achievements in competition by awarding them for their individual level of accomplishment as reflected in the time standards they have achieved.  At this juncture in our team’s development, the coaching staff would like to establish several new awards that we hope will convey what we value by rewarding behavior and attitudes that we believe are conducive to creating champions.  We hope these new awards will not only recognize our swimmers’ accomplishments in the previous year, but motivate them to higher achievements in future years.
For our novice swimmers, Tansition, and all of our 12 and younger Nadadores, we will continue to award trophies to each active athlete, recognizing their highest time standard achievement in the preceding year.  In addition, we are adding three significant awards that our swimmers can strive to attain.  These will be based on their performance over the course of a year which begins just after the JO-Max Championships in February and concludes with the following year’s JO-Max Championships.

Mission Viejo Nadadores Commitment Award (Attendance)
Considering that consistency at practice is the key to achievement in competition, this award recognizes those who are most consistent in their attendance at practice.  This award is given by Division (except Novice and Transition) to all swimmers who achieve their Division’s Optimal Attendance percentage based on annual attendance of the available workouts for their respective group.  A swimmer’s division (and Optimal Attendance Percentage) is determined by their September assignment and they must be active team members for the entire swim year. (The Commitment Award period is abbreviated for the 2010 Spring Banquet and is November 1, 2009 to Spring JO-Max)  The Optimal Attendance percentages:
8-Under Division - 80%
10-Under Division - 85%
11-12 Division - 90%
13-14 Division - 93%
High School Division - 93%
National Team - 95%

Mission Viejo Nadadores Performance Award
This award recognizes the swimmer with the top all-around competitive performance for each age or age-group (except Novice and Transition).  For those swimmers 14 and younger, the girl and the boy achieving the highest IM Extreme score for their age will receive the Nadadores Performance Award.  (Scores are customized  for 8-under swimmers since USA Swimming does not rank 8-Under swimmers).  For the 15 and older swimmers in the High School Division, the award  will go to the boy and girl in each age group (15-16, 17- 18, 19-over) with the highest score based on FINA power points in their 6 best events. 

Mission Viejo Nadadores Excellence Award
This award will go to the one swimmer in each Division (determined by their September assignment, except Novice and Transition) who best exemplifies the intent and spirit of the Mission Viejo Nadadores Mission Statement:
The Mission Viejo Nadadores program is dedicated to providing opportunity and encouragement for all of its swimmers to make an uncompromised commitment to the pursuit of excellence and, through the process of striving to be the best that they can be, to acquire life enhancing attributes such as integrity, discipline, teamwork and sportsmanship.

The coaching staff considers this to be an especially prestigious award, reflecting an athlete’s overall dedication, work ethic, teamwork, leadership, and integrity in practice and competition as well as in life beyond the pool.

We will also continue to recognize all team records, National Age Group Recognition Top 10 ranked swimmers, and graduating Seniors.