We are inching closer towards the fall swim season and the Husky Invitational. The Foundation has been working diligently to put together a quality meet, generate club and NCAA participant commitments, and solicit sponsorships to help cover the cost of running the meet.  We will soon be calling on alumni and supporters to help fill volunteer positions for the meet, so please be willing to donate a few hours of your time to help us put together a top-notch event.

For meet information, please visit our Husky Invite page.  If you are a club or NCAA team and would like to participate, please touch base with the Foundation (contact info on the meet page).

Sponsorship opportunities are still available–we will need your financial support to help us put this meet together.  If you or your business is interested in helping, please contact Cam Gravrock.

Thanks for your continued support!

Go Dawgs!

The Husky Swimming Foundation would like to update everyone that preparations for the resurrection of the Husky Inviational are well underway. There is a lot of interest generating from both age group and college teams from around the country and we hope to have several high profile swimmers competing as well. The dates of the meet are December 2nd through the 5th and will be held at the King County Aquatic Center in the same prelim/final format as always (1,000yd timed finals on Thursday).

We do need your help to make this event a huge success. The Husky Swimming Foundation is looking for commitments from three levels of Sponsors.

1. Gold Medal Sponsors – Presenting Sponsor (one available)
2. Silver Medal Sponsors (two remaining)
3. Bronze Medal Sponsors (multiple available)

Greetings, friends and supporters of Husky Swimming!

Alas! March has been a busy and productive month for the Husky Swimming Foundation! In particular, we have two exciting bits of news to share…

First, interest in resurrecting the Husky Invitational continues to grow. The foundation board has had several productive meetings concerning the meet; specifically we have focused our efforts on ways in which to make the meet special and exciting! A few of the key ideas that have emerged thus far are: attaching a clinic to the meet; having Olympian presence; additional sprint events; and of course, everyone’s favorite—the gala event!

As always, your ideas, energy and passion for Husky Swimming are most welcome. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to contact me at: drawzb@mhcc.edu as well as any of the other officers.

Equally as exciting, is the awarding of the spring 2011 Speedo Champions Series (Sr. Sectionals) to the Husky Swimming Foundation.  This meet, which includes swimmers from the twelve Northwest Local Swim Committees (LSC), represents an important milestone and significant opportunity to showcase our foundation and its mission—to support the reinstatement of men’s and women’s swimming at the University of Washington.

Additionally, these events will serve as the core drivers for our “Lost Dawg” campaign, as we will need dozens, if not hundreds, of volunteers to make these events successful —not to mention getting to visit with all of your old U of W friends!  Please help us by volunteering for these wonderful opportunities for the Husky Swimming Foundation.

More information on how you can help will be posted the website as it becomes available. We hope to hear from all of you!

Thank you for your continued support of Husky Swimming!

Be well,

Brandon Drawz “BD”

The Husky Swimming Foundation has confirmed the meet date for the 2010 edition of the Husky Invitational.  A Save-The-Date flyer will be coming your way via email or regular mail sometime soon and we have included a digital copy here:

HUSKY INVITE – SAVE-THE-DATE

In order to help cover the cost of the meet, we will be looking for Title and Event sponsors and will have sponsorship information available as soon as possible.  If you or your company is interested in becoming a sponsor of the Husky Invitational, please contact Cam Gravrock.

In other news, we have also begun developing plans for the Husky Swimming Foundation Gala.  Dates are yet to be confirmed, but the event is tentatively scheduled for Fall of 2011.  In preparation for this event, there will be an alumni gathering in November.  We’ll be sure to keep everyone posted once we have confirmed the date.

Thanks again for your continued support!

~The HSF Board

Happy New Year!  And with the new year, the Foundation board has some exciting news to share with the swimming community.  We have made a commitment to revive the Husky Invitational!  So mark your calendars:

This event is coming together quickly and we will be seeking help from our Husky Alumni and the swimming and local communities.  Serving as our Meet Director will be Jana Vincent, with honorary co-Directors, Coach Earl Ellis and JoAnn Brislin.  The Meet Referee will be former USA Swimming President, Ron Van Pool.

Please spread the word about this event.  If your team is interested in attending, please contact Jana.  Meet invitations will be formalized in the coming weeks.  If you or your company has interest in becoming a sponsor of this event, please contact Jana or Cam Gravrock.

In conjunction with the Husky Invitational, Cam Gravrock is chairing an effort to hold the First Annual Husky Swimming Foundation Gala.  Details regarding this event will be provided as they become available.

Finally, the University of Washington Athletic Department has kindly donated its remaining Husky Swimming apparel to the Foundation.  We are currently finalizing some donation thresholds that will enable you to get your hands on the final allotment (for now!) of t-shirts and parkas.  Once we have established the protocol for these items, we’ll let you know…

We’re looking forward to the coming months and hope you will find a way to include the Foundation in your charitable giving this year.  We’re counting on the support of alumni, the swimming community, and the local community to help us realize our goals.  With the team we have in place now, there is no ceiling to what we will be able to accomplish!

Happy Holidays from the Husky Swimming Foundation!  It has been quite a while since our last update, but the Foundation has definitely been working hard over the last few months.  Our focus continues to be our Lost Dawg Campaign as we attempt to rally all former Huskies behind our effort.  Again, please forward our information to any lost swimmers out there!

We have also taken an active role in Northwest Swimming.  Under the direction of Brandon Drawz, the Foundation has  bid to host the 2011 Sectional Championships in Federal Way–it looks as though it will be a successful bid and we are excited to have the opportunity to keep a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest swimming community.  Related to this event, the Foundation has also committed to resurrecting the Husky Invitational.  Former coaches Jana Vincent and Earl Ellis have expressed interest in ensuring we get this project up and running.  With the full support of the Foundation, we have no doubt that these meets will be a resounding success!

We have also reached out to a local organization which has been actively promoting the development of additional pools in the Seattle area.  In 2008, the Seattle City Council directed the Parks and Recreation Department to conduct a feasibility study for a new outdoor pool in Seattle.  The Foundation is circling the wagons and hoping to tap into this development as we progress towards our goals.

Our last piece of news is the introduction of our newest Board member, Cam Gravrock (Class of 1997)–we’re happy to have Cam join our team and look forward to working with him!

Again, Happy Holidays from the Husky Swimming Foundation!   Cheers!

We have received our Certificate of Exemption from the IRS and it can viewed by clicking HERE.  As promised, the exemption is retroactive to 2008, so all donations remitted to date and all those gifted in the future are tax deductible. 

At our last board meeting, we continued discussions about our Lost Dawg Campaign and we encourage you to spread the word to fellow Huskies and Husky Swimming supporters that we may be looking for them.  Please get your complete contact info to Jana or Rick.

We also formally adopted a mission statement and established the Foundation’s goals. They will be permanently listed on our website on our Missions & Goals page and we will also present them at the bottom of this post.  Our next schedule board meeting will be September 17th.  In the meantime, we will update you with any new information we have and will continue to work for our fellow Huskies!

Our Mission:

• The mission of the Husky Swimming Foundation is to support the reinstatement of men’s and women’s swimming at the University of Washington.  By partnering with the University, the alumni, USA Swimming, Pacific Northwest Swimming and the public, the Foundation seeks to preserve the long established swimming traditions in the Pacific Northwest.  The Foundation seeks to provide a local collegiate swimming opportunity for our regional age-group swimmers so that they may compete at both the national and the international level.

Our Goals:

1. Endow the athletes’ scholarships;
2. Build and operate a state of the art training and competition facility;
3. Provide for the operating expenses of the swimming and diving program on a sustained basis; and
4. Support swimming in the Pacific Northwest at all age group levels.

We have confirmed with the Internal Revenue Service that our application for exemption under Section 501(c)(3) has been approved and we are now officially a tax-exempt organization!  Once we have our hands on the actual certificate, we will post a copy on our website.

We have a board meeting scheduled for tonight, August 19th, and will report back to you in the coming days.  In the meantime, please continue to help with our Lost Dawg Campaign!

It has been quite a while since our last update, and for that, we apologize.  It’s been a hectic summer, but you can be assured that we are all still working dilligently to bring Husky Swimming back to the University of Washington.

We’d like to extend a BIG thank you to all of our contributors!  We are continuing to build a solid balance in our bank account–every penny will help our cause in the long run!

We have begun the first phase of our mission and we have affectionately named it “The Lost Dawg Campaign.”  The Board felt that our starting point for action should be to rebuild our alumni and support base.  There are many Huskies out there that we have lost contact with and we need to bring them back into the family.  We need to rekindle the spirit of Husky Swimming and galvanize support for our cause from within the Husky network.  Once we have the Husky team working together towards a common goal, then building a new facility and reinstating the programs can be achieved much quicker.

Heading the Lost Dawg Campaign will be Jana Vincent and Rick Colella.  We have established a sizable email list through our site’s subscription service, but we will be trying to track down additional alumni and supporter information (phone, address, etc.) in the coming weeks and months.  If you would like to update your contact information, please contact Jana or Rick.  And, PLEASE, forward our website along to any Lost Dawgs out there!

This is just a quick update to announce that the Foundation has added four new board members.  The Foundation’s Bylaws currently allow for eleven board positions and we are proud to add Andy Hathaway, Bill Patterson, Brandon Drawz, and Jana Vincent to the Board.  With the addition of these four, our current board is as follows:

• Catherine Clark, President
• Kelly Sterling, Secretary
• Ryan Stratton, Treasurer
• Ron Van Pool
• Rick Colella
• Mark Prothero
• Megan Wolfe
• Andy Hathaway
• Bill Patterson
• Brandon Drawz
• Jana Vincent

We have a great group of individuals with a wide range of experience both within the sport of swimming and professionally.

Our next scheduled Board meeting will be on July 8th and we will be sharing our progress with you as we move forward.