Welcome to the KING 2010-2011 online registration.
Please read, print (if you would like a copy for your reference) the registration terms and agreements contained herein. Should you have difficulties or questions, you may call us at 206-306-6040.
A Welcome from KING Head coach Sean Hutchison:
To Returning and Prospective KING Members:
After some pretty big changes this past year, KING remains as the dominant team in the Northwest. Every part of our team - the athletes, booster club, parents, dry-side staff, and coaches - contributed to keeping KING '1-TEAM' and ever improving.
On the 'dry side' of things, our website and billing continue to improve, ensuring accurate and accessible team and account information.
Additionally, as I hope you've noticed, the coaching staff has been working to address the team in writing on a regular basis for two main reasons: 1. For the members to know the coaches a little more through the ideas they write about, and 2. To strengthen the understanding that the vision of KING has as much to do with offering tools to become successful people as well as successful swimmers.
The KING Booster Club continues to provide unwavering and substantial support through successful fundraisers (How great was the Swim-a-thon event at KCAC ?), hosting meets so our swimmers can show off their skills, providing great events like the awards banquet, and aiding a large portion of our swimmers through contributions to numerous KING causes.
All of our Booster Club is important and appreciated, but our Booster officers deserve special recognition (Tim Wold, Jeremy Berry, Julia Hansen, and Amy Eha,) and those they have continued to recruit to become part of Boosters so as to be even more effective. Moreover, I would like to thank President Tim Wold for being a great person and friend to the coaching staff and KING membership. When you see him, he deserves a 'thank you'.
Also on the 'dry side', led by KING Senior Coach, Ken Spencer, Mount Rainier Pool was 'saved' from possible closure through development of a new park district in the Des Moines/Highline area. Ken committed a lot of time, work and sleepless nights coordinating the effort to ensure the survival of this integral facility of the KING network. Thank you, Ken.
The KING coaching staff is experiencing a rebirth, both in its influx of new talent and also in commitment to seeing through on pushing the limits on established coaching methods. We have expanded and continued to develop the dry-land program through video teaching to staff members and also testing procedures to evaluate effectiveness.
In the water portion of practice, the KING coaches and I are scaling down, for size and skill, technical strategies I developed (I call it 'stroke management')with the KING National group. Incidentally, these strategies are being implemented with my USOC training group here in Orange County. The stroke management system is currently being used in the national and senior groups and more recently added into regional and some age group groups (the swimmers would know it as 'stroke count'). Stroke management offers athletes much greater potential for long term success once their arms and legs stop growing.
Competitively, KING won PNS champs last summer and winter for consecutive wins since 2002. We also won age group sectionals for the third year in a row!
At the national level, in the summer of 2009, KING women's team won its second National Team Title in a row (all ages, college or club). I was honored by being granted the Head Coaching Position for the Women's USA World Championship Team which competed in Rome, Italy.
Individually, KING swimmers Ariana Kukors and Andie Taylor achieved US National Team Status. At the World Championships, Ariana won the 200 Individual Medley in World Record time. Notably, KING swimmer Megan Jendrick broke the American record in the 50 Meter Breaststroke the same day here in Federal Way!
I don't know that we could have had a much better follow up to such a great Olympic year!
In regards to registration and dues, there are two noteworthy comments:
· We are changing our dues structure this year from a 12-month billing cycle to an 11-month billing cycle. This decision seems to fit in line with our membership's needs. With that, when you look at the numbers, the change in monthly dues is less dramatic than you may first think.
· Speaking of monthly dues, as expected, there is a slight increase this year. Increases in pool rental expense, like every year, is the main culprit.
We are doing our best to keep operations lean and dues from advancing. We genuinely desire to keep our membership comfortable and happy. We never take any increase in dues lightly.
As always, we hope your experience with the KING family is a great one. Enjoy the ride and let us do our best in helping your swimmers become successful athletes and great people.
On to another great year!!!
Aspire and Inspire,
Sean Hutchison - Head Coach
