U.S. Masters Swimming Club of the Year Award

Recipient:	Granite State Penguins
Year:	2024
LMSC:	New England

The Granite State Penguins was a USMS workout group associated with New England Masters. The five words used to describe their team were rowdy, fun, welcoming, unique and encouraging. When their team won the New England LMSC SCY Championships in 2018, the announcer nicknamed them the ‘Rowdy Penguins’’ and the nickname stuck. They used that moniker for their team events and fundraising. Their team was fun in and out of the pool. New members were attracted to join because the swimmers saw the team laughing, dancing, and singing at meets. At the 2023 World Aquatic Masters Championships in Japan, the Penguin’s enthusiasm was so appealing that three other New England swimmers transferred their affiliation to the Penguins post meet. Welcoming new swim members happened often. Their team was encouraging, whether cheering swimmers at the end of their lanes at meets, helping the team with tasks, or supporting their teammates in and out of the pool.

An interesting feature about the Penguins was that they had no paid coaches and were “self-coached”. The Penguins trained at three different “workout” pools in New Hampshire. Each was run a little differently, depending on the facility, and several of the members swam at more than one pool. The Nashua program had workout writers who signed up to write a month of workouts (they swam M-W-F mornings). The Londonderry program used “Sign Up Genius” for members to write workouts (T-Th-Sat-Sun mornings). The Salem program was less formal, and the workout was pretty much created on the fly by the swimmers who showed up (M-W-F mornings). The Penguins often had “themed” workouts – which celebrated various holidays. And, they had a core group of competitors whose ethic at workouts was encouraging to the more novice swimmers. The goal was for members to take the “leap” to swim in a meet or open water event. About 75% of the members competed in USMS events.