Ashville Park Pirates Swim Team completes inaugural season
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Ashville Park Pirates Swim Team, which is part of the Virginia Beach Swim League, held its inaugural swim team season this past summer and it was a great success!
The brand-new swim team is not just for Ashville Park residents. It is open to anyone aged 5-18 from any neighborhood in the back bay area of Virginia Beach. The team had 128 swimmers (with over 60% of them being first time swimmers) in its first season from neighborhoods such as Ashville Park, Sherwood Lakes, Lagomar, and Red Mill just to name a few.
The season ran from June to August. Towards the end of the season the team ended up finishing in 5th place in the Divisional meet and over 25 swimmers qualified for All-Stars.
“It was a really cool experience for the kids. Swimming is both an independent sport as well as a team sport so it’s fun to watch the kids, with all levels of ability, have fun and be part of a team in a low-pressure environment,” says Mark Tunstall, President and Founder of the swim team.
Mark, along with many others, successfully founded the team in 2022. “I grew up swimming competitively and played water polo in college. Some of my favorite childhood memories growing up were tied to my neighborhood swim team. Some of my best friends to this day I met in swim team when I was six or seven years old. Ashville Park is a great neighborhood that has a great pool and I just wanted to provide the same opportunity for our neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods to be able to experience what I did,” Mark explains.
The team’s mission is to create a fun environment where kids are developing, learning how to swim, making new friends in the community, and just having a great time. It seems they were super successful in doing so as the team earned the “2022 Spirit and Sportsmanship Award” from the Virginia Beach Swim League out of all twenty teams in their division.
The team is coached by Head Coach Courtney Morrill, as well as the Assistant Coaches Katie Warnock and Ashley Bartholf.
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