All,

Unfortunately we have come to the tough decision to cancel tomorrow's home meet against Virginia Oaks. I can assure you that we looked at every possible way to be able to have the meet, but in the end we did not feel it was safe for our swimmers given the Air Quality and heat that we will still be having tomorrow morning.

As you may be aware, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality has issued a Code ORANGE Air Quality Alert Saturday for Northern Virginia.

Concentrations of fine particulate matter due to wildfire smoke will persist at levels consistent with an Air Quality Index of Unhealthy (Red Alert) to Very Unhealthy (Purple Alert) Friday night into Saturday morning. Air quality begins to improve Saturday afternoon.

Code Purple and Code Red Air Quality Alerts mean that air pollution concentrations within the region are unhealthy to very unhealthy for the general population.

A Code Orange Air Quality Alert means that air pollution concentrations within the region may become unhealthy for sensitive groups. Sensitive groups include children, people suffering from asthma, heart disease or other lung diseases and the elderly. The effects of air pollution can be minimized by avoiding strenuous activity or exercise outdoors. 

As we are cancelling due to air quality issues, the Swim Leagues inclement weather policy will apply - all swimmers entered at the deadline will receive credit for attending the meet for divisional qualifying, it does not count those entered events as legal swims for divisional event qualifying.

Some other teams in the league are waiting till morning to decide and may actually swim, but that was not an option for us as VA Oaks is about an hour away and we needed to make the call tonight.

While this was a very difficult decision to make, the safety of our swimmers and families, along with the visiting teams, has always and will always come first.

Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or concerns, and now we must turn our attention to winning Divisionals next week!

Go Lancers!!!

Daniel Kramek

President, Lake Ridge Lancers Swim Team