Happy New Year, and Many Thank Yous from SwimSwam

Happy New Year to all of our SwimSwam readers! It’s been a crazy year here at the site; we hit the ground running back in March, with NCAA’s looming, and we haven’t stopped yet. We hope that you’re still enjoying what we’re doing and hope to continue to bring you bigger, better, and more entertaining news coverage in 2013.

We would be remiss in this new year not to thank all of the dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people who have helped us get to this point. This has been a truly special year for us, as the swimming community has welcomed us and our perspective with open arms. We’ve cracked 10,000 Twitter followers and nearly 20,000 Facebook fans, and to each and every one of you that supports us with a “like,” or a comment on the site, or a Retweet, or a follow, we thank you all. You’ve all been a huge part of our growth and, even more so, giving us people to talk to, people to listen to, people to have a swimming conversation with. We love you guys, we have fun with you guys, and you guys’ support is what keeps us going.

Thank you first of all to our readers and our active commenters. We have a diverse community of opinions and thoughts and ideas, and I truly believe that you all, through your comments and discussions, have helped shape the sport in the last 9 months.

A second thank you, especially from our news group, to the countless coaches, swimmers, and officials who have shared their view of the sport with us. You all sharing information and insights with us have really helped us to add another layer to swimming coverage; reaching deeper to the stories that really give the full picture of the sport. We know most of you would prefer to remain unnamed, but know that we thank you.

Thank you to Roque Santos and Engine, as well as SwimOutlet. You all have been huge supporters of the site from day 1, heck, even before day 1, and we can’t thank you enough. Engine sent us to Omaha where we had quite a party (one many of you were able to enjoy I hope), and SwimOutlet helped us cover everything from London. All of our other sponsors, big and small, we thank each of you for having faith in us, taking “trust us” as enough of a word to hop on board. If you ever get on this site, enjoy something you read, and see an advertisement, know that the advertisement is here because that company believes in what we do and they want to make sure that we can afford to continue to do it. It’s no coincidence that we partner with the companies that we do. They’re usually SwimSwam readers first, and like all of our readers are passionate about the sport, and those are the kind of people we want to work with.

At risk of life and limb, here’s my best attempt at recalling everyone (named) who has helped us this year. No contribution has been too big or too small. If you’ve been left off the list, please take it as no slight, and feel free to send me a scathing email telling me of my misstep. It’s been a crazy 9 months, and surely we’ve overlooked someone, but here goes nothing: