Any families with kids in different swim clubs?

[Anonymous]

Our older DC is a year-round swimmer in a local swim club and now our younger DC is interested too; however we are not sure what will happen after tryouts and club swim fees x 2 is a big consideration.

Has anyone had kids in different swim clubs and how did you manage?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our older DC is a year-round swimmer in a local swim club and now our younger DC is interested too; however we are not sure what will happen after tryouts and club swim fees x 2 is a big consideration.

Has anyone had kids in different swim clubs and how did you manage?

It can be done but it's not easy. Things to think about: volunteer commitments x2 if at two different clubs versus one per family if at one club. A lot of times clubs will also give a multi-sibling discount. Finally different clubs also attend different meets...depending on the ages and abilities of your swimmers you may be at different meets anyway but it can get pretty hectic if you end up with multiple meets per month.

[Anonymous]

I spoke with a family this weekend that has kids in different clubs. They did it for coaching -- older kid switched clubs because the coach at the original club was downright mean and kid really enjoyed the coach at the new club. Parents left the younger sibling at the original club because sibling had a good coach.

Honestly, if your kids are in different age groups, their meets can really differ within a club. And our discount isn't enough to make me keep a kid with a coach he doesn't like!

[Anonymous]

We've done this for years and it's been totally fine. Even when our kids were at the same club they would often swim different meets because different age groups/practice groups attend different meets. We've had kids at NCAP and York and now we have them at York and AAC and it's all good - we just rely on carpools for practices and meets.

[Anonymous]

We did it for a few years and at the time I was like this is so annoying. Then put them in the same club and guess what it was EXACTLY the same because even in the same club they swim different meets. So it is a wash.

Like others have said, multi-sibling discount is not a huge deal and it is schlepping regardless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We did it for a few years and at the time I was like this is so annoying. Then put them in the same club and guess what it was EXACTLY the same because even in the same club they swim different meets. So it is a wash.

Like others have said, multi-sibling discount is not a huge deal and it is schlepping regardless.

I think the different practice locations/times are a bigger pain than the meet schedule. Even if not every practice coincided, it makes it much easier to do a single pickup/drop off one or two times a week. I had two in the same club and different meets due to age gap, but at least their practices overlapped twice a week.

[Anonymous]

In MD it’s not a big deal as long as kids are in different age groups because the practice sites for multiple teams are very close together.