Families that never volunteer - swim team
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Anonymous
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Our pool has many options that don't require volunteering at meets. Many other ways to volunteer.
Every Monday, a spreadsheet is emailed out to the team and shows how each family has volunteers, and how many hours are remaining. |
Anonymous
This. My “job” this season has been to drop off fruit for Friday breakfast at 7:15am. If your kid goes to 8,9, or 10 am practice, you wouldn’t know that I’ve chopped up 10-12 lbs of strawberries for the last 4 Thursday nights. |
Anonymous
Because you can't just leave a 4 year old at the pool without someone watching them. |
Anonymous
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When we had a toddler and a swimmer we would pick things that could be done before/after the meet. I still prefer setup at 7 am. I then go back to get my swimmers or my H brings them. I did clean up with another parent who had a toddler with them a few weeks ago. The toddler “helped” take the lane numbers off. Clean up is a really quick job and can be done while keeping an eye on a kid.
Fundraising/getting sponsors is another thing that can be accomplished with emails after kids are in bed at night. It boils down to whether you WANT to contribute and be part of the team or if you believe that your kid is entitled to a place on the team because you paid the fees. Whining that you can’t volunteer for this reason or that simply means that summer swim isn’t for your family right now. We have a bunch of families with 4/5 kids of which 3/4 are swimmers. Oddly, those are not the families trying to get out of volunteering. |
Anonymous
Tell them their kids won’t swim unless they volunteer. It’s effective. |
Anonymous
There are jobs you can do with a 4 year old (concessions, ribbons etc). People who don’t want to volunteer will find any excuse not to. For everyone else with small kids, we find a way to make it work. |
Anonymous
At our pool, some 13-15 year olds are hired to look after the little ones during meets. If they're an A meet swimmer they do this at B meets and vice versa. |
Anonymous
This is a good system. I’m thinking about coordinating volunteers for my pool next year. Do any pools allow parents to sign up for things all at once at the beginning of the season? I would like to do something like that, but worry that people will just no show if their plans change. |
Anonymous
Our pool does. It works well and allows both the team and the parents to plan ahead. My only gripe is they open it in the middle of a random weekday right before the season starts so those of us who work usually don’t see it until the evening so we have less choices. |
Anonymous
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Every year I read these complaints but no one ever wants to propose real answers like-
pools should include in their lifeguard contracts that they must participate in a couple of meets per season Hire a couple teens to do some jobs like timing Drop some of the activities that aren’t really needed - fruits for breakfast? pls parents are capable of sending breakfast for their kid |
Anonymous
Why would lifeguard contracts come into play? They are separate employers at our pool. Who is going to pay teens and where are you going to find them? This usually works out to be more work than help. I don’t think these are great “solutions”. |
Anonymous
How are you going to pay these people? Increase the fees to join? And that is less elitist than parent volunteers? |
Anonymous
Our team rep just assigns each family a job. Easy, simple, done. |
Anonymous
I’m not being funny but adding the putter area is fenced what are you concerned about? They’re not falling in with all those people watching the pool…. |
Anonymous
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