Feedback on the new St. James Swim Program

[Anonymous]

So, I see that the St. James drastically redid their once very flexible program.

The regular competitive team is structured now like other swim teams with a 9-10 month program and meets - set days for attendance.

They have a rec team with also set days but seems to be in three month blocks with no swim meets. The last block probably being the most popular which are sprints to prepare for summer league.

Thoughts? I know that in order to be a better club they had to move to this format. But I thought most joined them for the drop in and drop out.

[Anonymous]

I have no idea how the change is going, but I can say we actually moved to a bigger club this season solely because of this.

What was keeping us at St. James was the unique flexibility it offered, however once we realized they were just trying to be like all the other teams we figured we’d go to one of them that likely has it more figured out instead of going through the all the growing pains they were likely going to have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have no idea how the change is going, but I can say we actually moved to a bigger club this season solely because of this.

What was keeping us at St. James was the unique flexibility it offered, however once we realized they were just trying to be like all the other teams we figured we’d go to one of them that likely has it more figured out instead of going through the all the growing pains they were likely going to have.

That makes sense. We had a number of our summer swims love the St. James because you can work around your other sport seasons.

[Anonymous]

Np—I’m very curious about this as well. DC swam at STJ a few years ago and I’ve considered going back, but only if there were major changes. Can anyone who currently swims at STJ give feedback?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So, I see that the St. James drastically redid their once very flexible program.

The regular competitive team is structured now like other swim teams with a 9-10 month program and meets - set days for attendance.

They have a rec team with also set days but seems to be in three month blocks with no swim meets. The last block probably being the most popular which are sprints to prepare for summer league.

Thoughts? I know that in order to be a better club they had to move to this format. But I thought most joined them for the drop in and drop out.

The regular competitive team is actually a 6-month program (September-March) with options for spring (sprint season) and summer (long course, which they are calling the Olympic session). So not quite like everyone else, but moving towards more structured age-based training groups.

As for how things are going, too soon to tell. Give it a few meets or even a full season. A few top swimmers left, which seemed to happen every year anyway, some kids who were doing meets opted for the rec team, and some new kids joined. I’m guessing a few more kids will join after fall sports wrap up — some of the same kids who were really only swimming in the winter before. As you might expect the best coaches spend most of their time with the competitive team but some are helping to break in a few new coaches for the rec team. For those who want to compete have a dedicated professional coach is a big improvement over the round robin coaching of several years ago.