End of Year Banquet Questions

[Anonymous]

Does your team pick up the cost for this? Do you do a potluck? Require families to register? Our team has been paying for this event for a number of years but are contemplating going to potluck style next year.

[Anonymous]

We dumped the potluck a couple years ago, and its now a flat fee per family (pizza/chicken/pasta/chipotle varies). I will say a summer swim banquet is a hard sell for many. After a very crammed in season each year with all the pep rallies and pancakes, families are tired and do not particularly want to go see all the A meet families win all the awards while their kid gets friendliest and most punctual and best attitude. I don't think it is particularly helped by the fact that our pool has many large families so the 20 families with year round kids rule the school

[Anonymous]

LOL. Good assessment, but I found my B swimmers still loved the banquet

[Anonymous]

Our is covered. If it wasn’t we wouldn’t go. Summer swim at our pool is over and over again just for the A swimmers and their families. It doesn’t feel welcoming or like fun summer swim like it should.

[Anonymous]

For potluck I’d be a bit concerned from a food safety perspective personally

[Anonymous]

We’ve been doing BYO dinner at the pool for a few years. Team provides desserts.

[Anonymous]

Flashback. Every year as a mediocre swimmer I would get so irrationally hyped before the banquet would just hope and hope that I would win a real award. The coaches would push coming to the last practices even if you didn’t qualify, and I was always there like an eager fool hoping to put in the last bits of work before the banquet.

Maybe it would be the year a coach finally noticed my hard work even if my times sucked? Maybe there would be new award categories?!

Our pool awarded trophies to everyone with a base size that reflected how well you did. I always got the flat plain base participation trophy with the swimmer statue glued directly on it. Some years they did away with that and just did participation certificates. I hated my brother and the girls who got the super tall colored trophies for high points and stuff. The worst were the years when one kid would get both high points and most improved. I know trophies are a dime a dozen now and kids get them for breathing, but back then kids actually displayed and compared them and they were rare. My team wasn’t the best but somehow my age group had girls who went on to D1 and top D3s.

I quit the year after I was a 13-14 and they gave me a made-up trophy because there were only 3 girls in my age group and I didn’t get high points or most improved. For many years after 9-10s my brother was the only boy in his age group and also did dive and would be given a box for his awards at the end of the night. My parents would make me wait while they took a million photos of him on the pool steps with his hardware.

I remember crying in my bed after those stupid banquets!

[Anonymous]

No dinner. Everyone eats before the banquet and we just have cake at the banquet. The highlight is the slideshow and then the “late” night swim in the dark with the pool lights turned on.

[Anonymous]

Ours is a hybrid. We pay a flat fee per person (swimmers and coaches are free) for a catered dinner and then *also* bring a potluck dish. I'd rather just pay a bit more per person and have the whole thing catered. This seems the worst of both worlds.

[Anonymous]

Geez I’m always shocked at how many people seem to not like their summer team and still participate

Ours is great! A meet and B meet kids are friends, A meet and B meet parents volunteer, everyone gets a paper plate award, a few kids get special awards buts its usually not the A meet kids (my kid is an A meet kid and never gets anything special and we’re all good with that)

Banquet is catered at the pool with a slideshow. It’s wonderful! We feel lucky it still feels like summer swim. Some annoying competitive parents, sure, some complain-y kids, but overall great. Sad it’s over this weekend!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For potluck I’d be a bit concerned from a food safety perspective personally

[Anonymous]

Ours is very expensive and held at a restaurant. It never runs on time and there are so many paper plates given out with long explanations that it's ridiculous. The coaches seem to give out "awards" to make some kids/parents look good. We should have skipped the last couple of years and are skipping this year. My kid doesn't care about going

[Anonymous]

Ours is catered and paid for by the team and an incredible slideshow at the end.

The team reps do a nice job of balancing between the fast kids and everyone else. They have worked to make the team all inclusive.

So they do most improved trophies, recognition for records and all stars, and named awards that go to being part of a team.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous]Ours is catered and paid for by the team and an incredible slideshow at the end.

The team reps do a nice job of balancing between the fast kids and everyone else. They have worked to make the team all inclusive.

So they do most improved trophies, recognition for records and all stars, and named awards that go to being part of a team.

That seems to be a factor for some parents. It's not just the money (though for the same cost we could get an amazing dinner at our kids' favorite restaurant). Rather, it's paying a lot of money for mediocre food (think overcooked vegetables, skin on mystery chicken, pasta swimming in butter, etc...), The food comes out late and the awards never start on time. Sorry, but neither we nor our kid want to sit through that. Ribbons during the season and making All Stars are reward enough. My kid will see his friends at the pool in August after the summer swim and club swim seasons end.

[Anonymous]

Our families have to pay to attend. This year it’s $200 for our family of 4.