How does your summer swim do practices?
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Anonymous
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Ours was
8&under 9-12 13-17? Not they are doing it as beginner intermediate and advanced because some moms think their 8&unders are too good to swim with their age group. How does your pool do it? I don’t know what group my girls will be in but I can’t help but feel shocked that the coach approved this. My 10 year old swims very different events from an 8yr old no matter how fast this special 8 year old swims. 10yr olds are swimming 50s and need to be pushing flip turns and longer lengths while for summer an 8 year old is not doing that. I thought summer was supposed to be fun and inclusive, we are not a top 10 division. |
Anonymous
There are valid reasons to segregate on the basis of training intervals across age groups. Makes for making workouts and managing lane space easier so kids aren't on top of each other. Is it possible that an 7-8 girl can keep up with a 9-10 boy. Absolutely. And others can chime in with other scenarios. The typical pattern at are pool is by age groups (8U, 9-12, 13 and over) and segregate into pace groups as best they can. |
Anonymous
Our pool does 8 and 10 and up. There is no particularly fair way of doing this, honestly. My DD is 8 and is a club swimmer who regularly swims 50s and 100s in competition, many meets which are "10 and Under." She needs to be pushing flip turns and longer lengths for development - and also because it improves her times for shorter events. Is it fair that she be training with kids who only do summer swim and 25s? Not really, but that's the rub of belonging to a community pool team. Is it fair that your kids have to practive with advanced 8 year olds? Maybe not for them, but possibly other ten year olds who are more casual swimmers. |
Anonymous
| Ours divides by three age groups: 8U, 9-12 and 13+. In extreme circumstances, kids practice up because the same age group practice just doesn’t work. They are so much faster that they consistently get stuck if they stay in their age group. |
Anonymous
Kind of defeats the purpose of summer swim and making friends with your peer group. We have 8&U, 9-10, 11-12, and 13&U. For a coach it would be foolish to have an 8&U swim with an older group, they only swim 25s and do not need to work on turns. They should be focusing on stroke mechanics. 9-10s now have 50s and turns and need to focus on that. 11-12s could be with the 13&U, our team does not because developmentally there is a big difference between an 11 year old and a 17 year old, so it is more a social thing than a skill level. Our team has differentiation across the lanes in the age group (fast to slow) so it works out. The really fast kids tend to be club swimmers and attend club practice. |
Anonymous
Assuming the practices are 45 min. for 12U in general, do they really have not opportunities to have fun with their peer group outside of being in the lane/water? The complaints seems melodramatic to me especially most of the fun for summer swim is the stuff that happens outside of the water. |
Anonymous
| Ours breaks practices down by ability as well. Honestly this works great at our pool. We are a top 3 Division Team and have young kids (10-12) who swim 10+ hours a week and teenagers who don't swim over the school year at all. By splitting up practices this way, it allows for every kid to get a practice that suits them. There are also peer groups at every practice- it's not like there is only one thirteen year old at the intermediate level. |
Anonymous
Your summer swim program doesn't have a responsibility to prepare your kid for events they swim with club. That's like saying my kids' soccer team has responsibility to teach him stick handling so he can do better in lacrosse. The idea that it's not "fair" that they aren't pushing flip turns on a kid who isn't competing 50's, or that it's not "fair" that she be training with the team she signed up for is bizarre. At our pool, the age groups vary. The divisions are different for morning and afternoon practice, and different again for Friday clinic. They have to do with how many time slots and making the groupings as even as possible. Sometimes, when a kid's on the edge of an age group they will get moved up or down. I have a kid who is tall, fast, and has a summer birthday. In the years when he's on the older edge of a group, he often gets moved up because it helps balance groups and they know that it's easier for me to have him and his older brother together. I don't think he got moved up the summer he was 8 though. |
Anonymous
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we follow this:
8&under 9-12 13-18 With 6 practice lanes per group and kid split up based on pace. As mentioned above there can be benefits to doing practice by ability. Everyone gets more out of it when with kids on a similar level. However, I think age groups is best for summer swim toto keep age groups together which is good for team bonding and dynamics. |
Anonymous
| For the pools that split by ability rather than age, how do you handle relay prep? |
Anonymous
Ours does this too. |
Anonymous
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We have these same age groups as a starting place:
8&under 9-12 13-17 But the middle group is the biggest (too big) so the oldest/fastest kids in that group get bumped up. The slowest/new kids in the middle group may also be bumped down. My kid is a 12-year-old rising 8th grader. Their friends are all already 13 so they're very happy to be bumped up to the 13-17 age group. It's good there's some flexibility. |
Anonymous
Our practices are back to back so they'll ask kids to stay for the beginning of the next practice to practice with their relay. |
Anonymous
Um, the OP is saying it’s not fair her kids need to train with advanced 8 year olds. Fairness is relative - it may not be “fair” to my kid in my subjective opinion but I would never ask them to make an exception for her or kids like her. Because parents should not 1) involve themselves in coaching decisions unless there is safety reason; 2) life is not fair and summer swim is a safe way to learn that you have to do things like be a good sport and deal with losing rebate there are always kids faster than you and respectfully pass kids swimming slower than you, too. |
Anonymous
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We do it by age, which is great socially, but doesn’t work for every family or swimmer. I do wish the coaches were more flexible on allowing kids to come to practice one up (or down). At least on a case by case basis, but they have been really reluctant.
I think summer swim should be all about flexibility, so that’s where my opinion comes from |