How does your summer swim do practices?

[Anonymous]

Ours groups by age and I have no idea how that works for the advanced kids because mine are all mediocre.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Talk to the coach and please please make a video when you tell the coach what skills they should be pushing in their team’s different practices. Then share the video with us. I would love to see the coach’s reaction.

[Anonymous]

Ours splits it up by age group. There are fast swimmers and less fast swimmers in every group, so they can still divide up the lanes by ability. It seems to work well socially this way. Even the strongest club swimmers sign up for summer swim because it's a fun time to hang out with their friends, not because they're getting serious development from it.

[Anonymous]

Group splits, starting with youngest. Lanes are divided by ability for the most part. My 8U could do all strokes and was speedy, but stayed with 8U. It was fine. It’s summer swim. There is a rare ask to practice up & it’s usually granted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

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.

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.

I’m OP I’m NOT saying it’s not fair for an advanced 8 year old to swim with my 10 year old. I’m saying it’s not right to overhaul the entire team dynamics which is already split into A meet people and b meet People. This divides the team at a place that’s supposed to be fun and inclusive. This is not off season club training. Now the advanced A kids parents pushed to.change the whole dynamics. There are enough fast kids to have their own fast lane. Or if there is an exceptionally fast person just make single exceptions. I’m ok with that.

[Anonymous]

Our pool started this - doing ability practices.

Unfortunately, it was a sign of things to come- culminating in wearing tech suits for some kids at a and even some b meets.

Trying to convince people it should be for fun is a lost cause. Sad. Should make a "Dance Moms" type show about NVSL

[Anonymous]

We divide similar to what apps have described: 8U, 9-12 and 13+. I can’t recall an 8U being moved into the 9-12 group because they were too advanced. We have moved up kids that turn 9 during the summer season and want to be in the group with their classmates who turned 9 a few months before. It is pretty common for the fast club 11-12 year olds to swim in the 13+ group. The 9-12 group is far bigger than the 13+ group, so being able to move some of the advanced 11-12 year olds out of that group is helpful.

[Anonymous]

Not all pools are the same. Some of the less competitive pools have so few fast swimmers, that a swimmer who swims each 25 thirty seconds faster than the other kids in their age group literally can’t swim if they stay in their same age practice. They just get stuck. Now make that a 50. They have nowhere to go. This isn’t true for the faster pools who have a range of kids at each age group, but it is for others. Broad brush generalizations are never helpful because each pool is going to have different dynamics going on. If a few kids get moved one age group, you have the choice whether to see that as a team-wrecking, fun-wrecking decision or to stay positive and keep summer swim fun. I would hope you wouldn’t let what the coach and another swimmer decide wreck your or your swimmer’s experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not all pools are the same. Some of the less competitive pools have so few fast swimmers, that a swimmer who swims each 25 thirty seconds faster than the other kids in their age group literally can’t swim if they stay in their same age practice. They just get stuck. Now make that a 50. They have nowhere to go. This isn’t true for the faster pools who have a range of kids at each age group, but it is for others. Broad brush generalizations are never helpful because each pool is going to have different dynamics going on. If a few kids get moved one age group, you have the choice whether to see that as a team-wrecking, fun-wrecking decision or to stay positive and keep summer swim fun. I would hope you wouldn’t let what the coach and another swimmer decide wreck your or your swimmer’s experience.

These are short races. There's no reason a fast 8U kid can't go first in their lane and finish a 25 or 50 without running into other kids. This is just supposed to be for fun. They're not training for the Olympics.

I'm the parent of a 12 yo kid with a summer birthday who was very happy to be bumped up so that she could be with friends in her grade, which is the what matters to her as a middle achooler. It really has nothing to do with her speed. But I don't know any 8Us who get bumped up because the 9-12 age group is too crowded already.

[Anonymous]

we set up an IMX only lane for the 8U.

[Anonymous]

What’s imx

[Anonymous]

For morning practices it's by age group with a lot of lanes so each two lanes are practicing a certain skill etc. for afternoon it's grouped into fewer age cohorts.

[Anonymous]

The most advanced kids on our summer team don't even come to the practices, they just show up to the meets and smoke everyone. I assume they're practicing elsewhere

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The most advanced kids on our summer team don't even come to the practices, they just show up to the meets and smoke everyone. I assume they're practicing elsewhere

I’m one of the PPs and this is part of the reason our 13+ practice group is small. The fast club 13+ swimmers do not attend summer practice more than 1x a week if that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For morning practices it's by age group with a lot of lanes so each two lanes are practicing a certain skill etc. for afternoon it's grouped into fewer age cohorts.

You guys already have morning practices before school is out ?