Summer swim kids swimming in “wrong” age group

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s an interesting point. My son is a small 7 and he is racing against kids that turned 9 mid season. There is a huge difference between a 7 year old and a 9 year old in height, weight, strength.

Hang on…wait til your swimmer is 11 swimming against that kid when he’s 13.

You poor thing. Your 11 year old swimmer must not be very fast. My 11 year old swimmer can hold their own against the 13 year olds.

Gosh. You're an awful person. Get help.

Parents of kids with summer birthdays are used to always having their kid be the youngest. It happens over and over. It seems a bit ridiculous to hear the parents of kids with school year birthdays to suddenly get bent out of shape that their kid no longer has the advantage in just this one thing. They'll harp on and on about how redshirting is wrong and age cut offs must be respected. Or how after 1st grade it doesn't really matter that their kid is 12 months older, that doesn't give an advantage, their kid is just very athletic. Yet here there is just one June 1st cutoff--the only one I've ever heard of--and those same parents are up in arms. Well, welcome to how it feels. It's no different than my 8 yo being in basketball tryouts with almost 11 yos who have already hit puberty and have 40 lbs and 14 inches on her. (And in this case the disadvantage is only for the fun summer season, your kid can still do winter swim with age cutoffs. With basketball it's the same cutoff for rec, AAU and travel so she'll never have an opportunity to not be the very youngest.)

Yes, its this exactly that is rubbing me the wrong way. I have 2 summer bday kids (who are not club swimmers). When I first read this thread, I thought well I was not allowed to make excuses for my kids behavior in school "because they were the youngest" nor do I make excuses in all the other sports they participate in by grade level where redshirted kids are literally 3 years older than my kids. I just let them play the sport and strive to get better. I have one kid that is tiny and that kid is often 8-10 inches shorter than the other kids on the soccer field. They have had to learn over the years not to be afraid to get in there and mix it up with the bigger kids if they want to get the ball.

Let's be real, for most/all of our kids sports is a way to have fun, teach discipline and sportsmanship. This thread leaves a bad taste in my mouth about swim in general. I am so happy to watch my kids do the cheers, hang over lanes to encourage their friends and goof around between races (especially after 2 years of covid). Parents who are complaining about a random date, please don't ruin it for the rest of us.

This is a little different though because there are defined age groups in summer swim, but then if your birthday falls in an 8 week period you are allowed to swim in an age group that you have aged out of. It’s also weird to see the listing of the kids’ ages in heat sheets and see Larla Smith age 10 when everyone knows that Larla Smith is actually age 11.

This happens in other sports, though. It happens in baseball, where the age cutoff for the 6+ summer tournaments my kids played in was May 1, so kids (including one of mine) were playing ___U baseball up to 2-3 months after they turned the next age (i.e., playing 9U baseball for the summer after turning 10 in May). And yeah, everyone knows that a fair number of kids in the tournament playing 9U (or 10U, or whatever) are not actually that age. The point is that they created a defined, one year age group - which in that case, is May 1 - April 30 - and everyone with a birthday in that one year age band is in that age group.

My kids are relatively young, but I swam growing up, eventually on scholarship at an NCAA division 1 program- genuine question, do these 15-18 kids not do high school swimming? We did club swimming growing up, but the focus was the HS season, where I was a 14 year old 9th grader swimming against 18-19 year old HS seniors. I'll be honest, I'm struggling to understand why this is so harmful, particularly on the girls' side. And if the concern is that kids are returning to summer league after a year in an NCAA program, then prohibit that- a strictly age-based rule won't do it. I (and plenty of other kids, I'm sure) was 18 until September of my sophomore year of college and could have competed even if you changed the age ranges.

There is a reason for that in team sports vs individual because there are positions on the court/in the field that need to be filled in team sports, as well as developing team chemistry, etc. None of those considerations come into play in swimming, it’s you against the clock. There is literally no reason for there to be kids who have aged out of a group swimming down. It’s a short season, set the cutoff date on August 1st or August 15th (to make sure all stars is complete) and be done with it. It’s so counterintuitive to have swim leagues that start Memorial Day and have an age up cutoff on June 1st as opposed to August at the end of the season. If the cutoff is august no one could complain about 13 year olds swimming in the 11-12 age group.

Yikes, talk about missing the point. First- As someone else said, any way you slice it, kids within a 24 month band are swimming against one another, except at the senior level. That’s consistent with the way other sports do it. And as others have pointed out, you do have the issue of a relay swimmer being eligible during one part of the season but not at all stars. You seem to be really concerned with the logic of a 13 year old being assigned to the 11-12 age group, but keep phrasing it as though that kid is wrongfully swimming against kids who are more than 2 years younger. It’s kind of bizarre, and my point was that for the sake of ease and consistency that’s what other sports do. To the extent there is a concern about the 15-18 age range, if people are this concerned with consistency with club swimming, I’m surprised you’re not pushing for a separate 15-16 age group.

Second- I reference high school swimming because NVSL is more akin to that, and frankly I feel like you and other posters here don’t have a lot of experience with swimming in a team vs club environment. The difference between NVSL and club swimming is that teams develop lineups and compete in dual meets and divisional meets, and that championships are awarded based on what happens over the course of 6+ weeks. Swimming is an individual sport but NVSL is a team competition. That’s why it’s fun, FFS! The season is literally 5 dual meets long, plus capstone all star and champions meets, which are based on performance during the season. In your scenario, say my team has a great 10 year old who turns 11 on June 30th. So that kid is eligible to swim 9-10, and then is moved up for the last few dual meets. But those meets are typically against better teams. How do you fairly determine division winners? I.e., Chesterbrook has the best record but they got to swim tuckahoe when 4 kids had aged up, whereas Overlee had to swim them before. Are teams to look at their lineups and lobby the league to swim their toughest teams early in the season before anyone can age up? (My kids’ team is in division one, and I can guarantee you this would be a bone of contention). This is not a club meet- it’s not JOs and it’s not zones, or whatever other club meet your kids do in the winter and it’s not correct to say that lineups dont matter, and it’s simply the swimmer against the clock. If that were true, why would age group matter at all?

I’m a PP, and this issue really doesn’t matter to me because my kid is a club swimmer that has been able to compete even with kids who are swimming down, but pretending the lineups are a huge deal is a little disingenuous. For our team there are multiple kids that filter in and out of the last slots based on their times, people are on vacation, etc., so there isn’t a whole lot of this continuity you are talking about. It’s not like having to change up point guards midway through a season in basketball. And if the lineup thing is so important, why should teams get to pad their lineup with kids that aren’t in the age group they are swimming in?

I’m going to stop posting because there seems to be some true, deliberate attempts at failing to grasp the point. You and others keep insisting that kids at the top of the age group dominate summer swim, so we’re not talking about the kids who filter in and out of last slots. We’re talking about a team which has a roster including multiple top kids in meet one, and not having those kids in meet 5. If all of these purportedly overage kids are at the bottom of the roster, why would you guys care so much? These are the ringers, right? And basketball point guards take vacations too- that’s not what we’re talking about either.

You’re never going to win this argument so long as you keep insisting that kids aren’t in the age group they’re swimming in or are swimming down. NVSL rules define the age groups. I and numerous other people have explained to you why it’s appropriate in a team oriented league to use a single age cutoff date for the entire season. No one is swimming down. If you know of a swimmer who doesn’t meet the age requirements for the league, by all means, point it out and have them disqualified. If not, please trust- you’re not doing your kid or team any by constantly insinuating, falsely, that their competitors are cheating.

Best of luck next summer, may all of your aggrieved kids be forever guaranteed to swim only against smaller and younger kids.

And may your 19 year old get their needed satisfaction out of competing with kids in rec league swim.

[Anonymous]

If it makes you feel any better, the 19yo, D1 swimmer didn’t break Janet Hu’s records, so all is well, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s an interesting point. My son is a small 7 and he is racing against kids that turned 9 mid season. There is a huge difference between a 7 year old and a 9 year old in height, weight, strength.

Hang on…wait til your swimmer is 11 swimming against that kid when he’s 13.

You poor thing. Your 11 year old swimmer must not be very fast. My 11 year old swimmer can hold their own against the 13 year olds.

Gosh. You're an awful person. Get help.

Parents of kids with summer birthdays are used to always having their kid be the youngest. It happens over and over. It seems a bit ridiculous to hear the parents of kids with school year birthdays to suddenly get bent out of shape that their kid no longer has the advantage in just this one thing. They'll harp on and on about how redshirting is wrong and age cut offs must be respected. Or how after 1st grade it doesn't really matter that their kid is 12 months older, that doesn't give an advantage, their kid is just very athletic. Yet here there is just one June 1st cutoff--the only one I've ever heard of--and those same parents are up in arms. Well, welcome to how it feels. It's no different than my 8 yo being in basketball tryouts with almost 11 yos who have already hit puberty and have 40 lbs and 14 inches on her. (And in this case the disadvantage is only for the fun summer season, your kid can still do winter swim with age cutoffs. With basketball it's the same cutoff for rec, AAU and travel so she'll never have an opportunity to not be the very youngest.)

Yes, its this exactly that is rubbing me the wrong way. I have 2 summer bday kids (who are not club swimmers). When I first read this thread, I thought well I was not allowed to make excuses for my kids behavior in school "because they were the youngest" nor do I make excuses in all the other sports they participate in by grade level where redshirted kids are literally 3 years older than my kids. I just let them play the sport and strive to get better. I have one kid that is tiny and that kid is often 8-10 inches shorter than the other kids on the soccer field. They have had to learn over the years not to be afraid to get in there and mix it up with the bigger kids if they want to get the ball.

Let's be real, for most/all of our kids sports is a way to have fun, teach discipline and sportsmanship. This thread leaves a bad taste in my mouth about swim in general. I am so happy to watch my kids do the cheers, hang over lanes to encourage their friends and goof around between races (especially after 2 years of covid). Parents who are complaining about a random date, please don't ruin it for the rest of us.

This is a little different though because there are defined age groups in summer swim, but then if your birthday falls in an 8 week period you are allowed to swim in an age group that you have aged out of. It’s also weird to see the listing of the kids’ ages in heat sheets and see Larla Smith age 10 when everyone knows that Larla Smith is actually age 11.

This happens in other sports, though. It happens in baseball, where the age cutoff for the 6+ summer tournaments my kids played in was May 1, so kids (including one of mine) were playing ___U baseball up to 2-3 months after they turned the next age (i.e., playing 9U baseball for the summer after turning 10 in May). And yeah, everyone knows that a fair number of kids in the tournament playing 9U (or 10U, or whatever) are not actually that age. The point is that they created a defined, one year age group - which in that case, is May 1 - April 30 - and everyone with a birthday in that one year age band is in that age group.

My kids are relatively young, but I swam growing up, eventually on scholarship at an NCAA division 1 program- genuine question, do these 15-18 kids not do high school swimming? We did club swimming growing up, but the focus was the HS season, where I was a 14 year old 9th grader swimming against 18-19 year old HS seniors. I'll be honest, I'm struggling to understand why this is so harmful, particularly on the girls' side. And if the concern is that kids are returning to summer league after a year in an NCAA program, then prohibit that- a strictly age-based rule won't do it. I (and plenty of other kids, I'm sure) was 18 until September of my sophomore year of college and could have competed even if you changed the age ranges.

There is a reason for that in team sports vs individual because there are positions on the court/in the field that need to be filled in team sports, as well as developing team chemistry, etc. None of those considerations come into play in swimming, it’s you against the clock. There is literally no reason for there to be kids who have aged out of a group swimming down. It’s a short season, set the cutoff date on August 1st or August 15th (to make sure all stars is complete) and be done with it. It’s so counterintuitive to have swim leagues that start Memorial Day and have an age up cutoff on June 1st as opposed to August at the end of the season. If the cutoff is august no one could complain about 13 year olds swimming in the 11-12 age group.

Yikes, talk about missing the point. First- As someone else said, any way you slice it, kids within a 24 month band are swimming against one another, except at the senior level. That’s consistent with the way other sports do it. And as others have pointed out, you do have the issue of a relay swimmer being eligible during one part of the season but not at all stars. You seem to be really concerned with the logic of a 13 year old being assigned to the 11-12 age group, but keep phrasing it as though that kid is wrongfully swimming against kids who are more than 2 years younger. It’s kind of bizarre, and my point was that for the sake of ease and consistency that’s what other sports do. To the extent there is a concern about the 15-18 age range, if people are this concerned with consistency with club swimming, I’m surprised you’re not pushing for a separate 15-16 age group.

Second- I reference high school swimming because NVSL is more akin to that, and frankly I feel like you and other posters here don’t have a lot of experience with swimming in a team vs club environment. The difference between NVSL and club swimming is that teams develop lineups and compete in dual meets and divisional meets, and that championships are awarded based on what happens over the course of 6+ weeks. Swimming is an individual sport but NVSL is a team competition. That’s why it’s fun, FFS! The season is literally 5 dual meets long, plus capstone all star and champions meets, which are based on performance during the season. In your scenario, say my team has a great 10 year old who turns 11 on June 30th. So that kid is eligible to swim 9-10, and then is moved up for the last few dual meets. But those meets are typically against better teams. How do you fairly determine division winners? I.e., Chesterbrook has the best record but they got to swim tuckahoe when 4 kids had aged up, whereas Overlee had to swim them before. Are teams to look at their lineups and lobby the league to swim their toughest teams early in the season before anyone can age up? (My kids’ team is in division one, and I can guarantee you this would be a bone of contention). This is not a club meet- it’s not JOs and it’s not zones, or whatever other club meet your kids do in the winter and it’s not correct to say that lineups dont matter, and it’s simply the swimmer against the clock. If that were true, why would age group matter at all?

I’m a PP, and this issue really doesn’t matter to me because my kid is a club swimmer that has been able to compete even with kids who are swimming down, but pretending the lineups are a huge deal is a little disingenuous. For our team there are multiple kids that filter in and out of the last slots based on their times, people are on vacation, etc., so there isn’t a whole lot of this continuity you are talking about. It’s not like having to change up point guards midway through a season in basketball. And if the lineup thing is so important, why should teams get to pad their lineup with kids that aren’t in the age group they are swimming in?

I’m going to stop posting because there seems to be some true, deliberate attempts at failing to grasp the point. You and others keep insisting that kids at the top of the age group dominate summer swim, so we’re not talking about the kids who filter in and out of last slots. We’re talking about a team which has a roster including multiple top kids in meet one, and not having those kids in meet 5. If all of these purportedly overage kids are at the bottom of the roster, why would you guys care so much? These are the ringers, right? And basketball point guards take vacations too- that’s not what we’re talking about either.

You’re never going to win this argument so long as you keep insisting that kids aren’t in the age group they’re swimming in or are swimming down. NVSL rules define the age groups. I and numerous other people have explained to you why it’s appropriate in a team oriented league to use a single age cutoff date for the entire season. No one is swimming down. If you know of a swimmer who doesn’t meet the age requirements for the league, by all means, point it out and have them disqualified. If not, please trust- you’re not doing your kid or team any by constantly insinuating, falsely, that their competitors are cheating.

Best of luck next summer, may all of your aggrieved kids be forever guaranteed to swim only against smaller and younger kids.

I understand the rules, I think what many people are saying is that the rules as they exist don’t make a lot of sense. You’re also shifting your argument. You initially argued this was about lineups, and I pointed out that summer swim lineups are not some set in stone concept that must be maintained, the lineups change week to week, which cuts against your argument that lineups must be protected. Then you started talking about the teams that have a bunch of kids at the top during week 1 that would change at week 5 if the cutoff was changed to follow a kid’s actual age. And my response to that is yes, of course it would need to change if during week 5 the top 9-10 swimmers are in fact 11. I don’t understand what is so hard to grasp about this, it’s not being obtuse to have the opinion that a kid who is 11 shouldn’t be swimming with 9-10 year olds. It requires much more mental gymnastics to logically conclude that you should list a kid in the lineup sheet for a 9-10 event as a 10 year old when they are in fact 11.

[Anonymous]

Current age of top 12 NVSL 9-10 Freestyle, randomly selected, All-Star swimmers by place as determined by this website: https://swimmingrank.com/cgi-bin/mdva_search.cgi

1. 11
2. 10
3. 11
4. 10
5. 11
6. 10
7. 10
8. Unknown
9. 10
10. 9 --> props to this kid!
11. Unknown
12. 10 --> will be returning to 9-10 as 11 year old next year

I can see the beef of PPs, when you have 3 11 year olds in the top 5 of the 9-10 age group. If they turned 11 next month no one could complain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s an interesting point. My son is a small 7 and he is racing against kids that turned 9 mid season. There is a huge difference between a 7 year old and a 9 year old in height, weight, strength.

Hang on…wait til your swimmer is 11 swimming against that kid when he’s 13.

You poor thing. Your 11 year old swimmer must not be very fast. My 11 year old swimmer can hold their own against the 13 year olds.

Gosh. You're an awful person. Get help.

Parents of kids with summer birthdays are used to always having their kid be the youngest. It happens over and over. It seems a bit ridiculous to hear the parents of kids with school year birthdays to suddenly get bent out of shape that their kid no longer has the advantage in just this one thing. They'll harp on and on about how redshirting is wrong and age cut offs must be respected. Or how after 1st grade it doesn't really matter that their kid is 12 months older, that doesn't give an advantage, their kid is just very athletic. Yet here there is just one June 1st cutoff--the only one I've ever heard of--and those same parents are up in arms. Well, welcome to how it feels. It's no different than my 8 yo being in basketball tryouts with almost 11 yos who have already hit puberty and have 40 lbs and 14 inches on her. (And in this case the disadvantage is only for the fun summer season, your kid can still do winter swim with age cutoffs. With basketball it's the same cutoff for rec, AAU and travel so she'll never have an opportunity to not be the very youngest.)

Yes, its this exactly that is rubbing me the wrong way. I have 2 summer bday kids (who are not club swimmers). When I first read this thread, I thought well I was not allowed to make excuses for my kids behavior in school "because they were the youngest" nor do I make excuses in all the other sports they participate in by grade level where redshirted kids are literally 3 years older than my kids. I just let them play the sport and strive to get better. I have one kid that is tiny and that kid is often 8-10 inches shorter than the other kids on the soccer field. They have had to learn over the years not to be afraid to get in there and mix it up with the bigger kids if they want to get the ball.

Let's be real, for most/all of our kids sports is a way to have fun, teach discipline and sportsmanship. This thread leaves a bad taste in my mouth about swim in general. I am so happy to watch my kids do the cheers, hang over lanes to encourage their friends and goof around between races (especially after 2 years of covid). Parents who are complaining about a random date, please don't ruin it for the rest of us.

This is a little different though because there are defined age groups in summer swim, but then if your birthday falls in an 8 week period you are allowed to swim in an age group that you have aged out of. It’s also weird to see the listing of the kids’ ages in heat sheets and see Larla Smith age 10 when everyone knows that Larla Smith is actually age 11.

This happens in other sports, though. It happens in baseball, where the age cutoff for the 6+ summer tournaments my kids played in was May 1, so kids (including one of mine) were playing ___U baseball up to 2-3 months after they turned the next age (i.e., playing 9U baseball for the summer after turning 10 in May). And yeah, everyone knows that a fair number of kids in the tournament playing 9U (or 10U, or whatever) are not actually that age. The point is that they created a defined, one year age group - which in that case, is May 1 - April 30 - and everyone with a birthday in that one year age band is in that age group.

My kids are relatively young, but I swam growing up, eventually on scholarship at an NCAA division 1 program- genuine question, do these 15-18 kids not do high school swimming? We did club swimming growing up, but the focus was the HS season, where I was a 14 year old 9th grader swimming against 18-19 year old HS seniors. I'll be honest, I'm struggling to understand why this is so harmful, particularly on the girls' side. And if the concern is that kids are returning to summer league after a year in an NCAA program, then prohibit that- a strictly age-based rule won't do it. I (and plenty of other kids, I'm sure) was 18 until September of my sophomore year of college and could have competed even if you changed the age ranges.

There is a reason for that in team sports vs individual because there are positions on the court/in the field that need to be filled in team sports, as well as developing team chemistry, etc. None of those considerations come into play in swimming, it’s you against the clock. There is literally no reason for there to be kids who have aged out of a group swimming down. It’s a short season, set the cutoff date on August 1st or August 15th (to make sure all stars is complete) and be done with it. It’s so counterintuitive to have swim leagues that start Memorial Day and have an age up cutoff on June 1st as opposed to August at the end of the season. If the cutoff is august no one could complain about 13 year olds swimming in the 11-12 age group.

Yikes, talk about missing the point. First- As someone else said, any way you slice it, kids within a 24 month band are swimming against one another, except at the senior level. That’s consistent with the way other sports do it. And as others have pointed out, you do have the issue of a relay swimmer being eligible during one part of the season but not at all stars. You seem to be really concerned with the logic of a 13 year old being assigned to the 11-12 age group, but keep phrasing it as though that kid is wrongfully swimming against kids who are more than 2 years younger. It’s kind of bizarre, and my point was that for the sake of ease and consistency that’s what other sports do. To the extent there is a concern about the 15-18 age range, if people are this concerned with consistency with club swimming, I’m surprised you’re not pushing for a separate 15-16 age group.

Second- I reference high school swimming because NVSL is more akin to that, and frankly I feel like you and other posters here don’t have a lot of experience with swimming in a team vs club environment. The difference between NVSL and club swimming is that teams develop lineups and compete in dual meets and divisional meets, and that championships are awarded based on what happens over the course of 6+ weeks. Swimming is an individual sport but NVSL is a team competition. That’s why it’s fun, FFS! The season is literally 5 dual meets long, plus capstone all star and champions meets, which are based on performance during the season. In your scenario, say my team has a great 10 year old who turns 11 on June 30th. So that kid is eligible to swim 9-10, and then is moved up for the last few dual meets. But those meets are typically against better teams. How do you fairly determine division winners? I.e., Chesterbrook has the best record but they got to swim tuckahoe when 4 kids had aged up, whereas Overlee had to swim them before. Are teams to look at their lineups and lobby the league to swim their toughest teams early in the season before anyone can age up? (My kids’ team is in division one, and I can guarantee you this would be a bone of contention). This is not a club meet- it’s not JOs and it’s not zones, or whatever other club meet your kids do in the winter and it’s not correct to say that lineups dont matter, and it’s simply the swimmer against the clock. If that were true, why would age group matter at all?

I’m a PP, and this issue really doesn’t matter to me because my kid is a club swimmer that has been able to compete even with kids who are swimming down, but pretending the lineups are a huge deal is a little disingenuous. For our team there are multiple kids that filter in and out of the last slots based on their times, people are on vacation, etc., so there isn’t a whole lot of this continuity you are talking about. It’s not like having to change up point guards midway through a season in basketball. And if the lineup thing is so important, why should teams get to pad their lineup with kids that aren’t in the age group they are swimming in?

I’m going to stop posting because there seems to be some true, deliberate attempts at failing to grasp the point. You and others keep insisting that kids at the top of the age group dominate summer swim, so we’re not talking about the kids who filter in and out of last slots. We’re talking about a team which has a roster including multiple top kids in meet one, and not having those kids in meet 5. If all of these purportedly overage kids are at the bottom of the roster, why would you guys care so much? These are the ringers, right? And basketball point guards take vacations too- that’s not what we’re talking about either.

You’re never going to win this argument so long as you keep insisting that kids aren’t in the age group they’re swimming in or are swimming down. NVSL rules define the age groups. I and numerous other people have explained to you why it’s appropriate in a team oriented league to use a single age cutoff date for the entire season. No one is swimming down. If you know of a swimmer who doesn’t meet the age requirements for the league, by all means, point it out and have them disqualified. If not, please trust- you’re not doing your kid or team any by constantly insinuating, falsely, that their competitors are cheating.

Best of luck next summer, may all of your aggrieved kids be forever guaranteed to swim only against smaller and younger kids.

I understand the rules, I think what many people are saying is that the rules as they exist don’t make a lot of sense. You’re also shifting your argument. You initially argued this was about lineups, and I pointed out that summer swim lineups are not some set in stone concept that must be maintained, the lineups change week to week, which cuts against your argument that lineups must be protected. Then you started talking about the teams that have a bunch of kids at the top during week 1 that would change at week 5 if the cutoff was changed to follow a kid’s actual age. And my response to that is yes, of course it would need to change if during week 5 the top 9-10 swimmers are in fact 11. I don’t understand what is so hard to grasp about this, it’s not being obtuse to have the opinion that a kid who is 11 shouldn’t be swimming with 9-10 year olds. It requires much more mental gymnastics to logically conclude that you should list a kid in the lineup sheet for a 9-10 event as a 10 year old when they are in fact 11.

My argument was not that lineups do not shift. My argument was that you can’t fairly determine a division champion if a team is stronger in meet one than it is in meet 5 simply because a number of its scoring swimmers were moved up an age group. If you did it that way, the championship would be more down to how favorable the schedule is. Again, the issue is that teams are not competing against the same opponents throughout the season. This is quite obviously not the same thing as lineup shifts which occur because some kids got faster or went on vacation.

For the last time, NO ONE IS SWIMMING AGAINST SOMEONE MORE THAN 2 YEARS YOUNGER, and it’s just absurd to insinuate otherwise. The kid who is 11 years, 2 months at the end of the season is swimming against a kid who is, at youngest, 9 years two months. A two year age band, exactly the same as every other age group based swimming event. Promise, you can even look at a calendar to figure it out. No mental gymnastics needed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s an interesting point. My son is a small 7 and he is racing against kids that turned 9 mid season. There is a huge difference between a 7 year old and a 9 year old in height, weight, strength.

Hang on…wait til your swimmer is 11 swimming against that kid when he’s 13.

You poor thing. Your 11 year old swimmer must not be very fast. My 11 year old swimmer can hold their own against the 13 year olds.

Gosh. You're an awful person. Get help.

Parents of kids with summer birthdays are used to always having their kid be the youngest. It happens over and over. It seems a bit ridiculous to hear the parents of kids with school year birthdays to suddenly get bent out of shape that their kid no longer has the advantage in just this one thing. They'll harp on and on about how redshirting is wrong and age cut offs must be respected. Or how after 1st grade it doesn't really matter that their kid is 12 months older, that doesn't give an advantage, their kid is just very athletic. Yet here there is just one June 1st cutoff--the only one I've ever heard of--and those same parents are up in arms. Well, welcome to how it feels. It's no different than my 8 yo being in basketball tryouts with almost 11 yos who have already hit puberty and have 40 lbs and 14 inches on her. (And in this case the disadvantage is only for the fun summer season, your kid can still do winter swim with age cutoffs. With basketball it's the same cutoff for rec, AAU and travel so she'll never have an opportunity to not be the very youngest.)

Yes, its this exactly that is rubbing me the wrong way. I have 2 summer bday kids (who are not club swimmers). When I first read this thread, I thought well I was not allowed to make excuses for my kids behavior in school "because they were the youngest" nor do I make excuses in all the other sports they participate in by grade level where redshirted kids are literally 3 years older than my kids. I just let them play the sport and strive to get better. I have one kid that is tiny and that kid is often 8-10 inches shorter than the other kids on the soccer field. They have had to learn over the years not to be afraid to get in there and mix it up with the bigger kids if they want to get the ball.

Let's be real, for most/all of our kids sports is a way to have fun, teach discipline and sportsmanship. This thread leaves a bad taste in my mouth about swim in general. I am so happy to watch my kids do the cheers, hang over lanes to encourage their friends and goof around between races (especially after 2 years of covid). Parents who are complaining about a random date, please don't ruin it for the rest of us.

This is a little different though because there are defined age groups in summer swim, but then if your birthday falls in an 8 week period you are allowed to swim in an age group that you have aged out of. It’s also weird to see the listing of the kids’ ages in heat sheets and see Larla Smith age 10 when everyone knows that Larla Smith is actually age 11.

This happens in other sports, though. It happens in baseball, where the age cutoff for the 6+ summer tournaments my kids played in was May 1, so kids (including one of mine) were playing ___U baseball up to 2-3 months after they turned the next age (i.e., playing 9U baseball for the summer after turning 10 in May). And yeah, everyone knows that a fair number of kids in the tournament playing 9U (or 10U, or whatever) are not actually that age. The point is that they created a defined, one year age group - which in that case, is May 1 - April 30 - and everyone with a birthday in that one year age band is in that age group.

My kids are relatively young, but I swam growing up, eventually on scholarship at an NCAA division 1 program- genuine question, do these 15-18 kids not do high school swimming? We did club swimming growing up, but the focus was the HS season, where I was a 14 year old 9th grader swimming against 18-19 year old HS seniors. I'll be honest, I'm struggling to understand why this is so harmful, particularly on the girls' side. And if the concern is that kids are returning to summer league after a year in an NCAA program, then prohibit that- a strictly age-based rule won't do it. I (and plenty of other kids, I'm sure) was 18 until September of my sophomore year of college and could have competed even if you changed the age ranges.

There is a reason for that in team sports vs individual because there are positions on the court/in the field that need to be filled in team sports, as well as developing team chemistry, etc. None of those considerations come into play in swimming, it’s you against the clock. There is literally no reason for there to be kids who have aged out of a group swimming down. It’s a short season, set the cutoff date on August 1st or August 15th (to make sure all stars is complete) and be done with it. It’s so counterintuitive to have swim leagues that start Memorial Day and have an age up cutoff on June 1st as opposed to August at the end of the season. If the cutoff is august no one could complain about 13 year olds swimming in the 11-12 age group.

Yikes, talk about missing the point. First- As someone else said, any way you slice it, kids within a 24 month band are swimming against one another, except at the senior level. That’s consistent with the way other sports do it. And as others have pointed out, you do have the issue of a relay swimmer being eligible during one part of the season but not at all stars. You seem to be really concerned with the logic of a 13 year old being assigned to the 11-12 age group, but keep phrasing it as though that kid is wrongfully swimming against kids who are more than 2 years younger. It’s kind of bizarre, and my point was that for the sake of ease and consistency that’s what other sports do. To the extent there is a concern about the 15-18 age range, if people are this concerned with consistency with club swimming, I’m surprised you’re not pushing for a separate 15-16 age group.

Second- I reference high school swimming because NVSL is more akin to that, and frankly I feel like you and other posters here don’t have a lot of experience with swimming in a team vs club environment. The difference between NVSL and club swimming is that teams develop lineups and compete in dual meets and divisional meets, and that championships are awarded based on what happens over the course of 6+ weeks. Swimming is an individual sport but NVSL is a team competition. That’s why it’s fun, FFS! The season is literally 5 dual meets long, plus capstone all star and champions meets, which are based on performance during the season. In your scenario, say my team has a great 10 year old who turns 11 on June 30th. So that kid is eligible to swim 9-10, and then is moved up for the last few dual meets. But those meets are typically against better teams. How do you fairly determine division winners? I.e., Chesterbrook has the best record but they got to swim tuckahoe when 4 kids had aged up, whereas Overlee had to swim them before. Are teams to look at their lineups and lobby the league to swim their toughest teams early in the season before anyone can age up? (My kids’ team is in division one, and I can guarantee you this would be a bone of contention). This is not a club meet- it’s not JOs and it’s not zones, or whatever other club meet your kids do in the winter and it’s not correct to say that lineups dont matter, and it’s simply the swimmer against the clock. If that were true, why would age group matter at all?

I’m a PP, and this issue really doesn’t matter to me because my kid is a club swimmer that has been able to compete even with kids who are swimming down, but pretending the lineups are a huge deal is a little disingenuous. For our team there are multiple kids that filter in and out of the last slots based on their times, people are on vacation, etc., so there isn’t a whole lot of this continuity you are talking about. It’s not like having to change up point guards midway through a season in basketball. And if the lineup thing is so important, why should teams get to pad their lineup with kids that aren’t in the age group they are swimming in?

I’m going to stop posting because there seems to be some true, deliberate attempts at failing to grasp the point. You and others keep insisting that kids at the top of the age group dominate summer swim, so we’re not talking about the kids who filter in and out of last slots. We’re talking about a team which has a roster including multiple top kids in meet one, and not having those kids in meet 5. If all of these purportedly overage kids are at the bottom of the roster, why would you guys care so much? These are the ringers, right? And basketball point guards take vacations too- that’s not what we’re talking about either.

You’re never going to win this argument so long as you keep insisting that kids aren’t in the age group they’re swimming in or are swimming down. NVSL rules define the age groups. I and numerous other people have explained to you why it’s appropriate in a team oriented league to use a single age cutoff date for the entire season. No one is swimming down. If you know of a swimmer who doesn’t meet the age requirements for the league, by all means, point it out and have them disqualified. If not, please trust- you’re not doing your kid or team any by constantly insinuating, falsely, that their competitors are cheating.

Best of luck next summer, may all of your aggrieved kids be forever guaranteed to swim only against smaller and younger kids.

I understand the rules, I think what many people are saying is that the rules as they exist don’t make a lot of sense. You’re also shifting your argument. You initially argued this was about lineups, and I pointed out that summer swim lineups are not some set in stone concept that must be maintained, the lineups change week to week, which cuts against your argument that lineups must be protected. Then you started talking about the teams that have a bunch of kids at the top during week 1 that would change at week 5 if the cutoff was changed to follow a kid’s actual age. And my response to that is yes, of course it would need to change if during week 5 the top 9-10 swimmers are in fact 11. I don’t understand what is so hard to grasp about this, it’s not being obtuse to have the opinion that a kid who is 11 shouldn’t be swimming with 9-10 year olds. It requires much more mental gymnastics to logically conclude that you should list a kid in the lineup sheet for a 9-10 event as a 10 year old when they are in fact 11.

Huh? They set age groups as of June 1st. It's a snapshot for kids' ages as of that date and it holds for the short summer season. It means every age bracket contains exactly 24 months of birthdays. That's a completely logical choice. It's static and clear. No one is swimming overage or they should be disqualified.

The 9-10 age bracket is for kids who were 9 or 10 as of June 1st. No one cares about their age the day of the meet because thats not the standard.
No young 9 yos with post-June 1sr birthdays are disadvantaged because they follow the same rule and swim with their bracket. The bracket is exactly 24 months.

Some people are seriously bad at math. Geeze. If you are arguing for an August cutoff It's because your kid has a spring birthday. Give it up. August is no more fair than July--24 months is 24 months.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s an interesting point. My son is a small 7 and he is racing against kids that turned 9 mid season. There is a huge difference between a 7 year old and a 9 year old in height, weight, strength.

Hang on…wait til your swimmer is 11 swimming against that kid when he’s 13.

You poor thing. Your 11 year old swimmer must not be very fast. My 11 year old swimmer can hold their own against the 13 year olds.

Gosh. You're an awful person. Get help.

Parents of kids with summer birthdays are used to always having their kid be the youngest. It happens over and over. It seems a bit ridiculous to hear the parents of kids with school year birthdays to suddenly get bent out of shape that their kid no longer has the advantage in just this one thing. They'll harp on and on about how redshirting is wrong and age cut offs must be respected. Or how after 1st grade it doesn't really matter that their kid is 12 months older, that doesn't give an advantage, their kid is just very athletic. Yet here there is just one June 1st cutoff--the only one I've ever heard of--and those same parents are up in arms. Well, welcome to how it feels. It's no different than my 8 yo being in basketball tryouts with almost 11 yos who have already hit puberty and have 40 lbs and 14 inches on her. (And in this case the disadvantage is only for the fun summer season, your kid can still do winter swim with age cutoffs. With basketball it's the same cutoff for rec, AAU and travel so she'll never have an opportunity to not be the very youngest.)

Yes, its this exactly that is rubbing me the wrong way. I have 2 summer bday kids (who are not club swimmers). When I first read this thread, I thought well I was not allowed to make excuses for my kids behavior in school "because they were the youngest" nor do I make excuses in all the other sports they participate in by grade level where redshirted kids are literally 3 years older than my kids. I just let them play the sport and strive to get better. I have one kid that is tiny and that kid is often 8-10 inches shorter than the other kids on the soccer field. They have had to learn over the years not to be afraid to get in there and mix it up with the bigger kids if they want to get the ball.

Let's be real, for most/all of our kids sports is a way to have fun, teach discipline and sportsmanship. This thread leaves a bad taste in my mouth about swim in general. I am so happy to watch my kids do the cheers, hang over lanes to encourage their friends and goof around between races (especially after 2 years of covid). Parents who are complaining about a random date, please don't ruin it for the rest of us.

This is a little different though because there are defined age groups in summer swim, but then if your birthday falls in an 8 week period you are allowed to swim in an age group that you have aged out of. It’s also weird to see the listing of the kids’ ages in heat sheets and see Larla Smith age 10 when everyone knows that Larla Smith is actually age 11.

This happens in other sports, though. It happens in baseball, where the age cutoff for the 6+ summer tournaments my kids played in was May 1, so kids (including one of mine) were playing ___U baseball up to 2-3 months after they turned the next age (i.e., playing 9U baseball for the summer after turning 10 in May). And yeah, everyone knows that a fair number of kids in the tournament playing 9U (or 10U, or whatever) are not actually that age. The point is that they created a defined, one year age group - which in that case, is May 1 - April 30 - and everyone with a birthday in that one year age band is in that age group.

My kids are relatively young, but I swam growing up, eventually on scholarship at an NCAA division 1 program- genuine question, do these 15-18 kids not do high school swimming? We did club swimming growing up, but the focus was the HS season, where I was a 14 year old 9th grader swimming against 18-19 year old HS seniors. I'll be honest, I'm struggling to understand why this is so harmful, particularly on the girls' side. And if the concern is that kids are returning to summer league after a year in an NCAA program, then prohibit that- a strictly age-based rule won't do it. I (and plenty of other kids, I'm sure) was 18 until September of my sophomore year of college and could have competed even if you changed the age ranges.

There is a reason for that in team sports vs individual because there are positions on the court/in the field that need to be filled in team sports, as well as developing team chemistry, etc. None of those considerations come into play in swimming, it’s you against the clock. There is literally no reason for there to be kids who have aged out of a group swimming down. It’s a short season, set the cutoff date on August 1st or August 15th (to make sure all stars is complete) and be done with it. It’s so counterintuitive to have swim leagues that start Memorial Day and have an age up cutoff on June 1st as opposed to August at the end of the season. If the cutoff is august no one could complain about 13 year olds swimming in the 11-12 age group.

Yikes, talk about missing the point. First- As someone else said, any way you slice it, kids within a 24 month band are swimming against one another, except at the senior level. That’s consistent with the way other sports do it. And as others have pointed out, you do have the issue of a relay swimmer being eligible during one part of the season but not at all stars. You seem to be really concerned with the logic of a 13 year old being assigned to the 11-12 age group, but keep phrasing it as though that kid is wrongfully swimming against kids who are more than 2 years younger. It’s kind of bizarre, and my point was that for the sake of ease and consistency that’s what other sports do. To the extent there is a concern about the 15-18 age range, if people are this concerned with consistency with club swimming, I’m surprised you’re not pushing for a separate 15-16 age group.

Second- I reference high school swimming because NVSL is more akin to that, and frankly I feel like you and other posters here don’t have a lot of experience with swimming in a team vs club environment. The difference between NVSL and club swimming is that teams develop lineups and compete in dual meets and divisional meets, and that championships are awarded based on what happens over the course of 6+ weeks. Swimming is an individual sport but NVSL is a team competition. That’s why it’s fun, FFS! The season is literally 5 dual meets long, plus capstone all star and champions meets, which are based on performance during the season. In your scenario, say my team has a great 10 year old who turns 11 on June 30th. So that kid is eligible to swim 9-10, and then is moved up for the last few dual meets. But those meets are typically against better teams. How do you fairly determine division winners? I.e., Chesterbrook has the best record but they got to swim tuckahoe when 4 kids had aged up, whereas Overlee had to swim them before. Are teams to look at their lineups and lobby the league to swim their toughest teams early in the season before anyone can age up? (My kids’ team is in division one, and I can guarantee you this would be a bone of contention). This is not a club meet- it’s not JOs and it’s not zones, or whatever other club meet your kids do in the winter and it’s not correct to say that lineups dont matter, and it’s simply the swimmer against the clock. If that were true, why would age group matter at all?

I’m a PP, and this issue really doesn’t matter to me because my kid is a club swimmer that has been able to compete even with kids who are swimming down, but pretending the lineups are a huge deal is a little disingenuous. For our team there are multiple kids that filter in and out of the last slots based on their times, people are on vacation, etc., so there isn’t a whole lot of this continuity you are talking about. It’s not like having to change up point guards midway through a season in basketball. And if the lineup thing is so important, why should teams get to pad their lineup with kids that aren’t in the age group they are swimming in?

I’m going to stop posting because there seems to be some true, deliberate attempts at failing to grasp the point. You and others keep insisting that kids at the top of the age group dominate summer swim, so we’re not talking about the kids who filter in and out of last slots. We’re talking about a team which has a roster including multiple top kids in meet one, and not having those kids in meet 5. If all of these purportedly overage kids are at the bottom of the roster, why would you guys care so much? These are the ringers, right? And basketball point guards take vacations too- that’s not what we’re talking about either.

You’re never going to win this argument so long as you keep insisting that kids aren’t in the age group they’re swimming in or are swimming down. NVSL rules define the age groups. I and numerous other people have explained to you why it’s appropriate in a team oriented league to use a single age cutoff date for the entire season. No one is swimming down. If you know of a swimmer who doesn’t meet the age requirements for the league, by all means, point it out and have them disqualified. If not, please trust- you’re not doing your kid or team any by constantly insinuating, falsely, that their competitors are cheating.

Best of luck next summer, may all of your aggrieved kids be forever guaranteed to swim only against smaller and younger kids.

And may your 19 year old get their needed satisfaction out of competing with kids in rec league swim.

Lol, thanks? My all star this year was 7, but ok.

And may your children go far in life learning the most valuable lesson in sport- if at first you don’t succeed, be sure to tell mommy so she can have the rules changed. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s an interesting point. My son is a small 7 and he is racing against kids that turned 9 mid season. There is a huge difference between a 7 year old and a 9 year old in height, weight, strength.

Hang on…wait til your swimmer is 11 swimming against that kid when he’s 13.

You poor thing. Your 11 year old swimmer must not be very fast. My 11 year old swimmer can hold their own against the 13 year olds.

Gosh. You're an awful person. Get help.

Parents of kids with summer birthdays are used to always having their kid be the youngest. It happens over and over. It seems a bit ridiculous to hear the parents of kids with school year birthdays to suddenly get bent out of shape that their kid no longer has the advantage in just this one thing. They'll harp on and on about how redshirting is wrong and age cut offs must be respected. Or how after 1st grade it doesn't really matter that their kid is 12 months older, that doesn't give an advantage, their kid is just very athletic. Yet here there is just one June 1st cutoff--the only one I've ever heard of--and those same parents are up in arms. Well, welcome to how it feels. It's no different than my 8 yo being in basketball tryouts with almost 11 yos who have already hit puberty and have 40 lbs and 14 inches on her. (And in this case the disadvantage is only for the fun summer season, your kid can still do winter swim with age cutoffs. With basketball it's the same cutoff for rec, AAU and travel so she'll never have an opportunity to not be the very youngest.)

Yes, its this exactly that is rubbing me the wrong way. I have 2 summer bday kids (who are not club swimmers). When I first read this thread, I thought well I was not allowed to make excuses for my kids behavior in school "because they were the youngest" nor do I make excuses in all the other sports they participate in by grade level where redshirted kids are literally 3 years older than my kids. I just let them play the sport and strive to get better. I have one kid that is tiny and that kid is often 8-10 inches shorter than the other kids on the soccer field. They have had to learn over the years not to be afraid to get in there and mix it up with the bigger kids if they want to get the ball.

Let's be real, for most/all of our kids sports is a way to have fun, teach discipline and sportsmanship. This thread leaves a bad taste in my mouth about swim in general. I am so happy to watch my kids do the cheers, hang over lanes to encourage their friends and goof around between races (especially after 2 years of covid). Parents who are complaining about a random date, please don't ruin it for the rest of us.

This is a little different though because there are defined age groups in summer swim, but then if your birthday falls in an 8 week period you are allowed to swim in an age group that you have aged out of. It’s also weird to see the listing of the kids’ ages in heat sheets and see Larla Smith age 10 when everyone knows that Larla Smith is actually age 11.

This happens in other sports, though. It happens in baseball, where the age cutoff for the 6+ summer tournaments my kids played in was May 1, so kids (including one of mine) were playing ___U baseball up to 2-3 months after they turned the next age (i.e., playing 9U baseball for the summer after turning 10 in May). And yeah, everyone knows that a fair number of kids in the tournament playing 9U (or 10U, or whatever) are not actually that age. The point is that they created a defined, one year age group - which in that case, is May 1 - April 30 - and everyone with a birthday in that one year age band is in that age group.

My kids are relatively young, but I swam growing up, eventually on scholarship at an NCAA division 1 program- genuine question, do these 15-18 kids not do high school swimming? We did club swimming growing up, but the focus was the HS season, where I was a 14 year old 9th grader swimming against 18-19 year old HS seniors. I'll be honest, I'm struggling to understand why this is so harmful, particularly on the girls' side. And if the concern is that kids are returning to summer league after a year in an NCAA program, then prohibit that- a strictly age-based rule won't do it. I (and plenty of other kids, I'm sure) was 18 until September of my sophomore year of college and could have competed even if you changed the age ranges.

There is a reason for that in team sports vs individual because there are positions on the court/in the field that need to be filled in team sports, as well as developing team chemistry, etc. None of those considerations come into play in swimming, it’s you against the clock. There is literally no reason for there to be kids who have aged out of a group swimming down. It’s a short season, set the cutoff date on August 1st or August 15th (to make sure all stars is complete) and be done with it. It’s so counterintuitive to have swim leagues that start Memorial Day and have an age up cutoff on June 1st as opposed to August at the end of the season. If the cutoff is august no one could complain about 13 year olds swimming in the 11-12 age group.

Yikes, talk about missing the point. First- As someone else said, any way you slice it, kids within a 24 month band are swimming against one another, except at the senior level. That’s consistent with the way other sports do it. And as others have pointed out, you do have the issue of a relay swimmer being eligible during one part of the season but not at all stars. You seem to be really concerned with the logic of a 13 year old being assigned to the 11-12 age group, but keep phrasing it as though that kid is wrongfully swimming against kids who are more than 2 years younger. It’s kind of bizarre, and my point was that for the sake of ease and consistency that’s what other sports do. To the extent there is a concern about the 15-18 age range, if people are this concerned with consistency with club swimming, I’m surprised you’re not pushing for a separate 15-16 age group.

Second- I reference high school swimming because NVSL is more akin to that, and frankly I feel like you and other posters here don’t have a lot of experience with swimming in a team vs club environment. The difference between NVSL and club swimming is that teams develop lineups and compete in dual meets and divisional meets, and that championships are awarded based on what happens over the course of 6+ weeks. Swimming is an individual sport but NVSL is a team competition. That’s why it’s fun, FFS! The season is literally 5 dual meets long, plus capstone all star and champions meets, which are based on performance during the season. In your scenario, say my team has a great 10 year old who turns 11 on June 30th. So that kid is eligible to swim 9-10, and then is moved up for the last few dual meets. But those meets are typically against better teams. How do you fairly determine division winners? I.e., Chesterbrook has the best record but they got to swim tuckahoe when 4 kids had aged up, whereas Overlee had to swim them before. Are teams to look at their lineups and lobby the league to swim their toughest teams early in the season before anyone can age up? (My kids’ team is in division one, and I can guarantee you this would be a bone of contention). This is not a club meet- it’s not JOs and it’s not zones, or whatever other club meet your kids do in the winter and it’s not correct to say that lineups dont matter, and it’s simply the swimmer against the clock. If that were true, why would age group matter at all?

I’m a PP, and this issue really doesn’t matter to me because my kid is a club swimmer that has been able to compete even with kids who are swimming down, but pretending the lineups are a huge deal is a little disingenuous. For our team there are multiple kids that filter in and out of the last slots based on their times, people are on vacation, etc., so there isn’t a whole lot of this continuity you are talking about. It’s not like having to change up point guards midway through a season in basketball. And if the lineup thing is so important, why should teams get to pad their lineup with kids that aren’t in the age group they are swimming in?

I’m going to stop posting because there seems to be some true, deliberate attempts at failing to grasp the point. You and others keep insisting that kids at the top of the age group dominate summer swim, so we’re not talking about the kids who filter in and out of last slots. We’re talking about a team which has a roster including multiple top kids in meet one, and not having those kids in meet 5. If all of these purportedly overage kids are at the bottom of the roster, why would you guys care so much? These are the ringers, right? And basketball point guards take vacations too- that’s not what we’re talking about either.

You’re never going to win this argument so long as you keep insisting that kids aren’t in the age group they’re swimming in or are swimming down. NVSL rules define the age groups. I and numerous other people have explained to you why it’s appropriate in a team oriented league to use a single age cutoff date for the entire season. No one is swimming down. If you know of a swimmer who doesn’t meet the age requirements for the league, by all means, point it out and have them disqualified. If not, please trust- you’re not doing your kid or team any by constantly insinuating, falsely, that their competitors are cheating.

Best of luck next summer, may all of your aggrieved kids be forever guaranteed to swim only against smaller and younger kids.

I understand the rules, I think what many people are saying is that the rules as they exist don’t make a lot of sense. You’re also shifting your argument. You initially argued this was about lineups, and I pointed out that summer swim lineups are not some set in stone concept that must be maintained, the lineups change week to week, which cuts against your argument that lineups must be protected. Then you started talking about the teams that have a bunch of kids at the top during week 1 that would change at week 5 if the cutoff was changed to follow a kid’s actual age. And my response to that is yes, of course it would need to change if during week 5 the top 9-10 swimmers are in fact 11. I don’t understand what is so hard to grasp about this, it’s not being obtuse to have the opinion that a kid who is 11 shouldn’t be swimming with 9-10 year olds. It requires much more mental gymnastics to logically conclude that you should list a kid in the lineup sheet for a 9-10 event as a 10 year old when they are in fact 11.

Huh? They set age groups as of June 1st. It's a snapshot for kids' ages as of that date and it holds for the short summer season. It means every age bracket contains exactly 24 months of birthdays. That's a completely logical choice. It's static and clear. No one is swimming overage or they should be disqualified.

The 9-10 age bracket is for kids who were 9 or 10 as of June 1st. No one cares about their age the day of the meet because thats not the standard.
No young 9 yos with post-June 1sr birthdays are disadvantaged because they follow the same rule and swim with their bracket. The bracket is exactly 24 months.

Some people are seriously bad at math. Geeze. If you are arguing for an August cutoff It's because your kid has a spring birthday. Give it up. August is no more fair than July--24 months is 24 months.

No, an August cutoff would mean that only kids that are 9 and 10 are competing in an age group that is labeled…wait for it….9 and 10. I could also say that the people pushing this hard for a June cutoff which enables 11 year olds to swim in a 9/10 age group must have kids with summer birthdays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s an interesting point. My son is a small 7 and he is racing against kids that turned 9 mid season. There is a huge difference between a 7 year old and a 9 year old in height, weight, strength.

Hang on…wait til your swimmer is 11 swimming against that kid when he’s 13.

You poor thing. Your 11 year old swimmer must not be very fast. My 11 year old swimmer can hold their own against the 13 year olds.

Gosh. You're an awful person. Get help.

Parents of kids with summer birthdays are used to always having their kid be the youngest. It happens over and over. It seems a bit ridiculous to hear the parents of kids with school year birthdays to suddenly get bent out of shape that their kid no longer has the advantage in just this one thing. They'll harp on and on about how redshirting is wrong and age cut offs must be respected. Or how after 1st grade it doesn't really matter that their kid is 12 months older, that doesn't give an advantage, their kid is just very athletic. Yet here there is just one June 1st cutoff--the only one I've ever heard of--and those same parents are up in arms. Well, welcome to how it feels. It's no different than my 8 yo being in basketball tryouts with almost 11 yos who have already hit puberty and have 40 lbs and 14 inches on her. (And in this case the disadvantage is only for the fun summer season, your kid can still do winter swim with age cutoffs. With basketball it's the same cutoff for rec, AAU and travel so she'll never have an opportunity to not be the very youngest.)

Yes, its this exactly that is rubbing me the wrong way. I have 2 summer bday kids (who are not club swimmers). When I first read this thread, I thought well I was not allowed to make excuses for my kids behavior in school "because they were the youngest" nor do I make excuses in all the other sports they participate in by grade level where redshirted kids are literally 3 years older than my kids. I just let them play the sport and strive to get better. I have one kid that is tiny and that kid is often 8-10 inches shorter than the other kids on the soccer field. They have had to learn over the years not to be afraid to get in there and mix it up with the bigger kids if they want to get the ball.

Let's be real, for most/all of our kids sports is a way to have fun, teach discipline and sportsmanship. This thread leaves a bad taste in my mouth about swim in general. I am so happy to watch my kids do the cheers, hang over lanes to encourage their friends and goof around between races (especially after 2 years of covid). Parents who are complaining about a random date, please don't ruin it for the rest of us.

This is a little different though because there are defined age groups in summer swim, but then if your birthday falls in an 8 week period you are allowed to swim in an age group that you have aged out of. It’s also weird to see the listing of the kids’ ages in heat sheets and see Larla Smith age 10 when everyone knows that Larla Smith is actually age 11.

This happens in other sports, though. It happens in baseball, where the age cutoff for the 6+ summer tournaments my kids played in was May 1, so kids (including one of mine) were playing ___U baseball up to 2-3 months after they turned the next age (i.e., playing 9U baseball for the summer after turning 10 in May). And yeah, everyone knows that a fair number of kids in the tournament playing 9U (or 10U, or whatever) are not actually that age. The point is that they created a defined, one year age group - which in that case, is May 1 - April 30 - and everyone with a birthday in that one year age band is in that age group.

My kids are relatively young, but I swam growing up, eventually on scholarship at an NCAA division 1 program- genuine question, do these 15-18 kids not do high school swimming? We did club swimming growing up, but the focus was the HS season, where I was a 14 year old 9th grader swimming against 18-19 year old HS seniors. I'll be honest, I'm struggling to understand why this is so harmful, particularly on the girls' side. And if the concern is that kids are returning to summer league after a year in an NCAA program, then prohibit that- a strictly age-based rule won't do it. I (and plenty of other kids, I'm sure) was 18 until September of my sophomore year of college and could have competed even if you changed the age ranges.

There is a reason for that in team sports vs individual because there are positions on the court/in the field that need to be filled in team sports, as well as developing team chemistry, etc. None of those considerations come into play in swimming, it’s you against the clock. There is literally no reason for there to be kids who have aged out of a group swimming down. It’s a short season, set the cutoff date on August 1st or August 15th (to make sure all stars is complete) and be done with it. It’s so counterintuitive to have swim leagues that start Memorial Day and have an age up cutoff on June 1st as opposed to August at the end of the season. If the cutoff is august no one could complain about 13 year olds swimming in the 11-12 age group.

Yikes, talk about missing the point. First- As someone else said, any way you slice it, kids within a 24 month band are swimming against one another, except at the senior level. That’s consistent with the way other sports do it. And as others have pointed out, you do have the issue of a relay swimmer being eligible during one part of the season but not at all stars. You seem to be really concerned with the logic of a 13 year old being assigned to the 11-12 age group, but keep phrasing it as though that kid is wrongfully swimming against kids who are more than 2 years younger. It’s kind of bizarre, and my point was that for the sake of ease and consistency that’s what other sports do. To the extent there is a concern about the 15-18 age range, if people are this concerned with consistency with club swimming, I’m surprised you’re not pushing for a separate 15-16 age group.

Second- I reference high school swimming because NVSL is more akin to that, and frankly I feel like you and other posters here don’t have a lot of experience with swimming in a team vs club environment. The difference between NVSL and club swimming is that teams develop lineups and compete in dual meets and divisional meets, and that championships are awarded based on what happens over the course of 6+ weeks. Swimming is an individual sport but NVSL is a team competition. That’s why it’s fun, FFS! The season is literally 5 dual meets long, plus capstone all star and champions meets, which are based on performance during the season. In your scenario, say my team has a great 10 year old who turns 11 on June 30th. So that kid is eligible to swim 9-10, and then is moved up for the last few dual meets. But those meets are typically against better teams. How do you fairly determine division winners? I.e., Chesterbrook has the best record but they got to swim tuckahoe when 4 kids had aged up, whereas Overlee had to swim them before. Are teams to look at their lineups and lobby the league to swim their toughest teams early in the season before anyone can age up? (My kids’ team is in division one, and I can guarantee you this would be a bone of contention). This is not a club meet- it’s not JOs and it’s not zones, or whatever other club meet your kids do in the winter and it’s not correct to say that lineups dont matter, and it’s simply the swimmer against the clock. If that were true, why would age group matter at all?

I’m a PP, and this issue really doesn’t matter to me because my kid is a club swimmer that has been able to compete even with kids who are swimming down, but pretending the lineups are a huge deal is a little disingenuous. For our team there are multiple kids that filter in and out of the last slots based on their times, people are on vacation, etc., so there isn’t a whole lot of this continuity you are talking about. It’s not like having to change up point guards midway through a season in basketball. And if the lineup thing is so important, why should teams get to pad their lineup with kids that aren’t in the age group they are swimming in?

I’m going to stop posting because there seems to be some true, deliberate attempts at failing to grasp the point. You and others keep insisting that kids at the top of the age group dominate summer swim, so we’re not talking about the kids who filter in and out of last slots. We’re talking about a team which has a roster including multiple top kids in meet one, and not having those kids in meet 5. If all of these purportedly overage kids are at the bottom of the roster, why would you guys care so much? These are the ringers, right? And basketball point guards take vacations too- that’s not what we’re talking about either.

You’re never going to win this argument so long as you keep insisting that kids aren’t in the age group they’re swimming in or are swimming down. NVSL rules define the age groups. I and numerous other people have explained to you why it’s appropriate in a team oriented league to use a single age cutoff date for the entire season. No one is swimming down. If you know of a swimmer who doesn’t meet the age requirements for the league, by all means, point it out and have them disqualified. If not, please trust- you’re not doing your kid or team any by constantly insinuating, falsely, that their competitors are cheating.

Best of luck next summer, may all of your aggrieved kids be forever guaranteed to swim only against smaller and younger kids.

I understand the rules, I think what many people are saying is that the rules as they exist don’t make a lot of sense. You’re also shifting your argument. You initially argued this was about lineups, and I pointed out that summer swim lineups are not some set in stone concept that must be maintained, the lineups change week to week, which cuts against your argument that lineups must be protected. Then you started talking about the teams that have a bunch of kids at the top during week 1 that would change at week 5 if the cutoff was changed to follow a kid’s actual age. And my response to that is yes, of course it would need to change if during week 5 the top 9-10 swimmers are in fact 11. I don’t understand what is so hard to grasp about this, it’s not being obtuse to have the opinion that a kid who is 11 shouldn’t be swimming with 9-10 year olds. It requires much more mental gymnastics to logically conclude that you should list a kid in the lineup sheet for a 9-10 event as a 10 year old when they are in fact 11.

Huh? They set age groups as of June 1st. It's a snapshot for kids' ages as of that date and it holds for the short summer season. It means every age bracket contains exactly 24 months of birthdays. That's a completely logical choice. It's static and clear. No one is swimming overage or they should be disqualified.

The 9-10 age bracket is for kids who were 9 or 10 as of June 1st. No one cares about their age the day of the meet because thats not the standard.
No young 9 yos with post-June 1sr birthdays are disadvantaged because they follow the same rule and swim with their bracket. The bracket is exactly 24 months.

Some people are seriously bad at math. Geeze. If you are arguing for an August cutoff It's because your kid has a spring birthday. Give it up. August is no more fair than July--24 months is 24 months.

No, an August cutoff would mean that only kids that are 9 and 10 are competing in an age group that is labeled…wait for it….9 and 10. I could also say that the people pushing this hard for a June cutoff which enables 11 year olds to swim in a 9/10 age group must have kids with summer birthdays.

It's a normal cutoff for summer swim all over the country and has been that way for years. The 9-10 age bracket means that age as of June 1st. No kid who is 11 yo on June 1st falls in that bracket.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s an interesting point. My son is a small 7 and he is racing against kids that turned 9 mid season. There is a huge difference between a 7 year old and a 9 year old in height, weight, strength.

Hang on…wait til your swimmer is 11 swimming against that kid when he’s 13.

You poor thing. Your 11 year old swimmer must not be very fast. My 11 year old swimmer can hold their own against the 13 year olds.

Gosh. You're an awful person. Get help.

Parents of kids with summer birthdays are used to always having their kid be the youngest. It happens over and over. It seems a bit ridiculous to hear the parents of kids with school year birthdays to suddenly get bent out of shape that their kid no longer has the advantage in just this one thing. They'll harp on and on about how redshirting is wrong and age cut offs must be respected. Or how after 1st grade it doesn't really matter that their kid is 12 months older, that doesn't give an advantage, their kid is just very athletic. Yet here there is just one June 1st cutoff--the only one I've ever heard of--and those same parents are up in arms. Well, welcome to how it feels. It's no different than my 8 yo being in basketball tryouts with almost 11 yos who have already hit puberty and have 40 lbs and 14 inches on her. (And in this case the disadvantage is only for the fun summer season, your kid can still do winter swim with age cutoffs. With basketball it's the same cutoff for rec, AAU and travel so she'll never have an opportunity to not be the very youngest.)

Yes, its this exactly that is rubbing me the wrong way. I have 2 summer bday kids (who are not club swimmers). When I first read this thread, I thought well I was not allowed to make excuses for my kids behavior in school "because they were the youngest" nor do I make excuses in all the other sports they participate in by grade level where redshirted kids are literally 3 years older than my kids. I just let them play the sport and strive to get better. I have one kid that is tiny and that kid is often 8-10 inches shorter than the other kids on the soccer field. They have had to learn over the years not to be afraid to get in there and mix it up with the bigger kids if they want to get the ball.

Let's be real, for most/all of our kids sports is a way to have fun, teach discipline and sportsmanship. This thread leaves a bad taste in my mouth about swim in general. I am so happy to watch my kids do the cheers, hang over lanes to encourage their friends and goof around between races (especially after 2 years of covid). Parents who are complaining about a random date, please don't ruin it for the rest of us.

This is a little different though because there are defined age groups in summer swim, but then if your birthday falls in an 8 week period you are allowed to swim in an age group that you have aged out of. It’s also weird to see the listing of the kids’ ages in heat sheets and see Larla Smith age 10 when everyone knows that Larla Smith is actually age 11.

This happens in other sports, though. It happens in baseball, where the age cutoff for the 6+ summer tournaments my kids played in was May 1, so kids (including one of mine) were playing ___U baseball up to 2-3 months after they turned the next age (i.e., playing 9U baseball for the summer after turning 10 in May). And yeah, everyone knows that a fair number of kids in the tournament playing 9U (or 10U, or whatever) are not actually that age. The point is that they created a defined, one year age group - which in that case, is May 1 - April 30 - and everyone with a birthday in that one year age band is in that age group.

My kids are relatively young, but I swam growing up, eventually on scholarship at an NCAA division 1 program- genuine question, do these 15-18 kids not do high school swimming? We did club swimming growing up, but the focus was the HS season, where I was a 14 year old 9th grader swimming against 18-19 year old HS seniors. I'll be honest, I'm struggling to understand why this is so harmful, particularly on the girls' side. And if the concern is that kids are returning to summer league after a year in an NCAA program, then prohibit that- a strictly age-based rule won't do it. I (and plenty of other kids, I'm sure) was 18 until September of my sophomore year of college and could have competed even if you changed the age ranges.

There is a reason for that in team sports vs individual because there are positions on the court/in the field that need to be filled in team sports, as well as developing team chemistry, etc. None of those considerations come into play in swimming, it’s you against the clock. There is literally no reason for there to be kids who have aged out of a group swimming down. It’s a short season, set the cutoff date on August 1st or August 15th (to make sure all stars is complete) and be done with it. It’s so counterintuitive to have swim leagues that start Memorial Day and have an age up cutoff on June 1st as opposed to August at the end of the season. If the cutoff is august no one could complain about 13 year olds swimming in the 11-12 age group.

Yikes, talk about missing the point. First- As someone else said, any way you slice it, kids within a 24 month band are swimming against one another, except at the senior level. That’s consistent with the way other sports do it. And as others have pointed out, you do have the issue of a relay swimmer being eligible during one part of the season but not at all stars. You seem to be really concerned with the logic of a 13 year old being assigned to the 11-12 age group, but keep phrasing it as though that kid is wrongfully swimming against kids who are more than 2 years younger. It’s kind of bizarre, and my point was that for the sake of ease and consistency that’s what other sports do. To the extent there is a concern about the 15-18 age range, if people are this concerned with consistency with club swimming, I’m surprised you’re not pushing for a separate 15-16 age group.

Second- I reference high school swimming because NVSL is more akin to that, and frankly I feel like you and other posters here don’t have a lot of experience with swimming in a team vs club environment. The difference between NVSL and club swimming is that teams develop lineups and compete in dual meets and divisional meets, and that championships are awarded based on what happens over the course of 6+ weeks. Swimming is an individual sport but NVSL is a team competition. That’s why it’s fun, FFS! The season is literally 5 dual meets long, plus capstone all star and champions meets, which are based on performance during the season. In your scenario, say my team has a great 10 year old who turns 11 on June 30th. So that kid is eligible to swim 9-10, and then is moved up for the last few dual meets. But those meets are typically against better teams. How do you fairly determine division winners? I.e., Chesterbrook has the best record but they got to swim tuckahoe when 4 kids had aged up, whereas Overlee had to swim them before. Are teams to look at their lineups and lobby the league to swim their toughest teams early in the season before anyone can age up? (My kids’ team is in division one, and I can guarantee you this would be a bone of contention). This is not a club meet- it’s not JOs and it’s not zones, or whatever other club meet your kids do in the winter and it’s not correct to say that lineups dont matter, and it’s simply the swimmer against the clock. If that were true, why would age group matter at all?

I’m a PP, and this issue really doesn’t matter to me because my kid is a club swimmer that has been able to compete even with kids who are swimming down, but pretending the lineups are a huge deal is a little disingenuous. For our team there are multiple kids that filter in and out of the last slots based on their times, people are on vacation, etc., so there isn’t a whole lot of this continuity you are talking about. It’s not like having to change up point guards midway through a season in basketball. And if the lineup thing is so important, why should teams get to pad their lineup with kids that aren’t in the age group they are swimming in?

I’m going to stop posting because there seems to be some true, deliberate attempts at failing to grasp the point. You and others keep insisting that kids at the top of the age group dominate summer swim, so we’re not talking about the kids who filter in and out of last slots. We’re talking about a team which has a roster including multiple top kids in meet one, and not having those kids in meet 5. If all of these purportedly overage kids are at the bottom of the roster, why would you guys care so much? These are the ringers, right? And basketball point guards take vacations too- that’s not what we’re talking about either.

You’re never going to win this argument so long as you keep insisting that kids aren’t in the age group they’re swimming in or are swimming down. NVSL rules define the age groups. I and numerous other people have explained to you why it’s appropriate in a team oriented league to use a single age cutoff date for the entire season. No one is swimming down. If you know of a swimmer who doesn’t meet the age requirements for the league, by all means, point it out and have them disqualified. If not, please trust- you’re not doing your kid or team any by constantly insinuating, falsely, that their competitors are cheating.

Best of luck next summer, may all of your aggrieved kids be forever guaranteed to swim only against smaller and younger kids.

And may your 19 year old get their needed satisfaction out of competing with kids in rec league swim.

Lol, thanks? My all star this year was 7, but ok.

And may your children go far in life learning the most valuable lesson in sport- if at first you don’t succeed, be sure to tell mommy so she can have the rules changed. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Lol just like you assumed that I have a kid that’s aggrieved by this rule, she’s not but thanks for your concern But kids should learn that if there are rules that objectively don’t make sense, it is okay to work to get those rules changed. This is how it’s always been done is not always an acceptable answer, another good life lesson.

[Anonymous]

There are 2 arguments regularly being ignored in this thread.

1. 24 months is 24 months regardless of when the cutoff is set. Therefore there is never more than 24 months between the youngest and oldest in the division.

2. The June 1st cutoff has been used by summer swim leagues around the country for DECADES. It’s not something new or some conspiracy to screw over kids born on May 31st. It’s done to keep the age brackets consistent through a super compact swim Season where there are 12 regular season meets in 5 weeks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s an interesting point. My son is a small 7 and he is racing against kids that turned 9 mid season. There is a huge difference between a 7 year old and a 9 year old in height, weight, strength.

Hang on…wait til your swimmer is 11 swimming against that kid when he’s 13.

You poor thing. Your 11 year old swimmer must not be very fast. My 11 year old swimmer can hold their own against the 13 year olds.

Gosh. You're an awful person. Get help.

Parents of kids with summer birthdays are used to always having their kid be the youngest. It happens over and over. It seems a bit ridiculous to hear the parents of kids with school year birthdays to suddenly get bent out of shape that their kid no longer has the advantage in just this one thing. They'll harp on and on about how redshirting is wrong and age cut offs must be respected. Or how after 1st grade it doesn't really matter that their kid is 12 months older, that doesn't give an advantage, their kid is just very athletic. Yet here there is just one June 1st cutoff--the only one I've ever heard of--and those same parents are up in arms. Well, welcome to how it feels. It's no different than my 8 yo being in basketball tryouts with almost 11 yos who have already hit puberty and have 40 lbs and 14 inches on her. (And in this case the disadvantage is only for the fun summer season, your kid can still do winter swim with age cutoffs. With basketball it's the same cutoff for rec, AAU and travel so she'll never have an opportunity to not be the very youngest.)

Yes, its this exactly that is rubbing me the wrong way. I have 2 summer bday kids (who are not club swimmers). When I first read this thread, I thought well I was not allowed to make excuses for my kids behavior in school "because they were the youngest" nor do I make excuses in all the other sports they participate in by grade level where redshirted kids are literally 3 years older than my kids. I just let them play the sport and strive to get better. I have one kid that is tiny and that kid is often 8-10 inches shorter than the other kids on the soccer field. They have had to learn over the years not to be afraid to get in there and mix it up with the bigger kids if they want to get the ball.

Let's be real, for most/all of our kids sports is a way to have fun, teach discipline and sportsmanship. This thread leaves a bad taste in my mouth about swim in general. I am so happy to watch my kids do the cheers, hang over lanes to encourage their friends and goof around between races (especially after 2 years of covid). Parents who are complaining about a random date, please don't ruin it for the rest of us.

This is a little different though because there are defined age groups in summer swim, but then if your birthday falls in an 8 week period you are allowed to swim in an age group that you have aged out of. It’s also weird to see the listing of the kids’ ages in heat sheets and see Larla Smith age 10 when everyone knows that Larla Smith is actually age 11.

This happens in other sports, though. It happens in baseball, where the age cutoff for the 6+ summer tournaments my kids played in was May 1, so kids (including one of mine) were playing ___U baseball up to 2-3 months after they turned the next age (i.e., playing 9U baseball for the summer after turning 10 in May). And yeah, everyone knows that a fair number of kids in the tournament playing 9U (or 10U, or whatever) are not actually that age. The point is that they created a defined, one year age group - which in that case, is May 1 - April 30 - and everyone with a birthday in that one year age band is in that age group.

My kids are relatively young, but I swam growing up, eventually on scholarship at an NCAA division 1 program- genuine question, do these 15-18 kids not do high school swimming? We did club swimming growing up, but the focus was the HS season, where I was a 14 year old 9th grader swimming against 18-19 year old HS seniors. I'll be honest, I'm struggling to understand why this is so harmful, particularly on the girls' side. And if the concern is that kids are returning to summer league after a year in an NCAA program, then prohibit that- a strictly age-based rule won't do it. I (and plenty of other kids, I'm sure) was 18 until September of my sophomore year of college and could have competed even if you changed the age ranges.

There is a reason for that in team sports vs individual because there are positions on the court/in the field that need to be filled in team sports, as well as developing team chemistry, etc. None of those considerations come into play in swimming, it’s you against the clock. There is literally no reason for there to be kids who have aged out of a group swimming down. It’s a short season, set the cutoff date on August 1st or August 15th (to make sure all stars is complete) and be done with it. It’s so counterintuitive to have swim leagues that start Memorial Day and have an age up cutoff on June 1st as opposed to August at the end of the season. If the cutoff is august no one could complain about 13 year olds swimming in the 11-12 age group.

Yikes, talk about missing the point. First- As someone else said, any way you slice it, kids within a 24 month band are swimming against one another, except at the senior level. That’s consistent with the way other sports do it. And as others have pointed out, you do have the issue of a relay swimmer being eligible during one part of the season but not at all stars. You seem to be really concerned with the logic of a 13 year old being assigned to the 11-12 age group, but keep phrasing it as though that kid is wrongfully swimming against kids who are more than 2 years younger. It’s kind of bizarre, and my point was that for the sake of ease and consistency that’s what other sports do. To the extent there is a concern about the 15-18 age range, if people are this concerned with consistency with club swimming, I’m surprised you’re not pushing for a separate 15-16 age group.

Second- I reference high school swimming because NVSL is more akin to that, and frankly I feel like you and other posters here don’t have a lot of experience with swimming in a team vs club environment. The difference between NVSL and club swimming is that teams develop lineups and compete in dual meets and divisional meets, and that championships are awarded based on what happens over the course of 6+ weeks. Swimming is an individual sport but NVSL is a team competition. That’s why it’s fun, FFS! The season is literally 5 dual meets long, plus capstone all star and champions meets, which are based on performance during the season. In your scenario, say my team has a great 10 year old who turns 11 on June 30th. So that kid is eligible to swim 9-10, and then is moved up for the last few dual meets. But those meets are typically against better teams. How do you fairly determine division winners? I.e., Chesterbrook has the best record but they got to swim tuckahoe when 4 kids had aged up, whereas Overlee had to swim them before. Are teams to look at their lineups and lobby the league to swim their toughest teams early in the season before anyone can age up? (My kids’ team is in division one, and I can guarantee you this would be a bone of contention). This is not a club meet- it’s not JOs and it’s not zones, or whatever other club meet your kids do in the winter and it’s not correct to say that lineups dont matter, and it’s simply the swimmer against the clock. If that were true, why would age group matter at all?

I’m a PP, and this issue really doesn’t matter to me because my kid is a club swimmer that has been able to compete even with kids who are swimming down, but pretending the lineups are a huge deal is a little disingenuous. For our team there are multiple kids that filter in and out of the last slots based on their times, people are on vacation, etc., so there isn’t a whole lot of this continuity you are talking about. It’s not like having to change up point guards midway through a season in basketball. And if the lineup thing is so important, why should teams get to pad their lineup with kids that aren’t in the age group they are swimming in?

I’m going to stop posting because there seems to be some true, deliberate attempts at failing to grasp the point. You and others keep insisting that kids at the top of the age group dominate summer swim, so we’re not talking about the kids who filter in and out of last slots. We’re talking about a team which has a roster including multiple top kids in meet one, and not having those kids in meet 5. If all of these purportedly overage kids are at the bottom of the roster, why would you guys care so much? These are the ringers, right? And basketball point guards take vacations too- that’s not what we’re talking about either.

You’re never going to win this argument so long as you keep insisting that kids aren’t in the age group they’re swimming in or are swimming down. NVSL rules define the age groups. I and numerous other people have explained to you why it’s appropriate in a team oriented league to use a single age cutoff date for the entire season. No one is swimming down. If you know of a swimmer who doesn’t meet the age requirements for the league, by all means, point it out and have them disqualified. If not, please trust- you’re not doing your kid or team any by constantly insinuating, falsely, that their competitors are cheating.

Best of luck next summer, may all of your aggrieved kids be forever guaranteed to swim only against smaller and younger kids.

And may your 19 year old get their needed satisfaction out of competing with kids in rec league swim.

Lol, thanks? My all star this year was 7, but ok.

And may your children go far in life learning the most valuable lesson in sport- if at first you don’t succeed, be sure to tell mommy so she can have the rules changed. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Lol just like you assumed that I have a kid that’s aggrieved by this rule, she’s not but thanks for your concern But kids should learn that if there are rules that objectively don’t make sense, it is okay to work to get those rules changed. This is how it’s always been done is not always an acceptable answer, another good life lesson.

The rules objectively make sense, as numerous posters have explained. And this rule was put in place in 2012, it actually wasn’t how it was always done.

It would probably be helpful to try to understand the rule you want changed before you light the torches and fight the patriarchy, or whatever wrong you think you’re righting (but given the number of people on this thread who still, 15 pages in, apparently believe that summer birthday kids are “swimming down” against kids not in their age group, my hopes aren’t high). God bless the NVSL folks who have to deal with you all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are 2 arguments regularly being ignored in this thread.

1. 24 months is 24 months regardless of when the cutoff is set. Therefore there is never more than 24 months between the youngest and oldest in the division.

2. The June 1st cutoff has been used by summer swim leagues around the country for DECADES. It’s not something new or some conspiracy to screw over kids born on May 31st. It’s done to keep the age brackets consistent through a super compact swim Season where there are 12 regular season meets in 5 weeks.

I don't see anyone ignoring these points. One person, however, does keep repeating them over and over and over despite what other posters try to add to the conversation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are 2 arguments regularly being ignored in this thread.

1. 24 months is 24 months regardless of when the cutoff is set. Therefore there is never more than 24 months between the youngest and oldest in the division.

2. The June 1st cutoff has been used by summer swim leagues around the country for DECADES. It’s not something new or some conspiracy to screw over kids born on May 31st. It’s done to keep the age brackets consistent through a super compact swim Season where there are 12 regular season meets in 5 weeks.

Except that the top age bracket in the NVSL is 15-18, so you can have a have a kid who turns 15 on 5/31 swimming against one who turns 19 on 6/2. That’s a lot more than 24 months. I personally don’t care when the cutoff is you can’t ignore that it can/does have an impact.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are 2 arguments regularly being ignored in this thread.

1. 24 months is 24 months regardless of when the cutoff is set. Therefore there is never more than 24 months between the youngest and oldest in the division.

2. The June 1st cutoff has been used by summer swim leagues around the country for DECADES. It’s not something new or some conspiracy to screw over kids born on May 31st. It’s done to keep the age brackets consistent through a super compact swim Season where there are 12 regular season meets in 5 weeks.

Except that the top age bracket in the NVSL is 15-18, so you can have a have a kid who turns 15 on 5/31 swimming against one who turns 19 on 6/2. That’s a lot more than 24 months. I personally don’t care when the cutoff is you can’t ignore that it can/does have an impact.

15 -18 is a different ballgame. These kids are swimming against eachother all year, in high school and club. Many 15 year olds are faster than 19 year olds. They’re all past puberty, the age matters much less.

The brutal age group appears to be 11/12 but only for the 11 year olds, some of who still can swim the pants off of the older 11s that might be turning 12 in the summer.