Swim Team Volunteering - it helps if you are nice

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP who posted about “I’m not going to do that” guy: New week, new meet, new unhelpful parent.

It was time for the second volunteer shift and one mom was missing. I found her as she was walking out with a bag and two kids.

Me: “hi, you’re signed up to work the second half of the meet!”
Her: “I’m leaving! I’ll never be treated like that again!”

Her kids were playing under the scorer’s table and someone asked them to move to the team area. She found it offensive and used it as a reason to leave in a huff. It seems like every meet has a “misunderstanding” like this. I had to cover her shift.

The coaches are having their own struggles. Kids aren’t signing out of meets and are screwing other kids on the ladder out of event spots. We’ve never had a problem with this and so it’s too late to put in a penalty policy for this season. The manager and coaches are putting together a policy for next season to hold no-shows out of the next meet and/or levy no-show fees to families.

It feels like Covid has damaged our families’ ability to manage swim team and/or interpersonal interactions.

When you demand volunteers you need volunteers to supervise the kids of those volunteering.

. Uh, no. You figure it out like every other family. You are not special.

+1
Do you have no friends PP? Or babysitter or older sibling? Or other parent? Plus there are not JUST timer jobs. There is other stuff that you can volunteer for if you cannot possibly be at the meet without childcare. We live in a high military area where spouses are often parenting solo but no one tells the team they cannot do anything at all since the other parent is not around. They find a different way to help or swap who is minding the kids with another mom.

We don’t have a lot of older kids in the team and they already volunteer. Kids just run wild.

[Anonymous]

Our team has a 15 credit hour minimum or you’re charged a $250 fee. I’m not thrilled with that. We missed a week of swim due to vacation and trying to get hours is tough. We’re having a breakfast this morning for the team. I took off work and spent hours buying and prepping food only to go online and see that the credit hours for food were cut by 75% overnight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our team has a 15 credit hour minimum or you’re charged a $250 fee. I’m not thrilled with that. We missed a week of swim due to vacation and trying to get hours is tough. We’re having a breakfast this morning for the team. I took off work and spent hours buying and prepping food only to go online and see that the credit hours for food were cut by 75% overnight.

That's absurd. Ours bases it on meets. If your kid just wants to practice and never do a meet, you're fine just paying your registration fees. If your kid is in a meet, you have to volunteer for a meet (not necessarily that meet).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our team has a 15 credit hour minimum or you’re charged a $250 fee. I’m not thrilled with that. We missed a week of swim due to vacation and trying to get hours is tough. We’re having a breakfast this morning for the team. I took off work and spent hours buying and prepping food only to go online and see that the credit hours for food were cut by 75% overnight.

That's absurd. Ours bases it on meets. If your kid just wants to practice and never do a meet, you're fine just paying your registration fees. If your kid is in a meet, you have to volunteer for a meet (not necessarily that meet).

How do you enforce volunteering?

We have parents with kids at a and b meets who never volunteer.
But also no sure to enforce that all parents volunteer.
Instead we just talk about them behind their backs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our team has a 15 credit hour minimum or you’re charged a $250 fee. I’m not thrilled with that. We missed a week of swim due to vacation and trying to get hours is tough. We’re having a breakfast this morning for the team. I took off work and spent hours buying and prepping food only to go online and see that the credit hours for food were cut by 75% overnight.

I think hosting a tram breakfast vs. bringing snacks to the snack shack is a matter you could bring up to your team. I doubt they’ll treat them the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our team has a 15 credit hour minimum or you’re charged a $250 fee. I’m not thrilled with that. We missed a week of swim due to vacation and trying to get hours is tough. We’re having a breakfast this morning for the team. I took off work and spent hours buying and prepping food only to go online and see that the credit hours for food were cut by 75% overnight.

That's absurd. Ours bases it on meets. If your kid just wants to practice and never do a meet, you're fine just paying your registration fees. If your kid is in a meet, you have to volunteer for a meet (not necessarily that meet).

How do you enforce volunteering?

We have parents with kids at a and b meets who never volunteer.
But also no sure to enforce that all parents volunteer.
Instead we just talk about them behind their backs.

No the PP but I don’t think kids should be allowed to swim if their parents don’t ever volunteer. Easy way to enforce would be populating the eligibility list for meets based on the volunteer signups from previous meets. So, when you go to register, your kid’s name isn’t on the list if you haven’t volunteered. Obviously, you would start this after a few meets have happened and probably exempt the 6/u parents who are new. Volunteering doesn’t have to be a huge timesuck if everyone pitches in. 30 minutes during a meet is not a big ask.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our team has a 15 credit hour minimum or you’re charged a $250 fee. I’m not thrilled with that. We missed a week of swim due to vacation and trying to get hours is tough. We’re having a breakfast this morning for the team. I took off work and spent hours buying and prepping food only to go online and see that the credit hours for food were cut by 75% overnight.

That's absurd. Ours bases it on meets. If your kid just wants to practice and never do a meet, you're fine just paying your registration fees. If your kid is in a meet, you have to volunteer for a meet (not necessarily that meet).

How do you enforce volunteering?

We have parents with kids at a and b meets who never volunteer.
But also no sure to enforce that all parents volunteer.
Instead we just talk about them behind their backs.

No the PP but I don’t think kids should be allowed to swim if their parents don’t ever volunteer. Easy way to enforce would be populating the eligibility list for meets based on the volunteer signups from previous meets. So, when you go to register, your kid’s name isn’t on the list if you haven’t volunteered. Obviously, you would start this after a few meets have happened and probably exempt the 6/u parents who are new. Volunteering doesn’t have to be a huge timesuck if everyone pitches in. 30 minutes during a meet is not a big ask.

when is it ever 30 min during a meet?

but still these are parents who are at all the meet watching bust still never volunteer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our team has a 15 credit hour minimum or you’re charged a $250 fee. I’m not thrilled with that. We missed a week of swim due to vacation and trying to get hours is tough. We’re having a breakfast this morning for the team. I took off work and spent hours buying and prepping food only to go online and see that the credit hours for food were cut by 75% overnight.

That's absurd. Ours bases it on meets. If your kid just wants to practice and never do a meet, you're fine just paying your registration fees. If your kid is in a meet, you have to volunteer for a meet (not necessarily that meet).

How do you enforce volunteering?

We have parents with kids at a and b meets who never volunteer.
But also no sure to enforce that all parents volunteer.
Instead we just talk about them behind their backs.

We have 250+ swimmers. A parent with a kid who swims in a B meets who doesn't volunteer won't crash the system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our team has a 15 credit hour minimum or you’re charged a $250 fee. I’m not thrilled with that. We missed a week of swim due to vacation and trying to get hours is tough. We’re having a breakfast this morning for the team. I took off work and spent hours buying and prepping food only to go online and see that the credit hours for food were cut by 75% overnight.

That's absurd. Ours bases it on meets. If your kid just wants to practice and never do a meet, you're fine just paying your registration fees. If your kid is in a meet, you have to volunteer for a meet (not necessarily that meet).

How do you enforce volunteering?

We have parents with kids at a and b meets who never volunteer.
But also no sure to enforce that all parents volunteer.
Instead we just talk about them behind their backs.

We have 250+ swimmers. A parent with a kid who swims in a B meets who doesn't volunteer won't crash the system.

Who is talking about just one parent not volunteering?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our team has a 15 credit hour minimum or you’re charged a $250 fee. I’m not thrilled with that. We missed a week of swim due to vacation and trying to get hours is tough. We’re having a breakfast this morning for the team. I took off work and spent hours buying and prepping food only to go online and see that the credit hours for food were cut by 75% overnight.

That's absurd. Ours bases it on meets. If your kid just wants to practice and never do a meet, you're fine just paying your registration fees. If your kid is in a meet, you have to volunteer for a meet (not necessarily that meet).

How do you enforce volunteering?

We have parents with kids at a and b meets who never volunteer.
But also no sure to enforce that all parents volunteer.
Instead we just talk about them behind their backs.

Some teams charge a fee at registration that is refunded in part or total based on volunteer hours.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our team has a 15 credit hour minimum or you’re charged a $250 fee. I’m not thrilled with that. We missed a week of swim due to vacation and trying to get hours is tough. We’re having a breakfast this morning for the team. I took off work and spent hours buying and prepping food only to go online and see that the credit hours for food were cut by 75% overnight.

That's absurd. Ours bases it on meets. If your kid just wants to practice and never do a meet, you're fine just paying your registration fees. If your kid is in a meet, you have to volunteer for a meet (not necessarily that meet).

How do you enforce volunteering?

We have parents with kids at a and b meets who never volunteer.
But also no sure to enforce that all parents volunteer.
Instead we just talk about them behind their backs.

We have 250+ swimmers. A parent with a kid who swims in a B meets who doesn't volunteer won't crash the system.

Right, but when you have 250 swimmers maybe your volunteer requirements should reflect the large number of volunteers you have available so that the families that do volunteer don’t feel like they have to volunteer at every meet just meet the requirement.

[Anonymous]

If volunteers are hard to get, the system is broken. A systematic change. Fixed from the top down, if necessary. It doesn't work.

[Anonymous]

We have a volunteer position that is kust monitoring voluteer hours. Five jobs required per family. The computer system runs reports so they can track who is behind.

[Anonymous]

:I wood like to.play. At the
Sowm mett