Stroke and turn Judge at B swim meets

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s unclear why swim parents think their sport is different from others cited by OP.

Swim parents just might be the worst and there is certainly a lot of competition for that title in this area.

Because part of the rules of swimming are that the requirements are applied to all swimmers. That is actually a rule in and of itself. It's repeated to all officials by the referee at the beginning of every single meet during the pre-race briefing.

Unless it's a sweet little exhibition meet for the 6U, the rules require it. The kids learn, some are bummed and some aren't, but it's a tool for learning.

[Anonymous]

As a long long time Stroke and turn judge the last B meet is usually the meet where they throw all the kids in who are on the team or pre team. The ref doesn't get justification from the S&T judge in B meets, they just fill out the form and it goes to the runner who takes it to automation to process.

The coaches need to know who is legal in a stroke, kids go on vacation and sometimes they need that usual B meet swimmer to swim in an A meet to fill a spot, if the judges don't dq the coaches put them in the A meet where those judges will dq and the team can end up losing a point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow! The crazy swim parents didn't take long.

So please tell referees at your kids' kindergarten basketball games that travelling, double dribbles, 3 seconds etc, must be called. Play with 10 ft hoops on full sized courts...play soccer on full fields, full rosters, with regular goals and the offsides rule. The swim folks have explained it.... ALL RULES MUST BE STRICTLY ADHERED TO BY 6yr OLDS OR THEY"LL NEVER LEARN. Please tell your kid's teachers this as well. Little Timmy misspelled a word on a test in 1st grade.....well, if we don't give him an F, he'll never learn.

Way to grow your sport....or is keeping it small the point?

If you'd been able to make a team in another sport, you'd have understood the officiating analogy. But hey, at least you had swimming.

Boy you really told us, didn’t you! Love the dig at the end, too. You’re so special.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The swim parents at our pool like to think they’re laid back and chill but they aren’t. The amount of screaming while
their kids are swimming at meets is terrifying. The kids are underwater— they can’t hear you and I don’t think they want to hear you either. And the amount of time and volunteering the team expects from parents is also not laid-back. Finally, the swim families are so clique-ish. The parents don’t interact with non swim-team families, the kids think the pool belongs to them and not all the families. Finally, the families of top swimmers self-segregate from even the rest of the swim team families!

I went from new pool member with a kid in the 7-under minis program to a seasoned swim parent with a kid swimming all stars events over the last 2 years. The first summer I met hardly anyone new at the pool. I talked to people I already knew, and that’s about it. The second summer my kid was swimming A meets, and that’s how I got to know more people- seeing and volunteering with them at meets, talking at team lunches and socials, etc. Once my kid was swimming all stars I was in the trenches with some of those families- carpooling to other pools, volunteering side by side on a regular basis, etc. I’m an introverted person who wasn’t looking for a clique, but like with pretty much any social set up, you get to know the people you see a lot. That's why swim team families get to know each other in a way that isn’t deliberately exclusionary, but might look like it to people who aren’t a part of it.

[Anonymous]

We had judges at an A dive meet this week giving kids 0s who completed legal dives. That was special. It's unclear to me how there could be absolutely nothing right about a dive that satisfies the rule requirements.

[Anonymous]

We had a bunch of kids DQd at last night’s B meet, including my kid. My kid needs to learn the stroke better.

[Anonymous]

My kids are little, and I coach. I see nothing wrong with DQs. My kids work all year to develop their strokes. Why shouldn't kids that are not swimming the stroke legally get DQ'd.

A B meet is purely developmental. If you are swimming fly or breast stroke as an 8 and under or even 9-10, there are plenty of DQs. It is fine - that way at an A meet, there are not 6 DQs per event at the younger ages. The coaches only put kids in that are legal in those strokes.

I fail to see how this is different than a ref giving a kid a free kick at U9 for a handball or a goalie going outside the box, etc. The kids have to learn some how. And believe me, all kids remember this stuff and fix it. It doesn't make it "less fun". It teaches kids that rules are rules, and they have to be followed to play the sport. Isn't that part of life - following rules?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow! The crazy swim parents didn't take long.

So please tell referees at your kids' kindergarten basketball games that travelling, double dribbles, 3 seconds etc, must be called. Play with 10 ft hoops on full sized courts...play soccer on full fields, full rosters, with regular goals and the offsides rule. The swim folks have explained it.... ALL RULES MUST BE STRICTLY ADHERED TO BY 6yr OLDS OR THEY"LL NEVER LEARN. Please tell your kid's teachers this as well. Little Timmy misspelled a word on a test in 1st grade.....well, if we don't give him an F, he'll never learn.

Way to grow your sport....or is keeping it small the point?

If you'd been able to make a team in another sport, you'd have understood the officiating analogy. But hey, at least you had swimming.

Just like 5 year olds have a shorter basket, they swim a shorter distance. But just like 5 year olds are expected to dribble the ball and not just grab it and run with it, kids are expected to swim the stroke they're signed up. If they can only swim freestyle, that's cool. And there, the only thing that's going to get the kid DQed is making forward movement on a lane line, or standing up and walking.

If you're not comfortable with your kid trying to follow the rules of his sport, then don't sign him up for basketball. Just go shoot baskets for fun. Don't sign him up for swim. Just go play at the pool.

[Anonymous]

What bugs the crap out of me is that our coaches never talk to the kids about the fact that they were DQ'd and why unless the kid is old enough/aware enough to raise it with the coach. So little kids with clueless parents continue to DQ for the same reasons meet after meet. But this is just one of the myriad complaints I have about the coaching of our summer swim team.

[Anonymous]

You’re being ridiculous. Don’t like it, don’t do meets or don’t do strokes your kid can’t legally do or work on this insecurity you have about it or get lessons for your kid or ask the coach what the issue was, etc. wrong is wrong and a dq is a learning experience rather than reinforcing bad habits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they get a legal time at a b meet, they might mistakenly be put in an A meet even though they cant swim the stroke legally.

It happened to my DD.

This. You don't want kids who can't swim the stroke legally to displace kids who can. I've seen it happen, especially at time trials, where the S&T judges are either inexperienced or rusty.

+1

Plus part of DQing is knowing what you did wrong so you don’t make the same mistake again and can learn proper form. Any good coach or team rep will let you know why you DQd.

FWIW for the sake of time we often don’t DQ 6 and unders at B meets

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s rough dq’ing a kid but the standard is that you judge 8yr olds and 18yr olds the same way. The stroke requirements aren’t different due to age.

We are all parent volunteers and we all want all the kids to be successful and have fun, but that’s how swimming works.

+1!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just hate sports around here. I was on a neighborhood swim team for years in the 80s, through my teens. We didn’t have turn judges and the only DQs I remember were the people who dove before the gun (and even then I think you got at least one false start do-over). People take themselves—or their kids—so seriously here!! Who cares what their kids’ times are? Do you think you have a little michael Phelps? Some of the kids I swam with later swam for Stanford, so I think they somehow managed to learn how to swim without being DQed by turn judges.
This is part of why I don’t let my kids do swim team. So ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just hate sports around here. I was on a neighborhood swim team for years in the 80s, through my teens. We didn’t have turn judges and the only DQs I remember were the people who dove before the gun (and even then I think you got at least one false start do-over). People take themselves—or their kids—so seriously here!! Who cares what their kids’ times are? Do you think you have a little michael Phelps? Some of the kids I swam with later swam for Stanford, so I think they somehow managed to learn how to swim without being DQed by turn judges.
This is part of why I don’t let my kids do swim team. So ridiculous.

That's weird, because I was on a summer swim team through the entirety of the 80s in the Midwest and it was EXACTLY like it is here. In fact, I was DQd in my first race at age 7! And I coached a summer swim team in the 90s and guess what? Exactly the same as the summer league we're in now. And none of these pools had high-level teams.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You’re being ridiculous. Don’t like it, don’t do meets or don’t do strokes your kid can’t legally do or work on this insecurity you have about it or get lessons for your kid or ask the coach what the issue was, etc. wrong is wrong and a dq is a learning experience rather than reinforcing bad habits.

+1
OP, it's not just about your kid but the others too. My younger son who is 8 recently placed 2nd in a B meet in breaststroke. Great, right? No! He was doing a dolphin kick, which is MUCH FASTER than a breaststroke kick, and he should have gotten DQ'ed. It was unfair to the kids who were doing the stroke properly and therefore went slower. I have an older swimmer too so my son knows how important it is to have legal form. I told him he should have gotten DQ'ed and he told the coach. Coach told him she agreed but it wasn't up to her and sometimes stroke and turn judges make mistakes. He told his friend who placed further down in the ranking for the event that he "won" over my son.

Then the boys got snow cones. It was a great meet!