Freeloading swim team parents suck

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We switched pools this year to one in a much higher NVSL division. I’m subsidizing those A meet swimmers financially, and then at busy B meets, I’m told priority goes to A meet swimmers and that my younger kid can’t swim. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth and makes it hard to get excited about volunteering. I say this as someone who held several prominent jobs at our old swim team.

Not sure I get this. Are you saying that at B Meets, your kid is not getting the opportunity to swim b/c they are giving lanes to A meet swimmers? And how exactly are you subsidizing the A meet swimmers?

I don't understand this either. If it's true that they have limited entries at the B meets and given priority to A meet swimmers that's really obnoxious and I would protest. The B meets are designed for the kids who can't swim the A meets!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My favorite volunteers are the A-meet-parent-whose-kids-never-swim-B-meets who sign up first to take timer slots away from B meet parents who then have to take PTO to run the midweek pancake breakfast instead. And then these A meet parents humble-martyr themselves when meeting the other timers "Oh my kid actually isn't even swimming because she is doing the A meet. So, which one of the B meet losers is your kid?"

Doesn't make sense. Why would you want to time? Why would they want to time a B meet if their child swims A meets? I think it's easier to do the pancake breakfast in any case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We switched pools this year to one in a much higher NVSL division. I’m subsidizing those A meet swimmers financially, and then at busy B meets, I’m told priority goes to A meet swimmers and that my younger kid can’t swim. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth and makes it hard to get excited about volunteering. I say this as someone who held several prominent jobs at our old swim team.

What!? This makes no sense?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We switched pools this year to one in a much higher NVSL division. I’m subsidizing those A meet swimmers financially, and then at busy B meets, I’m told priority goes to A meet swimmers and that my younger kid can’t swim. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth and makes it hard to get excited about volunteering. I say this as someone who held several prominent jobs at our old swim team.

Not sure I get this. Are you saying that at B Meets, your kid is not getting the opportunity to swim b/c they are giving lanes to A meet swimmers? And how exactly are you subsidizing the A meet swimmers?

I don't understand this either. If it's true that they have limited entries at the B meets and given priority to A meet swimmers that's really obnoxious and I would protest. The B meets are designed for the kids who can't swim the A meets!!

This. The only restrictions our pool places on B meets is that 6 and under who want to swim breast or fly need a coach's permission (it's given as long as they are remotely close to legal) and you can't swim a stroke that you placed in at the prior A meet

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't have time to read through 19 pages of this nonsense but I judge the volunteer nazis like OP who deliberately try to make people feel bad. Same person who gets into a tizzy when the volunteers' shirt isn't 100% white cotton or if someone makes a mistake when filling out those unnecessary ribbons. SMD, OP.

Riddle me this, how is a single parent with one kid swimming and two others who aren't because they aren't old enough or don't want to but aren't old enough to be at home by themselves supposed to volunteer for 5 effing swim meets, plus all of the other stupid events such as needing volunteers for tie-dying shirts, or for pancake breakfasts or for the rootbeer floats. It's so much bullshine.

Perhaps at registration allow folks to opt out from volunteering for an additionl $50-$100. Then you could hire the additional help needed to do the meets.

For B meets, why not just one or two timers? It's not important at all and if little Johnny is going to swim in 8 meets he doesn't need 24 different time samples for each stroke to figure out if he's good enough for all stars or whatever else.

Summer swim team is not for the person is this situation then.
The social culture -root beer floats and pancake breakfasts and the other stuff you deem billshine - is what makes it fun for the kids. Versus year round swimming which is a grind.

As someone who does my best to volunteer whenever I can, while working around a full-time job, this attitude makes me sad. As a timer, does it really make my job harder if there's an extra kid in Lane 6 vs that lane being empty, or maybe having one extra heat of freestylers? No? Then why should the kid be barred from joining the team if his parents have a hard time with the volunteer schedule, or don't want to bring him to the extras?

I'm glad our team isn't that clique-y. We welcome all swimmers, regardless of the family situation. Of course we request and encourage volunteering; we have the same needs as every other team. But we would never push a family out or shun a kid if the parents are in a tough spot schedule-wise. I mean, some of the 'freeloader' parents on swim team are really active in PTA or Scouts or other time-consuming activities throughout the year, in which my kids benefit from their volunteer time. Or not ... but the kid should still have an opportunity to participate regardless. I volunteer because I want to make the activity better for all kids, not just the ones from families I deem worthy of it.

The issue becomes it heavily falls on other parents, especially with smaller teams. We only have one ref, so every home meet, my spouse has to ref. He cannot get sick or miss it for any reason and has to rearrange his work schedule around it as no one else will step up. When he's not ref, he's stroke and turn. He doesn't get one meet off, which isn't really fair. And, I'm doing a lot of behind the scenes stuff.

That’s a little much. He’s allowed to get sick. Your husband could set some boundaries and give his availability and stick to it. People are never going to volunteer because they know Frank always does it or that your family will step in. Just say no. Let the cards fall where they may.

He has very good boundaries but the swim meet will not happen without a ref. Its a small team. We will do our part but it sucks when others don't. Its only two months. No one else IS stepping in. You must not get swim as you have to get certified for specific positions.

Cancel one meet and someone will step up.

There is no one else certified. So, we punish our kids and the other kids? Nope.

Missing one meet won’t hurt anyone and might be a wake up call to the adults.

Teaching your kids not to have boundaries? That’s a problem.

referee spouse- ignore this stupid poster. Of course if your spouse is the referee they have to be a the home meet. Our big team only has one referee as well- I think that is pretty standard. Missing one meet in the summer would be a HUGE deal- and it would be something that no one can do anything about- becoming a referee is not just a matter of clicking a button on a sign up genius. Your teaching your kids that we follow through with our committments, even if it is hard.

All she needs to do is have her husband say, in enough time to have someone else take the course, "I won't be referring the week of X" and then either someone else will step up, or it will be clear that people are fine with a week off.

Missing one meet in the summer is not a huge deal. The fact that we make youth sports out to be this enormous thing is a problem. But there are ways to handle this without missing a meet, she just needs to give advance notice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We switched pools this year to one in a much higher NVSL division. I’m subsidizing those A meet swimmers financially, and then at busy B meets, I’m told priority goes to A meet swimmers and that my younger kid can’t swim. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth and makes it hard to get excited about volunteering. I say this as someone who held several prominent jobs at our old swim team.

You are not subsidizing A meet swimmers.

Most of the coaching time goes to B meet swimmers. Some A meet swimmers rarely go to practice, if at all.

And the B meets are almost twice as long as A meets.

This is ridiculous. A meet swimmers get to swim in the much more fun A meets, as well as the B meets. And they get to do relay carnivals, divisionals, etc as well. And much more attention at practice from the coaches, who want to win A meets and don’t really care that much if B Meet Barlo is ever legal in Butterfly. A meet kids get a lot more for their money from summer swim team.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We switched pools this year to one in a much higher NVSL division. I’m subsidizing those A meet swimmers financially, and then at busy B meets, I’m told priority goes to A meet swimmers and that my younger kid can’t swim. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth and makes it hard to get excited about volunteering. I say this as someone who held several prominent jobs at our old swim team.

You are not subsidizing A meet swimmers.

Most of the coaching time goes to B meet swimmers. Some A meet swimmers rarely go to practice, if at all.

And the B meets are almost twice as long as A meets.

This is ridiculous. A meet swimmers get to swim in the much more fun A meets, as well as the B meets. And they get to do relay carnivals, divisionals, etc as well. And much more attention at practice from the coaches, who want to win A meets and don’t really care that much if B Meet Barlo is ever legal in Butterfly. A meet kids get a lot more for their money from summer swim team.

Not sure what pool you’re at but we’ve belonged to two and the first poster is right in saying most club swimmers do NOT attend summer swim team practices.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We switched pools this year to one in a much higher NVSL division. I’m subsidizing those A meet swimmers financially, and then at busy B meets, I’m told priority goes to A meet swimmers and that my younger kid can’t swim. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth and makes it hard to get excited about volunteering. I say this as someone who held several prominent jobs at our old swim team.

You are not subsidizing A meet swimmers.

Most of the coaching time goes to B meet swimmers. Some A meet swimmers rarely go to practice, if at all.

And the B meets are almost twice as long as A meets.

This is ridiculous. A meet swimmers get to swim in the much more fun A meets, as well as the B meets. And they get to do relay carnivals, divisionals, etc as well. And much more attention at practice from the coaches, who want to win A meets and don’t really care that much if B Meet Barlo is ever legal in Butterfly. A meet kids get a lot more for their money from summer swim team.

Not sure what pool you’re at but we’ve belonged to two and the first poster is right in saying most club swimmers do NOT attend summer swim team practices.

We are at a D4 pool and I don't know who the "club" swimmers are but I regularly see almost all the kids who swim A meets at practices. And yes, they get extra attention from the coaches.

[Anonymous]

Why do they get to swim for their team if they don’t practice with their team?

That’s right. Winning. I forgot.

[Anonymous]

Our team specifically asked club swimmers to NOT sign up for practices. That may be a COVID specific request, but I have noticed in years past that the club swimmers generally aren’t at practice. If you’re a year round swimmer and your club swims through the end of July, there is little utility to making those kids do 2 a days for summer swim team. It’s not like basketball where players need to learn to play together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We switched pools this year to one in a much higher NVSL division. I’m subsidizing those A meet swimmers financially, and then at busy B meets, I’m told priority goes to A meet swimmers and that my younger kid can’t swim. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth and makes it hard to get excited about volunteering. I say this as someone who held several prominent jobs at our old swim team.

You are not subsidizing A meet swimmers.

Most of the coaching time goes to B meet swimmers. Some A meet swimmers rarely go to practice, if at all.

And the B meets are almost twice as long as A meets.

This is ridiculous. A meet swimmers get to swim in the much more fun A meets, as well as the B meets. And they get to do relay carnivals, divisionals, etc as well. And much more attention at practice from the coaches, who want to win A meets and don’t really care that much if B Meet Barlo is ever legal in Butterfly. A meet kids get a lot more for their money from summer swim team.

This is absolutely incorrect- other than divisionals, and that is only the top two in each event.

[Anonymous]

It is incorrect that A meet swimmers get twice the number of meets B meet swimmers do? It is incorrect that A meet swimmers get to attend the extra special relay meets? It is incorrect that A meet swimmers can get more attention from coaches?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think teams need to have more visibility with volunteering both in terms of all the types of jobs and how many volunteer hours it takes to run swim team and the social events, as well as, visibility on who is volunteering. Track hours and make it visible.

I think it is easy to look at who it openly volunteering in visible positions and wonder why so and so never volunteers, when in reality some folks might be doing lot behind the scenes that you don't see (social chair, website management, awards night). Not saying there aren't free loaders, there certainly are but there are also a lot of jobs.

I know on our volunteer sign up you only see spots for marshals, timers and clerk of course. You don't see the spots that require special training (Starter, Ref, RTO, stroke and turn) or the spots that the same people automatically do every week (data entry, awards, head timer, announcer, runner).

I also think work/jobs are a huge excuse. Lots of parents work and still volunteer. We have many duel income families on our team where both parents volunteer a ton. My husband works stroke and turn at every meet and I often volunteer to time. And just because another parent may not work a full-time job doesn't mean it is their duty to give your kid a great summer swim experience.

They would much rather hire summer teens to do those job, that’s the point. Just because your family has excess leisure time, many working parents don’t. I’ll bet most of those “working parents” you are citing have one spouse part time, which is a totally different thing. Or their youngest kid is 12.

There are not minimum wage workers available for a couple hours at a time. Just hiring people isn’t quite that easy.

Exactly — I said this upthread about not always being able to find people (teens/retirees) for hire. Businesses are aren’t even able to fill low level positions right now. The best you might be able to do is hire a babysitter type to do that sort of stuff occasionally.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't have time to read through 19 pages of this nonsense but I judge the volunteer nazis like OP who deliberately try to make people feel bad. Same person who gets into a tizzy when the volunteers' shirt isn't 100% white cotton or if someone makes a mistake when filling out those unnecessary ribbons. SMD, OP.

Riddle me this, how is a single parent with one kid swimming and two others who aren't because they aren't old enough or don't want to but aren't old enough to be at home by themselves supposed to volunteer for 5 effing swim meets, plus all of the other stupid events such as needing volunteers for tie-dying shirts, or for pancake breakfasts or for the rootbeer floats. It's so much bullshine.

Perhaps at registration allow folks to opt out from volunteering for an additionl $50-$100. Then you could hire the additional help needed to do the meets.

For B meets, why not just one or two timers? It's not important at all and if little Johnny is going to swim in 8 meets he doesn't need 24 different time samples for each stroke to figure out if he's good enough for all stars or whatever else.

Summer swim team is not for the person is this situation then.
The social culture -root beer floats and pancake breakfasts and the other stuff you deem billshine - is what makes it fun for the kids. Versus year round swimming which is a grind.

As someone who does my best to volunteer whenever I can, while working around a full-time job, this attitude makes me sad. As a timer, does it really make my job harder if there's an extra kid in Lane 6 vs that lane being empty, or maybe having one extra heat of freestylers? No? Then why should the kid be barred from joining the team if his parents have a hard time with the volunteer schedule, or don't want to bring him to the extras?

I'm glad our team isn't that clique-y. We welcome all swimmers, regardless of the family situation. Of course we request and encourage volunteering; we have the same needs as every other team. But we would never push a family out or shun a kid if the parents are in a tough spot schedule-wise. I mean, some of the 'freeloader' parents on swim team are really active in PTA or Scouts or other time-consuming activities throughout the year, in which my kids benefit from their volunteer time. Or not ... but the kid should still have an opportunity to participate regardless. I volunteer because I want to make the activity better for all kids, not just the ones from families I deem worthy of it.

The issue becomes it heavily falls on other parents, especially with smaller teams. We only have one ref, so every home meet, my spouse has to ref. He cannot get sick or miss it for any reason and has to rearrange his work schedule around it as no one else will step up. When he's not ref, he's stroke and turn. He doesn't get one meet off, which isn't really fair. And, I'm doing a lot of behind the scenes stuff.

That’s a little much. He’s allowed to get sick. Your husband could set some boundaries and give his availability and stick to it. People are never going to volunteer because they know Frank always does it or that your family will step in. Just say no. Let the cards fall where they may.

He has very good boundaries but the swim meet will not happen without a ref. Its a small team. We will do our part but it sucks when others don't. Its only two months. No one else IS stepping in. You must not get swim as you have to get certified for specific positions.

Cancel one meet and someone will step up.

There is no one else certified. So, we punish our kids and the other kids? Nope.

Missing one meet won’t hurt anyone and might be a wake up call to the adults.

Teaching your kids not to have boundaries? That’s a problem.

referee spouse- ignore this stupid poster. Of course if your spouse is the referee they have to be a the home meet. Our big team only has one referee as well- I think that is pretty standard. Missing one meet in the summer would be a HUGE deal- and it would be something that no one can do anything about- becoming a referee is not just a matter of clicking a button on a sign up genius. Your teaching your kids that we follow through with our committments, even if it is hard.

All she needs to do is have her husband say, in enough time to have someone else take the course, "I won't be referring the week of X" and then either someone else will step up, or it will be clear that people are fine with a week off.

Missing one meet in the summer is not a huge deal. The fact that we make youth sports out to be this enormous thing is a problem. But there are ways to handle this without missing a meet, she just needs to give advance notice.

We have missed meets was my children got sick and spouse was still told to come. Its not as simple as someone else stepping up as you have to get certified. Some positions can be done by anyone, others not. We aren't making it a problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why do they get to swim for their team if they don’t practice with their team?

That’s right. Winning. I forgot.

Because my child just finished a hard 2 hr practice at 5:30 am and doesn’t need to take the space during a summer swim practice 1 hr later. However, she is at every other activity, helps coach the minis and participants in every pep rally and team event. Our pool prefers club swimmers not come to practice so they can focus on the other kids.