Reply to Tell me about Swim Team

Forum Index » Swimming and Diving

Reply to "Tell me about Swim Team"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Your kids are the perfect for pre-team/swim team!

Our family did it for the first time this year and it was really fun. I have zero experience with swim so I signed them up with the goal of being water safe and I was surprised at how social the whole experience was. It felt like summer camp. The kids had an hour practice every morning. Then there was a B meet on Wednesday night which goes from 5 - 9pm, then a pep rally Friday afternoon. There were also popsicle outings and social gatherings for the kids separate from official practice. Obviously, this means you need a SAH parent (or very flexible WFH parent) to take the kids to the pool all the time. You also need to volunteer a significant amount, 6 jobs is fairly common but some pools require less. They can’t run meets without parental support. Overall, it wasn’t a big deal to help time while your kid swims or set up ribbons or whatever.

Check your pool website, there’s usually a handbook with swim team information. There was another recent thread with swim team cost and it’s fairly cheap at around $200 (on average) for the season. [/quote]

I largely second this PP's experience - my kids did it for the first time this summer and I hadn't had experience with swim team myself growing up.  They enjoyed the swimming and it was great to see them improve week over week (my competitive kid got really into the competitive part, my other one just had fun), but I was surprised (and really loved) the team/social experience and how the older kids looked out for and helped the younger kids and how independent and confident my kids got just from having a lot of time at these activities. We also met some other parents and families at our pool who we didn't otherwise know, which was nice, and we'd see families we knew from other clubs at the meets.

Our pool does an early morning practice for those who can't make the midday practices due to camp, working parents, etc., so my kids did that.  It was an early AM commitment, but the kids did it mostly without complaint (and it was only about a month/5 weeks after school got out and now it's done).  There are definitely volunteer requirements (read around here for lots of fun opinions on those), but they weren't unmanageable and seemed like legitimate needs.

It's apparent on DCUM that things can get more intense and pools/teams have their own drama, etc. - but we didn't notice any of that in year 1 (and with not-competitive swimmers) and it was a really good experience.  Definitely recommend giving it a shot![/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics