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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]For an 8 year old the best team is the one close to your house with kids they know, that keeps it fun. If your child is really that good nothing else matters yet. Save the worries about the coaching and training groups for middle school at the earliest. Maybe look for a club known for being good at teaching stroke technique. Some athletic kids can muscle through 25s with poor technique. That won’t work later. [/quote] this. My kid is 10 and the best one for us is 10 mins from our house and only requires practices twice a week. Don’t fall into the trap with an 8yo and push too hard. [/quote]

I wrote that post and I am glad to see others agree. It is based on my lived experience. I tried summer swim at 8 and was quite good for a new swimmer. Didn't swim at all that winter, then signed up for a winter team after my second summer season as a 9 year old. It was a low key team with young enthusiastic coaches and tons of kids from my immediate area. I then moved to a team that was started by a couple of the coaches from the first team, which was also fun and low key. Some of the better swimmers in my area drove 30+ minutes to one of the two "best" and most intense teams in the area. They dominated kids from my team up until the teen years. Then those kids started burning out and wanting to do other things because they had spent so much time driving to the pool and doing these intense practices in order to be the best. A few of us switched to one of the intense teams in late HS when we started having the goal of high level college swimming. Those of us who had been on the fun team were able to have more success in the long run (HS and college) because we had started at a place that had instilled a love for the sport over being the fastest. By the time I was at the intense team I had the maturity to be setting my own goals and be responsible for what I was doing to get me to those goals. It wasn't forced on me by parents who were excited about my potential.[/quote]

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