Reply to Competitive (Club) Swimming -- At what point is it fine for a child to leave a longtime sport?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is a timely post. I am struggling on what to do with my 8 year old.   He loves to swim but basically has to work 2x as hard as the other kids on our summer team just to keep up and even then it doesn't always happen.   So far has not caused an issue and the practices are great exercise.   Its definitely occurred to me that maybe we should encourage some other pursuits for some of the same reasons covered by PPs.  Or not, since maybe he is old enough to decide himself.

For those of you with older kids, at what age did the hard work pay off?  Did something click at some point or were your kids always really good?    [/quote]

Swim parent here.

First of all, at only 8 years old, your son has probably not had enough training for you to truly evaluate what he is capable of.  He may be swimming with children who already have year-round formal instruction on technique, and that may be the reason why he is having trouble keeping up.  If your son wants to pursue swimming in the fall, I would encourage you to enroll him in a swim program which focuses its younger swimmers on learning the right technique (The Fish is one program with a good early focus on form).

That said, there is definitely such a thing as a "natural" swimmer, and many of the best that I have seen come up through NVSL and the local clubs (NCAP, Machine, RMSC, NOVA) looked good with their form -- even if they were not the very fastest -- pretty early on.  My own DCs, alas, were not among them.  Like you, I could see early on that my DCs were not naturals and had to focus extra hard to overcome some of their naturally bad tendencies (like bicycle kicks in freestyle), some of which they carry through to today.  A swimmer like that will still learn good lessons from swimming, reach many of their goals, and have a real sense of accomplishment; but -- at least in our case -- will be happy one day just to make Sectionals times.  (In my experience, a child who can master a natural butterfly (dolphin kick) early on, has a better likelihood of future success in the sport.)

Now as to your other question, even if you work hard to master the correct form in your younger years, you may still initially be slower in the water than some of your peers.  I have seen a few swimmers who had trouble making JO cuts as 9-10 year olds, grow into dominant area swimmers as 13+ year olds -- when their coordination and growth kicked in with their form.  However, I have never seen a swimmer with bad technique find much success in the long term, even with growth factored in.

If your son really enjoys competitive swimming and wants to continue, then invest in 2 or 3 years of good instruction, and see if your son can master the correct form.  If he can, the sky is the limit (possibly).

As I said my own DCs were never able to fully overcome their natural bad swim tendencies, but did love their years swimming and are very successful in other pursuits.[/quote]

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