Reply to Swim Team Volunteering - it helps if you are nice

Forum Index » Swimming and Diving

Reply to "Swim Team Volunteering - it helps if you are nice"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The current gen are annoyed they can't pay people to do the work volunteers used to do. Hilarious how they want to outsource every aspect of their life...can't grill, gotta have food trucks. Can't time, need ot hire teenagers or off suty life guards. Heck they try to use on duty life guards as baby sitters.

Also, there is no need for 3 timers for 6 year olds swimming.[/quote]

This, and I think it's one of the reasons kids sports in general are dying out. No one wants to be involved or make a commitment any more.[/quote]

Just an observation from a non-swimmer parent...I swam growing up- wasn't particularly good, though placed in the top 5 in a few high school events- but even in our competitive summer swim league, we didn't have 3 timers per lane.  You got one and you lived with the time they clocked for you.  It's been fascinating reading these swim threads.[/quote]
Did you have touch pads though? High schools when I grew up had a touch pad and one timer as a backup.  Most summer pools rely solely on timers, and that's why there are 3.  [/quote]

No, our summer league pools didn’t have touch pads- they had ONE mom or dad holding a stop watch.[/quote]

I don't know if rules have changed but I'm pretty sure at least two are currently required in order for the time to "count" for placing at A meets, individual standings, etc. Of course this is irrelevant for most 6 year olds, but some are really fast. You can't just randomly change the policies for the 6 and under heats because 1) you never know if a 6 year old will have a fast swim that needs to "count", and 2) the heats before and after will need 2-3 timers per lane anyway.

Swimming has always required a high level of parent commitment. I remember the signup posters at my pool growing up in the 80s and 90s (ah, the good old pre-Internet days). It takes a lot of people to run a swim meet and there are a lot of them in a short season. Honestly if you can't commit to helping out you shouldn't sign your kids up for summer swim. I know plenty of parents who don't because they are realistic about their time while working full time. There are plenty of other activities that don't require so much from parents. [/quote]

I hear you and agree that if 3 timers are required, you can't go rogue and only have one. But, does anyone get a college scholarship from swimming summer league? Serious question as my kids are not on swim team (as you said, we could never do it due to being a two working parent family).  Do the times/standings ever impact anything beyond the end of July?  [/quote]
No, they don’t, but parents in this area like to act like summer rec swim is the equivalent of the Olympics or something. I actually find the summer swim parents worse than my kid’s club parents. The kids that swim in college do so based on their results in club meets, not based on summer swim results. There are good club swimmers that swim for their summer teams, although on our summer team the top club kids seem to stop summer swim once they hit 13-14. [/quote]

The problem is these leagues (and many of the teams) are run by parents who have year-round swimmers. All of the timing rules, stroke and turn, refereeing etc. benefit year round swimmers and those parents want to keep it that way.[/quote]

How do ref and stroke and turn judges only benefit year round swimmers? In any sport there are refs. Stroke and turn are there to let kids know if they aren't doing a stroke properly. May kids start out in summer league, love swimming and go on to swim year round. Some kids may also swim in high school even if they don't do year round swim. [/quote]

Apparently PP thinks they should relax the rules for summer swim. I can’t even. That’s like saying soccer rules are set up to benefit travel players and that refs should just rec soccer players use their hands. So ridiculous.[/quote]

No... it's not like changing the rules so that players can use their hands.  It's like acknowledging that while the MLS may have five refs on the field, it's actually OK to have just one ref do his best when a bunch of 10 year olds are playing soccer in the local rec league.  And yeah, sometimes the one ref may miss an off-sides call.  It's OK.  It really is.
In fact - horror of horrors - I've even been to rec soccer games when an official ref didn't show up, and two parents, one from each team, just did their best to keep the game fair and moving along.  It was fine.
Likewise, while super-official-college-bound-important year round swimmers may need three people timing them, perhaps it's OK if only one person times the summer league lanes and just does their best.[/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