Reply to Divisionals really shows why the unfair birthday rule matters

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/katie-ledecky-returns-to-her-summer-swim-league-to-sign-autographs--and-set-records/2014/07/05/023f7b54-0392-11e4-8fd0-3a663dfa68ac_story.html

The great thing about summer swim is that it is for everyone. But then parents go and ruin it by calculating kids ages down to the month and claiming an unfair advantage.

Katie Ledecky, Phoebe Bacon and Erin Gemmill have an unfair advantage over my kids - they are phenomenal swimmers. I seriously doubt their birthdate has anything to do with it.

Moral of the story - teach your kids that [b]life isn't fair[/b] and to do the best with what gifts you do have.

[/quote]

So you admit the birthday rule is unfair. [/quote]

Any way you manage it, kids sports have an element of unfairness.  Kids exactly the same age are going to be taller or shorter, or have hit puberty or not.  Whether the cut off is the day of the meet, or another day, there will be kids competing who are 729 days older or younger than other kids.  There will be kids who have advantages like club swim, or pools in their backyards, or parents who taught them to swim early.

The birthday rule is just the same as all of the rest.  It's no more or less fair than aging up on your birthday, and a lot less unfair than allowing club swimmers to compete.  But none of this matters, because the vast majority of people in summer swim get that it's a rec sport, and that the point is to get kids active, and learning to support each other, and having fun.

I really think that summer swim should be like my kids' church rec basketball team where every player gets exactly the same number of minutes, or in this case A and B races.  The people like OP whose priority seems to raising their kids to be entitled a-holes who whine about things like this would leave, and the rest of us would have even more fun.  [/quote]

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