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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My kids are 4 and 5 and just stumbled into a swim team practice in our neighborhood pool 2 weeks ago.  I just found out the season is over but planning for next year.

What is swim team all about?  What is pre-team and what should I expect for my kids. There is practice daily?  There are meets weekly?  Help me navigate this for next year. I have asked neighbors and some love it and some can’t handle it. Give me the scoop. [/quote]

Dig through and read the swim related threads here over the past 2 months and you'll have a pretty good picture of summer swim.

You'll be in pre-team next year so no need to over-think this, you'll learn most of what you need to know between now and the end of next season.[/quote]

Not necessarily. My 6 year old DD swam 8U this year and made every A meet and divisionals. [/quote]

That's a nice humble-brag but if you are completely honest, you have to admit that this is fairly exceptional and very atypical, don't you agree?

OP seems to know nothing about about swim(hence the question) so the chances that her now 4 and 5 year olds are doing anything other than pre-team is unlikely.  And there's nothing wrong with that.
[/quote]
I'm a NP and I had a similar experience.  I know nothing about swim.  My brand-new 7 yo (May birthday) had never heard of breaststroke when she started the season.  She made Divisionals for the stroke, narrowly missing All Stars.  Crazy stuff happens when you're first starting, like dropping 40 seconds in the week before Divisionals. She spent 30 minutes with a senior swimmer and came out of that practice with a good stroke.

When we signed up, I hadn't expected swim to take over my Saturdays. From what I'd been told, I didn't expect to go to A meets at all.  That turned out not to be true.  We were at nearly every A meet.

Not bragging, just trying to defend the PP.  It can be a lot the first year as you figure it all out.  I had no idea what to expect. [/quote]

No one who was swimming in A meets all summer dropped 40 seconds in a week.  Didn't happen.[/quote]
Especially in a 25 meter race, that’s ridiculous.[/quote]

My kids are 13-14 and 15-18 now, but I see something like this every year in the 8 and unders in our mid divisions nvsl team.

They will take a 6 or 7 year old who doesn’t have a clue how to do breaststroke or fly and takes over a minute to get across the pool just to dq. And a coach or other older kid will spend a few practices teaching them breast or fly and it just clicks with the kid. They get legal for the last meet of the year, then go to Divisionals and drop massive time.  I’ve never seen anyone get good enough to “almost” make all stars. But we seem to have an 8 and under at Divisionals every year who couldn’t swim the stroke two weeks before. [/quote]

Agree. Most kids in 8 and under can barely swim so any kid who manages to be legal in breast or fly has a chance at divisionals in lower division teams.[/quote]
This also totally true. Not to step on the proud parents of the 8Us but on many teams, particularly lower division ones, if you are just legal in those strokes you will be at A meets and have a chance at Divisionals. That said I’ve never seen a kid start legal and drop 40 seconds over a few weeks. I have seen kids go from not legal to legal and making A meets and Divisionals though. [/quote]
No one is claiming their 6 yo is the next Michael Phelps.  The comments have all been that they parents underestimated the intensity and level of commitment.  Having both A meets, B meets and 5 days of practice per week is a ton for a 6-7 yo.[/quote]
There are multiple parents of new 8 and under swimmers posting proudly in this thread about their kids making all the A meets and Divisionals. Also a poster claimed a kid dropped 40 seconds over a week or 2 in a 25 meter race, which as multiple posters pointed out is unlikely to have happened. [/quote]

We give an award for the most time dropped from prior season times. This year the winner dropped 5 minutes across all strokes plus IM. They are still far away from ever swimming an A meet let alone divisionals or all stars, but they went from kid everyone clapped for to being able to easily finish. I can totally see a slow swimmer dropping 40 seconds - look at the bottom of your teams ladder and there are going to be 8 and unders with times of 2 or 3 minutes. Just learning how to get across the pool more easily will drop 40 seconds [/quote]
Time dropped from a previous season is not the same as claiming a kid dropped 40 seconds in a 1-2 week span in a 25 meter race. I’ve been a swim parent for a long time and have not seen that. Huge drops from season to season, absolutely, especially if the kid did a stroke and turn clinic in the winter/spring.[/quote]

Kid panics or gets exhausted and hangs out on the lane line for a minute vs. gutting it out. That happens all the time. [/quote]
That kid gets DQd, so they don’t get a time.[/quote]

Actually- that’s not a DQ. [/quote]

It's hard to maintain simultaneous arm and leg action, stay on stroke cycle and keep elbows in the water while hanging on the lane line.  Lots of ways this can be a DQ.[/quote]

As long as they don't push off, it's not a DQ for free style [/quote]

Breaststroke was the stroke in question.[/quote]

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