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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I also find the posts about not being able to 'get in' later weird.  This has not been my experience at all, and my kids are not very good.  One of my kids joined club swim at age 11, and had plenty of options.  Started out swimming 2 days a week, eventually stepped up to 3 days.  
I've seen many kids who are not great swimmers switch clubs, both from small clubs to big clubs (e.g. NCAP) and from big clubs to smaller clubs.  And by not great swimmers I mean might have a b cut in their best stroke, but mostly have no cuts.  
The clubs like RMSC and AAC that are subsidized by the government and cheaper are harder to get into- but I have also seen kids joining these clubs- this is where it helps to be a super strong swimmer.  Although it also helps to be on top of registration deadlines, etc- and move quickly.
I had another kid who opted to join club swimming at 7.  For this kid, they loved going to meets and motivated from meets.  So club was a real advantage over a stroke clinic.  Its really about what works for your kid and your family- but in my opinion, FOMO is always a bad reason to join something- although it is often the prevailing reason here in the slightly crazy DMV.[/quote]

I'm super interested in your experience because ours has been that it's hard to get in. While obviously if your kid is excellent, they'll find a spot. But for a kid with a B cut or no cut? I'm not sure how they find a spot at 11.

Granted, my kid is NOT a fast swimmer by any means. He did a low tier club last year as a 9yo and tried out this year as a 10yo for TOLL and RMSC and was denied at both. We're going to do a development program this year 2x/week (in the hopes that it prepares him better than the club he joined - for many reasons we were not particularly happy with the club and the amount of improvement over 5 weeks this summer compared to the zero improvement over the course of the year spoke volumes - so we wanted to try something new this year), but I'm not sure he has a path to joining a club again.

There are a limited number of clubs in MoCo. RMSC, ASA, NCAP are all going to be super competitive and only want kids with A cuts at 11-12. He was already denied at TOLL. Other than JFD/QOSA and SDS, are there any other clubs? Does he have a path to ever getting into a club if he wants to? He's a multi-sport athlete and has other sports he excels at, but was disappointed not to get into a club for swimming. [/quote]

As PP said, this is highly dependent on where you live. I lived in Manhattan, and if you weren't on the website when tryout registration opened, you couldn't even get a spot to try out, much less get in. I repeat, even the tryout slots were hard to get. I learned my lesson one year when I went to the website a day after registration opened, and my kids had to wait until the next year. And they usually only had a few spots for 11/12 and 13/14, and some years they had zero spots.[/quote]

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