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][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How are the competitive area swim clubs so successful at getting parents to pay thousands of dollars of fees per year for programs where it seems that the same principle would apply as to our academic teams. (I.e., they are open to everyone, but are of greatest benefit to the most talented participants)?[/quote]

Swimming is an individual as well as a team sport. The "supporting players" may not be earning points for their team but they get to participate in meets, they participate in practice, they improve their technique and their times and their endurance.

Those same parents would likely not pay if their children did not get to participate (e.g. if they only got to attend practice and never compete in a meet, if they weren't challenged and taught how to improve technique and times, etc) fully.

My child is not a star swimmer but aside from the competitive qualifying meets, she gets the same experience as a star swimmer. She might not get the same amount of access to the "best" coaches, if you consider only their stats on coaching star swimmers, but she gets the same amount of access to excellent coaches who suit where she is in swimming.[/quote]

USA Swimming, the regional governing bodies (e.g., PVS), and the local, year-round, competitive club swim teams (e.g., RMSC, NCAP, The Fish, Machine, NOVA, Sea Devils), and the summer leagues (Prince Mont, MCSL, NVSL) have done an excellent job of recruiting an incredibly large base of young age-group swimmers.  Swimming is now the second-most popular organized sport in the country for children.  Last year (2012), membership in USA Swimming increased to a total of 300,884 active, year-round competitive swimmers across this nation.  (Of the less than 50% who self-reported their ethnicity, .5% identified themselves as African American, 1.5% identified as Latino, 2.7% identified as Asian, and 20.1% identified as White).

Swimming's effective recruitment of an incredibly large (if not diverse) population of young swimmers is the single most important reason why U.S. swimming continues to outperform and dominate every other country in the world.  First, because when you cast a wide net, you are bound to catch some very good fish.  More U.S. children experience organized competitive swimming, at some point in their youth, than all but one other sport (soccer?).  And I would argue that those who do engage in organized swimming have a more serious experience of it than those who attempt organized soccer (through AYSO, and local city or county leagues when they are very young).

In addition to catching some of the very best swimmers with the wide net it casts, swimming supports its most talented swimmers through the "subsidies" that the not-so-talented swimmers provide in annual club fees ($3,000+/yr.), and USA Swimming dues (approx. $60/annual to national and club).  In no other sport does a base 300,884 athletes strong help to support through their fees and dues the top-level coaching and competition that USA Swimming does.  Gymnasts and figure skaters, for example, often have to pay large, out-of-pocket-fees for their top-level coaching.  In part, this is because swimming can be organized on a larger scale (pools are big, staggered practices provide more time still, and the star clubs can hire less-recognized coaches for the junior groups).

Take a top-level area talent competing on the national or world stage.  That swimmer commands more of his/her coaches' and club's time than $4,000+ they pay in dues every year.  In fact, if coaches charged their top-level swimmers by the hours spent, it would be prohibitively expensive for those swimmers.  The less-talented, but still enthusiastic, competitive swimmer also gets much benefit, but could probably attain the same level of enjoyment and fitness with less hours.  In most cases, this majority of average competitive swimmers gets less in value than the $3,000+ that they pay annually.

Getting back to the comment above, to which I am responding, I do not know why the same principles of mass support cannot be/are not translatable to academic teams on which everyone can compete, or even other sports in which everyone can join.

Must be something in the water, I guess.[/quote]

Interesting food for thought.[/quote]

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