Our team has had winter swim for years. Many of the kids wouldn't be swimming off season at all otherwise. With only one day a week and lots of weekends when our host pool can't accommodate us, it isn't going to make our swimmers Olympic qualifiers. But, it keeps the kids in contact with each other and helps the kids retain their hard-earned prowess. It does help the younger kids get legal in new strokes and get used to swimming the longer distances as they move up in age groups. Although not required, many kids wear their team suits to winter swim. I LOVE that! Their pride in being on our team re-affirms our loyalty. I require my kids to participate in at least one competitive sport during the school year. They, hands down, chose swimming. So, they swim & compete in PVS too.

If you can get good professional coaches it would be great but most coaches are kinda meh. I wouldn't rely on our summer pool for any real coaching, just fun.

No team is competing to stay in a high division based on it's summer and winter programs. The goal of winter should be to help the youngest kids get legal in all strokes and hopefully enjoy it enough to do club because club swimming is where kids really improve.

I don’t think any winter program can be fun like summer. Summer is fun because it is a lot of social activities disguised as swim.

Ours is horrible. Teen coaches who chat with each other while having kids swim laps, but will little instruction on

Our team is a high NVSL team but depends heavily on already talented kids and recruiting year round swimmers to the summer team (coach coaches high level swim year round). So the coaching in both summer and winter is not great.

The winter program is not fun like the summer program. I found it better to do stroke clinics at a club off season rather than winter swim through our swim team. Most people agree but they get new families each year who don’t know better, or people join because it’s cheaper and maybe their kids just needs some time in the pool.

Ours has what I consider a great one. It's run by the assistant coaches and teens. Teens who want to coach summer are required to coach winter as well. The downside is that it's just Sundays and there is limited benefit to swimming once a week.

We have a great program that we’ve started a few years ago. It’s one day a week, lead by our head coach with support from the assistant coaches (2 adults), and we have teen swimmers in the water with our younger swimmers. Some of the teens do it to satisfy volunteer hours.

It’s been great to keep water skills for our younger swimmers. We’ve noticed fewer DQs for our 8&U this past summer.

We have a great program. It is all technique based so not a lot of laps. The point is to teach the kids new strokes and keep the ones that know their strokes in good shape.

My friend's pool does not do a program until spring and their program is two days a week. Literally getting the kids ready for summer.

Ours is not officially affiliated with the swim team, it is run by the pool so it's open to all pool members not just swim team families, and if there's room is actually open to non-pool members as well. That being said, for the last few years it has been led by our head coach and the other coaches are all teenagers from the swim team.

There is some technique work but it's really more of a workout to keep kids in the water who don't swim club.

Does your summer team host a winter swim program? If so, what kind of coaches do they have? (teens, adults, etc)

How good or bad is the program? We are thinking of starting one at our pool, we do not have one.