Check out some of the teams that practice at Fairland pool.

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Machine has younger groups at both Fairland and UMD but they do fill up. You have to contact them to see if there is space.

PAC also has a site at UMD

Machine’s gears group I believe is ages 8-12 and they have a group at UMD (at least they did last year).

My kids swam for the BCC Y team as a “stepping stone” from summer to year round swim at that 8-10 range. It was good bc it was convenient to our house, 2-3x/week practice, and let them experience year round swim w/out all the “pressure” of tryouts etc. It was not as good in that the meets were all -very- far away (Hagerstown, Cumberland, Salisbury!), there were only a few meets each year, and the meets were -very- long bc they were not broken up by age grouped sessions. The coaching was definitely not as good, either. I feel like they missed technique instruction during those “formative” years. Again, this was BCC but I think it’s basically the same at Silver Spring.

Researching options for my 8 year old who tried out summer swimming for the first time and loved it. We weren't ready for the commitment of something like RMSC and Machine doesn't seem to have the younger groups available at the UMD site. It would seem to me that the YMCA would be what I (and honestly it seems a fair amount of people based on the posts I'm reading) are looking for.

Anyone care to share their thoughts or experiences with the piranhas?