Adding to the chorus of different perspective. My kids participate in a pool that is part of MCSL and there are 200+ kids on the team. I think only one record is left from the 2010s and many get reset each year. I would say my kids’ team is thriving and kids love to participate.

My wife and I both work, but our swim team has early morning and late afternoon practices, so it's not hard to do.

Anonymous wrote:PP above, your pool/club doesn’t have a membership cap? Ours can only have a certain number of memberships per year and there is a long wait list. We only add new members when people or move away.

They might have a membership cap and haven’t reached it. For example, our cap is 400 and we currently have about 245 memberships.

Adding to my above post, please read some of the posts on the swim volunteer thread. My kids were never that into joining and I stopped encouraging because I don’t want to be involved in that. I would volunteer for something they loved but summer swim volunteer requirements sound terrible if your kids are indifferent. Mine play other sports and there isn’t the intensive time requirement on the parents.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Summer swim practice is easiest for kids who have a stay at home parents. Otherwise practice starts around 8 or 10 am and then what for childcare for the little ones?

No true. Working parents can make do it too. If you have more than 1 kids, it is easier and cheaper to get a college student as a summer nanny that pay for a summer camps all summer. Nanny share is also an option, All the kids in our neighborhood stay at the pool and play after practice.

This is a huge hassle for a kid’s activity. Some of us, like me, didn’t grow up with summer swim so this is just another activity. It’s so much easier to enroll in camp.

I have a job with a month off in the summer and could have made it work. My kids never wanted to get up early day to swim laps in cold or cool water. The pool was a place they wanted to go splash around and have fun at in the evenings. When they were little, I encouraged them to join the swim team fle the social activities but neither were ever interested. Now that my youngest is in upper elementary, it’s her idea of hell to be at a pool at 8am every day of summer break.

Anonymous wrote:At our pool, the only kids that do summer swim are the ones with a parent that stays at home. When I was a kid there were a lot more SAHMs therefore a lot more kids swimming every day. That might explain the number of kids/meets.

It’s interesting how different pool cultures are. At our pool (giant swim team), I can count the number of stay at home parents on one, maybe two hands.

At our pool, the only kids that do summer swim are the ones with a parent that stays at home. When I was a kid there were a lot more SAHMs therefore a lot more kids swimming every day. That might explain the number of kids/meets.

PP above, your pool/club doesn’t have a membership cap? Ours can only have a certain number of memberships per year and there is a long wait list. We only add new members when people or move away.

I think the competitiveness of most teams is somewhat cyclical. eg, right now our summer team has a ton of club swimmers and has for several years. If we hadn't known so many people swimming club we probably wouldn't have started.
I do think that the overspecialization of youth sports takes away from summer swim. e.g. kids who are playing travel soccer etc. have to keep up their soccer commitments all summer and always prioritize soccer over anything else- which leads to missing some swim practice and meets even if they are on the team.
I think the theory that there all a bunch of baby boomers occupying pool space and thus keeping out younger families from the pool and off swim team is simply bizarre. As a pool board member, we love our baby boomer members- they pay their dues, and don't come much, so it's really not keeping us from letting anyone else in.
In terms of swim practice times etc- I don't think its so much the rise of 2 parent working families, but the rise in supervision expectations for kids that can make swim team hard. e.g. in the 1980's it was perfectly acceptable for your 9 year old to be dropped at swim practice, hang around until the pool opened, and then be at the pool all day 'unsupervised' while mom was at work. Now many pools require kids to be at least 13 to be alone at the pool, latchkey kids aren't really a thing, etc.

I don't know OP. Our swim team is also 200+ and we are in a low division. Plenty of interest in our area.

We are a small pool and have 90-100 swimmers total. I agree with the PPs that the practice times make it hard. We both work but do shift work so always have one of us home in the mornings. We have a HS sitter in the afternoons twice a week. Also, while the season itself is super short it is very intense. If you are not a social parent who wants to get involved and spend every minute at the pool for 5 weeks straight you’re prob not going to sign up.

What happened to Summer Swim ... have you read the volunteering thread? Too much of An Ask.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is there a limit on pool memberships? Once the empty nesters fly south for good there will be room for young families and the team will rebuild

This. But the pool has to actively shed non going members and attract families. Not all boards are proactive like this.

How would you do that? Require people to go a certain number of times or their membership is revoked? I’m a membership chair and I don’t care how often they are at the pool as long as they pay their dues. They are bond members in good standing.

Our membership is growing, but we are only at about 60% of our total allowable memberships.

No requirement. But you keep track of attendance and call them at end of season or before paying for next and ask them what their plans are and if they want to continue paying for membership if they aren't using the pool.

I just don’t see the reason to do that. With no waitlist it wouldn’t make sense to eliminate any members.

I was a swimmer in the 80s and my really fast friends were year-round swimmers. It wasn’t as common then and the only kids who did club were kids who would be in the tippy top workout groups now. That’s why I think you’re seeing records lingering from the 70s and 80s. They were probably set by 8 year olds doing 6 workouts/week and yardage that would be considered really irresponsible today. I see coaches today trying to create longer swimming careers and prevent injury and burnout.

Summer swim was also more serious and less inclusive where I grew up. We would knock out sets back then that would be more than an entire workout for my 8 & under now. It was understood that you had to have bilateral breathing, a decent pullout, etc. to even join workouts, and so kids spent a ton of time in swim lessons in the winter. It was all about passing your YMCA Porpoise and Whale levels.

My kids’ practices this summer include children who stop halfway through a lap or are still doggie paddling, but the coaches don’t dare say something to the parents about swim lessons or mini team.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is there a limit on pool memberships? Once the empty nesters fly south for good there will be room for young families and the team will rebuild

This. But the pool has to actively shed non going members and attract families. Not all boards are proactive like this.

How would you do that? Require people to go a certain number of times or their membership is revoked? I’m a membership chair and I don’t care how often they are at the pool as long as they pay their dues. They are bond members in good standing.

Our membership is growing, but we are only at about 60% of our total allowable memberships.

No requirement. But you keep track of attendance and call them at end of season or before paying for next and ask them what their plans are and if they want to continue paying for membership if they aren't using the pool.