Anonymous wrote:If you plan on doing this long term, or if your kids will do HS swim or go to HS football games...

Get a tub now. Buy stuff at the dollar tree (diff color beads, grass skirt, leis.) Pick up some of the face/body paint at wal mart.
Some $1 USA glasses or hair bands.

Save them and use year to year.

I don't re-buy every year. We re-use. Sometimes the kids re-freshen, but you will end up having "dress-up" for the rest of your kids school lives, even if not for swim team.

This is good advice. We still have a "dress up" closet even though my kids are teens and the stuff gets used a lot.

100% optional, except maybe for the coaches, sorry for them.

Anonymous wrote:My biggest issue with the whole concept is that kids only wear their outfits for ~5 minutes. It's so so short that kids don't even get to really check out each other's outfits. Our typical schedule:

7 AM - Team arrives
7:05 AM - Team photo in costumes
7:07 AM - Strip off outfits and put on caps
7:10 AM - Warm ups start

Is it always this rushed for other teams? It's feels like a whole lot of effort to sort Hawaiian wear for an 8 yo for a 6:15 AM departure (to arrive by 7 AM) with less than 5 minutes of payoff.

We dress up for the pep rallies, so kids are wearing their outfits for 2 plus hours the night before, and then again on meet morning. Themes are typically: tropical, neon, 4th of July, superheroes, pirates.

Our team does. Themes have always been pretty simple, ones I remember:
- team color (usually for Divisionals)
- Hawaiian/tropical
- Sport jerseys
- Prom (not my fav bec it's a lot for younger kids)
- Neon
- Crazy hats
- Red, white and blue (4th of July)
- Tie die (made at the pool)
- Color wars (each age division was a different color and parent/coaches too)

Agree with PP who recycle or find stuff at home. It's a fun part of the team but we're not over the top about it.

Do the boys participate? Seems like a girl thing or girl moms.

Our high-division team does this and it’s a big part of the fun of summer swim. Many of our kids are club swimmers who work hard all year. Let them have some fun with summer swim meets for God’s sake!

Anonymous wrote:The amount of don’t do it, it’s a waste of time sentiment in this thread makes me sad

Same. A whole bunch of curmudgeons. The entire purpose, in my opinion, of summer swim is traditions/fun. Kids can do the actual swim competition thing in club swim. For summer — Kids want the dressing up, the cheers, the post-meet lunches, the jumping into the pool at the end of a meet, etc. (And, if you’re an 80s kid like I am, eating jello packets before races, or whatever the equivalent of that is in the 2020s.)

I've never heard of this trend, our pool doesn't do this.

Anonymous wrote:The amount of don’t do it, it’s a waste of time sentiment in this thread makes me sad

Agree - if you want just stick to business swim only, just skip summer swim and stick to club.

The amount of don’t do it, it’s a waste of time sentiment in this thread makes me sad

What is the point of dress up day? They are SWIMMERS! Wear a bathing suit and be done.

Don’t do it. We just got over all the end of school shenanigans. We don’t need more stuff to think about right now.
And to the PP that suggested holidays. There is a heatwave right now, no one wants to wear a flippin Christmas sweater outside.

My biggest issue with the whole concept is that kids only wear their outfits for ~5 minutes. It's so so short that kids don't even get to really check out each other's outfits. Our typical schedule:

7 AM - Team arrives
7:05 AM - Team photo in costumes
7:07 AM - Strip off outfits and put on caps
7:10 AM - Warm ups start

Is it always this rushed for other teams? It's feels like a whole lot of effort to sort Hawaiian wear for an 8 yo for a 6:15 AM departure (to arrive by 7 AM) with less than 5 minutes of payoff.

Our team does this and we keep the themes the same year to year. For example, 80’s, Red White and Blue for 4th of July week, Hawaiian, etc. Unless you’re new to the team you have stuff from the year prior. Our team also hands out things to all the kids to wear for the pep rally, the A meet and the B meet. So even if you bring nothing you’ll get a lei or a pair of sunglasses or some beads. The majority of kids dress up because of this, all the coaches do, and some of the super involved parents. It makes it fun and all the kids love it. Obviously it takes work but that’s one volunteer’s job to coordinate it all.

- red, white, blue (July 4th week)
- wear red (Juneteenth)
- ‘green’ out, or whatever your team color is

Keep the same every year and keep it super simple, so most kids will participate.

Easy!