Worth it to clarify summer swim volunteering: it’s largely required and necessary for one parent with a swimmer in the meet to work in some capacity. Preparing gift bags (wtf?) and other extraneous mid-weekday miscellany is not required at the vast majority of teams, and absurd.

Anonymous wrote:Yup, if you don’t like helping out, don’t sign your kid up for summer swim. Parents like the pp are a total drag. Either they don’t sign up for anything and just watch as other families pick up their slack OR they do some stuff and complain constantly. If you’re a single parent or have a baby, obviously you can’t do much, and that’s understandable. But a two parent household where the kids are old enough to run around the meets by themselves—one of you should volunteer. If you can make it to the meets, then you can help out at some point. Even behind the scenes. Something. And if that’s not your thing, maybe summer swim isn’t where your family should be. It really is a community/family thing.

Our swim team isn’t clique-y. People have their groups of course because they’ve known each other for a long time, but they are friendly and there is little to no parent drama. I’m going to miss it when my kids graduate (or quit, whichever comes first!)

+1,000 to the bolded. Heck, if you don’t like helping out, consider not signing up for club swim, either. That requires parent volunteers, if not in the condensed time frame of summer swim - but those meets also don’t run without parents pitching in, mostly as timers and officials. The volunteering is part of what I enjoy about swim culture but YMMV.

Anonymous wrote:We belong to a neighborhood pool that has a swim team.

When I firsted started going there, I was like, "oh swim club looks so fun and nice! maybe our kids should do it!"

but after a couple summers of overhearing the swim team moms and dads talk to each other, no way. there's all this pressure to do annoying sh*t like sell concessions and set up chairs and time races. tons of gossip. lots of SAHMS with too much time on their hands who do stuff like make up unnecessary volunteer work and then pressure you to do it. Idiotic stuff like potluck parties at 1pm in the 95 degree heat. Sitting around making gift bags for kids. And then they get all mommy martyr-ish and try to pressure other moms into doing this sh*t. No thanks.

The kids seem fine. Mostly white. No Lax bro culture. But the parent culture, yuck

All that stuff is fine. It's the elitist swim club parents that are annoying. "She's fast but is she in RMSC." What is that the Rockville Montgomery Satanic Cult? We're the Rays, wear the cap.

OP, swim team is a great environment for kids. Swimming really did a number on my hair. I had hydral fatigue for years. If your dc has textured hair, I’d make sure he wears a cap over wet, conditioned hair and uses special chlorine shampoo. I maintain that the swim team experience was worth not looking my best. It’s not like I met my future spouse in middle school.

I had a friend who wouldn’t do swim team because of the hair issue and while I get it, she still can’t swim. People of all colors can drown. I think a few summers of suboptimal hair are absolutely worth the technical skill you get from swim team.

Agree - summer swim wouldn’t happened without volunteers. It takes many parents to run a meet. Do I like potlucks in the heat and other things the pp describes? no. But I do it for my kids and the community. They love summer swim and have had such a positive experience. Our team has several great traditions where the older swimmers support the younger and it brings the whole neighborhood together.

Yup, if you don’t like helping out, don’t sign your kid up for summer swim. Parents like the pp are a total drag. Either they don’t sign up for anything and just watch as other families pick up their slack OR they do some stuff and complain constantly. If you’re a single parent or have a baby, obviously you can’t do much, and that’s understandable. But a two parent household where the kids are old enough to run around the meets by themselves—one of you should volunteer. If you can make it to the meets, then you can help out at some point. Even behind the scenes. Something. And if that’s not your thing, maybe summer swim isn’t where your family should be. It really is a community/family thing.

Our swim team isn’t clique-y. People have their groups of course because they’ve known each other for a long time, but they are friendly and there is little to no parent drama. I’m going to miss it when my kids graduate (or quit, whichever comes first!)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We belong to a neighborhood pool that has a swim team.

When I firsted started going there, I was like, "oh swim club looks so fun and nice! maybe our kids should do it!"

but after a couple summers of overhearing the swim team moms and dads talk to each other, no way. there's all this pressure to do annoying sh*t like sell concessions and set up chairs and time races. tons of gossip. lots of SAHMS with too much time on their hands who do stuff like make up unnecessary volunteer work and then pressure you to do it. Idiotic stuff like potluck parties at 1pm in the 95 degree heat. Sitting around making gift bags for kids. And then they get all mommy martyr-ish and try to pressure other moms into doing this sh*t. No thanks.

The kids seem fine. Mostly white. No Lax bro culture. But the parent culture, yuck

A lot of what is described here is unique to summer swim and not part of the club culture. Having to volunteer to time is a part of club swim though.

+1. Summer swim culture is parent heavy. Club swim is more about the kids. Parents support but are much less involved. Volunteer duties, including timing, are much lighter. Timing is handled by all participating teams, and sometimes just by the host team. Also, two timers per lane, not three.

Anonymous wrote:We belong to a neighborhood pool that has a swim team.

When I firsted started going there, I was like, "oh swim club looks so fun and nice! maybe our kids should do it!"

but after a couple summers of overhearing the swim team moms and dads talk to each other, no way. there's all this pressure to do annoying sh*t like sell concessions and set up chairs and time races. tons of gossip. lots of SAHMS with too much time on their hands who do stuff like make up unnecessary volunteer work and then pressure you to do it. Idiotic stuff like potluck parties at 1pm in the 95 degree heat. Sitting around making gift bags for kids. And then they get all mommy martyr-ish and try to pressure other moms into doing this sh*t. No thanks.

The kids seem fine. Mostly white. No Lax bro culture. But the parent culture, yuck

A lot of what is described here is unique to summer swim and not part of the club culture. Having to volunteer to time is a part of club swim though.

Anonymous wrote:We belong to a neighborhood pool that has a swim team.

When I firsted started going there, I was like, "oh swim club looks so fun and nice! maybe our kids should do it!"

but after a couple summers of overhearing the swim team moms and dads talk to each other, no way. there's all this pressure to do annoying sh*t like sell concessions and set up chairs and time races. tons of gossip. lots of SAHMS with too much time on their hands who do stuff like make up unnecessary volunteer work and then pressure you to do it. Idiotic stuff like potluck parties at 1pm in the 95 degree heat. Sitting around making gift bags for kids. And then they get all mommy martyr-ish and try to pressure other moms into doing this sh*t. No thanks.

The kids seem fine. Mostly white. No Lax bro culture. But the parent culture, yuck

If you don’t want to ever have to volunteer than don’t sign your kids up for summer swim…it’s really just that simple.

Anonymous wrote:We belong to a neighborhood pool that has a swim team.

When I firsted started going there, I was like, "oh swim club looks so fun and nice! maybe our kids should do it!"

but after a couple summers of overhearing the swim team moms and dads talk to each other, no way. there's all this pressure to do annoying sh*t like sell concessions and set up chairs and time races. tons of gossip. lots of SAHMS with too much time on their hands who do stuff like make up unnecessary volunteer work and then pressure you to do it. Idiotic stuff like potluck parties at 1pm in the 95 degree heat. Sitting around making gift bags for kids. And then they get all mommy martyr-ish and try to pressure other moms into doing this sh*t. No thanks.

The kids seem fine. Mostly white. No Lax bro culture. But the parent culture, yuck

You make this post several times a year, seizing any thread where you could make the segue. And every time, someone explains that swimming requires volunteering for very real reasons and fundraising for very real reasons and that it’s mostly working parents doing the work. Still, you ignore the input of people actually in the know so that you can post the same random, SAHM make work accusations over and over again.

Anonymous wrote:We belong to a neighborhood pool that has a swim team.

When I firsted started going there, I was like, "oh swim club looks so fun and nice! maybe our kids should do it!"

but after a couple summers of overhearing the swim team moms and dads talk to each other, no way. there's all this pressure to do annoying sh*t like sell concessions and set up chairs and time races. tons of gossip. lots of SAHMS with too much time on their hands who do stuff like make up unnecessary volunteer work and then pressure you to do it. Idiotic stuff like potluck parties at 1pm in the 95 degree heat. Sitting around making gift bags for kids. And then they get all mommy martyr-ish and try to pressure other moms into doing this sh*t. No thanks.

The kids seem fine. Mostly white. No Lax bro culture. But the parent culture, yuck

I hear you on the gift bags, but if there are no timers there are no meets.

It depends on the teams you choose. We chose competitive, but lower key teams that focused on life balance and kids being kids and exploring other interests, while still fulfilling (reasonable) commitments. So for us it was a great experience with many positive rewards. My kids were able to swim year round, participate in theater/orchestra, be on the high school team, etc. and have fun.

We belong to a neighborhood pool that has a swim team.

When I firsted started going there, I was like, "oh swim club looks so fun and nice! maybe our kids should do it!"

but after a couple summers of overhearing the swim team moms and dads talk to each other, no way. there's all this pressure to do annoying sh*t like sell concessions and set up chairs and time races. tons of gossip. lots of SAHMS with too much time on their hands who do stuff like make up unnecessary volunteer work and then pressure you to do it. Idiotic stuff like potluck parties at 1pm in the 95 degree heat. Sitting around making gift bags for kids. And then they get all mommy martyr-ish and try to pressure other moms into doing this sh*t. No thanks.

The kids seem fine. Mostly white. No Lax bro culture. But the parent culture, yuck

I’ll add that kids tend to be strong students who are slightly on the nerdy side. The community is tight. My kids (college now) know swimmers from all over the country. There tends to be an immediate connection between swimmers.

Echoing what others have said, it's a huge time commitment if your kid gets into it. If you have early morning practices it basically dictates the entire household's schedule for years. It's also basically year round which affects when you can go on vacation. Agree there seems to be less of the bro culture (the negative parts at least) than some other sports for guys. In the DMV it's mostly white kids and Asian kids, a few black kids and very few Latinos. It forces your kids to be disciplined because it's so time consuming.