LOWELL SCHOOL. Lowell has a fantastic USA Swiming team based out of its on-campus indoor pool.
-Lowell is a preK-8th grade school in NW Washington but does have some high-school aged swimmers on the team.
-The team is open to the entire community, not limited only to Lowell students.
-Some swimmers do the early-morning swim thing there. Others practice in the afternoon/early evening. Space permitting, the session your swimmer practices in is your choice, not dictated by the team.
-My 9th grader still swims with the Lowell Lionfish even while she also swims for her high school team and my 7th grader swims exclusively for the Lionfish team throughout the year. All of us have been very pleased with the team and with the coaching.
-The focus is on learning and improving all strokes (for the newer swimmers) and on goal-setting and -meeting (for those who aspire to qualify for 'no slower than' meets) and, of course, on having fun.
-You may find more through the Lowell School website: http://www.lowellschool.org/Page/Programs/Aquatics.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My BFF is moving back to the states after 20 something years abroad, YAY!!! She has asked me to help her research schools with a swim team and a pool. She will move back here next summer (2017). They are well off and are ok with moving to DC or NoVA. She wants to find a good school first because she doesn't want a long drive to the school (she's a SAHM). Her two kids (5th and 6th grader) are both competitive swimmers and she wants a school with a strong swim team and a pool at the school. I did a bit of a search and found a Georgetown Prep, but it is a school for only boys. She has a boy and a girl. Can you recommend a good private school that has a pool and a competitive team? Thanks!

If her kids have any talent at all, she should be asking you to find her a good swim club / Olympic development team. But then, if her kids were really talented she would already have contacts.

Private schools are hardly the place to develop a world class athlete. LOL

I had a classmate in HS who went to the US Olympic trials as a HS Junior. She had been training with a club since age 8 and she practiced with them every day at 5AM before going to school. It might be a good idea to buy a house within a couple miles of such a private club team. Of course, being a member is by invitation only.

Unless your last name is Ledecky. But she wasn't reliant on the school team alone.

Anonymous wrote:If they are competitive swimmers, I agree that their focus should be on swimming for a solid club team, not wasting time on school teams. Especially at their ages.

High schools like Prep and Stone Ridge rent out to the club teams after the school team is done with practice - NCAP, All Star aquatics, etc

Stone ridge

NCS/STA looks like it might be the right situation. The schools, although separate and single gender, share the same campus (one morning drop-off and evening pickup) and on-campus swimming facilities. The high school coaches coach the middle school teams. The Sea Devils youth team practices at the pool every day under the tutelage of the same coaches and the coaches have also coached summer league swimming at a local community pool. St Albans also runs a co-ed summer swim camp.

Your friend should visit the US this summer and tour the local schools to get a better feel for the area and the different school cultures and begin the application process.

From usaswimming.org

Washington, D.C.: Washington, D.C. is a strong addition to the top 10 with 15,000 USA Swimming members, the fourth highest number in the country. There are 122 swim facilities inside the Beltway, sixth-best, and one of the most robust summer league programs nationwide. Nation’s Capital Swim Club topped the USA Swimming Club Excellence program in 2015.

Your friend may be disappointed with the pool/swim team situation in the DC metro area.

In my hometown (a mid-sized city in the US), every public high school has its own pool on its campus. The school swim teams are very competitive and robust.

Here in the DC area, there are very few indoor pools relative to the dense population. It was a true shock to me when I moved here 10 years ago, but people who are from here seem to just accept it as normal. Maybe land is so expensive that it's not possible to build more indoor pools.

I prefer the robust school-affiliated swim teams myself, but I don't see a lot of that in the DC area.

Usaswimming ranks DC area in top ten of country based on various factors. I did not realize other parts of the country had much better school teams. Do you mind sharing where ?..I'm just curious,

But the usaswimming factors on their site seem to indicate we have plenty of pools and stars...look at some of the top Olympic talent coming out of DC metro area. Agree the real swimming is happening at club level in most of the country not just DC.

Holton has one of the nicest pools in the area, and one of the year-round clubs also trains there. (Might be Sea Devils?)

Anonymous wrote:My BFF is moving back to the states after 20 something years abroad, YAY!!! She has asked me to help her research schools with a swim team and a pool. She will move back here next summer (2017). They are well off and are ok with moving to DC or NoVA. She wants to find a good school first because she doesn't want a long drive to the school (she's a SAHM). Her two kids (5th and 6th grader) are both competitive swimmers and she wants a school with a strong swim team and a pool at the school. I did a bit of a search and found a Georgetown Prep, but it is a school for only boys. She has a boy and a girl. Can you recommend a good private school that has a pool and a competitive team? Thanks!

If her kids have any talent at all, she should be asking you to find her a good swim club / Olympic development team. But then, if her kids were really talented she would already have contacts.

Private schools are hardly the place to develop a world class athlete. LOL

I had a classmate in HS who went to the US Olympic trials as a HS Junior. She had been training with a club since age 8 and she practiced with them every day at 5AM before going to school. It might be a good idea to buy a house within a couple miles of such a private club team. Of course, being a member is by invitation only.

Ideally they'd find a great club team and school team. If they're really good & swimming club multiple days a week, and are flexible about where they live, it'd be great to find a strong club team that practices close to where they will live & go to school, and be thinking about that now, rather than ending up with long drives at 5 am or 5 pm. I don't know all the club locations, but here's one example: I know a lot of top local swimmers swim NCAP at Georgetown Prep, and there are some families with NCAP swimmers with girl(s) at Stone Ridge & boy(s) at Prep. Prep is only HS, so they'd need another school for a few years, but SR is preK through 12 and has a middle school swim team as well as HS, and also a pool on campus. I know it doesn't fit the bill of one co-ed school, but it would have similar benefits because of overlap in communities & close proximity of schools. Perhaps your friend should look up locations for NCAP, RSMC, Machine, and other top clubs, and take that into consideration. As a PP said, many of the top swimming schools are single sex. The co-ed privates that finished in the top 10 for boys AND girls in the WMPSSDL Championships include St. John's, Good Counsel, and O'Connell. . . teams like Flint Hill, St. Stephen St. Agnes, Ireton, Potomac had one gender in top 10 . . . You could look these all up & see which have pools on campus.

If they are competitive swimmers, I agree that their focus should be on swimming for a solid club team, not wasting time on school teams. Especially at their ages.

Most private schools have middle school teams as well as high school teams. (Usually 6 or 7 grade)

Do most of the school mentioned start school swim teams before 9th? OP said the kids are middle school.

I cannot tell what age you are looking for but Lowell has a. Pool and a team. I don't think they compete against the Stone Ridge level of competitors but their swim coach is terrific with kids.

Stone Ridge