Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is an amazing thread. I have been a:
swim mom (winter)
summer swim mom; country club addition
baseball mom
basketball mom (club, HS, and elite travel)
soccer mom

The common thread is that the more elite you get, the worse the parents are. So winter swim is on par with the competitive dance moms, I'm guessing. Winter swim parents have fully bought in to early-ass practices (they wear them like some badge of honor), and the interminable weekend meets where their kids only swim for like 5 minutes total in an 8 hour committed day.

Baseball moms, particularly in our little league, are gross, but for other reasons. Moms on the same team buy matching clothes and accessories and I find the entire thing infantilizing.

Travel league parents put their travel kid above everything else - disrupting every other part of the family schedule.

And my fave: country club summer swim! I volunteer because I think it's fun, and it helps the meets go by faster. And yes - probably too much drinking at the end of the meet, but I generally like most of the other parents!

IMO, the more elite a swimmer is the more chill the parents are. It’s the ones bickering over rec level summer swim that need to take a seat.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find this analogy sexist because a lot of swim dads are insane

Idk. Are there dance dads?

I mean the children have fathers, but nobody gives a shit because what’s your kid going to grow up to be- Michael Jordan? Michael Phelps? Can’t name a single pro dancer. Nobody gets rich off dancing unless you work in a strip club.

So they’re confused as to why the moms care so much.

Anonymous wrote:This is an amazing thread. I have been a:
swim mom (winter)
summer swim mom; country club addition
baseball mom
basketball mom (club, HS, and elite travel)
soccer mom

The common thread is that the more elite you get, the worse the parents are. So winter swim is on par with the competitive dance moms, I'm guessing. Winter swim parents have fully bought in to early-ass practices (they wear them like some badge of honor), and the interminable weekend meets where their kids only swim for like 5 minutes total in an 8 hour committed day.

Baseball moms, particularly in our little league, are gross, but for other reasons. Moms on the same team buy matching clothes and accessories and I find the entire thing infantilizing.

Travel league parents put their travel kid above everything else - disrupting every other part of the family schedule.

And my fave: country club summer swim! I volunteer because I think it's fun, and it helps the meets go by faster. And yes - probably too much drinking at the end of the meet, but I generally like most of the other parents!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find this analogy sexist because a lot of swim dads are insane

Idk. Are there dance dads?

Anonymous wrote:This is an amazing thread. I have been a:
swim mom (winter)
summer swim mom; country club addition
baseball mom
basketball mom (club, HS, and elite travel)
soccer mom

The common thread is that the more elite you get, the worse the parents are. So winter swim is on par with the competitive dance moms, I'm guessing. Winter swim parents have fully bought in to early-ass practices (they wear them like some badge of honor), and the interminable weekend meets where their kids only swim for like 5 minutes total in an 8 hour committed day.

Baseball moms, particularly in our little league, are gross, but for other reasons. Moms on the same team buy matching clothes and accessories and I find the entire thing infantilizing.

Travel league parents put their travel kid above everything else - disrupting every other part of the family schedule.

And my fave: country club summer swim! I volunteer because I think it's fun, and it helps the meets go by faster. And yes - probably too much drinking at the end of the meet, but I generally like most of the other parents!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am both. (If you count summer swim as a “swim mom”)

Summer swim is in a league of its own. It’s supposed to be a flurry of fun for 1.5 months.
The swim parents involved in summer swim are just volunteers that are trying to make a fun experience for their kids.

True swim parents have kids that swim year round and yes they can be as competitive and catty as dance moms.

I am also both and I was a competitive, 6-days-per-week dancer growing up. In my experience, club swim parents are the best. Our closest friends are swim parents we met sitting outside practice or in the bleachers. Nobody cares about who is faster, etc. Kids just hang out together and have such fun. Parents mostly work or talk about things completely unrelated to swim, unless it’s to compliment someone’s swimmer.

Dance is a whole other animal, mostly because — like in Dance Moms — the more private lessons you pay for, the more lessons you pay for, the more costumes you pay for, the more money the studio makes. Also, dance is significantly more subjective in terms of who makes company, who gets solos/trios at competitions, who gets to do that special event at [insert fancy setting] or that commercial shoot, etc.

Swim is not subjective. Moving to elite practice groups is because a child has the cut times that are for the group. My child is an AA swimmer for NCAP. She has only been on a handful of relays, and we know going to any meet she almost certainly won’t be on the relays because NCAP is huge and there are easily 8 girls from NCAP ahead of her. And that’s okay. Nobody cares and few kids even know who swam on any relays. Some kids make elite meets, some kids don’t. Nobody cares. They are still friends and make crafts and play Taco Cat or Uno at every meet they attend together. They cheer for their B time friends and their AAA friends. And no amount of schmoozing up the coaches will change the times a swimmer swims.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am both. (If you count summer swim as a “swim mom”)

Summer swim is in a league of its own. It’s supposed to be a flurry of fun for 1.5 months.
The swim parents involved in summer swim are just volunteers that are trying to make a fun experience for their kids.

True swim parents have kids that swim year round and yes they can be as competitive and catty as dance moms.

Since you acknowledge you’re only a summer swim mom, what is your basis for describing club swim moms as catty and competitive?

Anonymous wrote:Don’t count out the dads.

Anonymous wrote:Year round swim is way less dramatic than the 8 weeks of summer swim crazy!

A lot of summer swim parents think this is a lot more serious than it really is 🤣

Anonymous wrote:I find this analogy sexist because a lot of swim dads are insane