Anonymous wrote:Swimming comes across as so elitist. The expensive pay-to-play model is bad enough but then you have forced volunteering or an expensive payout? I can't see how my mom would have been able to handle that. I'm now married to a successful college swimmer and it is funny that she is the one who isn't interested in being involved in the toxic competitive swim culture.

Expensive? Ours is so cheap. Like $250 for a full summer. You do have to belong to my HOA though, so maybe if you don’t have a pool membership you’re paying more.

Anonymous wrote:Swimming comes across as so elitist. The expensive pay-to-play model is bad enough but then you have forced volunteering or an expensive payout? I can't see how my mom would have been able to handle that. I'm now married to a successful college swimmer and it is funny that she is the one who isn't interested in being involved in the toxic competitive swim culture.

Summer swimming is one of the least elitist activities my kids have done. (Only cross country would rank lower). Not sure why you consider volunteering elitist…it honestly gives you a chance to meet other parents.

I do volunteer as I have family help. But I have a 4 and a 1 year old too. Family usually is very helpful but she’s having a lot of health issues and the doctors appts are chaotic. I get it- not swim teams problem, but I find myself scrambling a lot.

Why don’t they just publish parents who volunteer? (But how do you all do that? Some kids have 1 kid swimming, 2 parents volunteering. Others have 5 kids swimming, 1 parent volunteering)

Anonymous wrote:Swimming comes across as so elitist. The expensive pay-to-play model is bad enough but then you have forced volunteering or an expensive payout? I can't see how my mom would have been able to handle that. I'm now married to a successful college swimmer and it is funny that she is the one who isn't interested in being involved in the toxic competitive swim culture.

If your spouse did summer swim in Northern VA she would know how many volunteers it takes to run a meet.

All competitive sports can be toxic depending on the environment.

I haven't been involved for a couple years now, but our team had a job number requirement based on the number of families signing up--usually it was 6 jobs. Come June 5 at 7 pm, you better sign in to sign up for your jobs. They could be anything as long as they added up to 6. S&T and starters got put in by admins ahead of time. Clean up/set up was 2 jobs about 10 years ago but then became one job (I guess less families?) I used to sign up for A meet set/up/take down bc I get up early on and can walk to the pool so I didn't mind it, and my husband would sometimes time on Saturdays even though our kids usually weren't every week A swimmers since an A meet is way more enjoyable to time than a B meet. I don't understand how people can pay to get out of the jobs--seems difficult to run a meet! Anyone who didn't sign up was emailed, and then if they still didn't sign up they were put into the remaining slots and told what their jobs were.

I am the volunteer coordinator for a large upper division team. I don't understand how teams run without a volunteer policy. You do a minimum number of points tracked in Swimtopia. If you don't, you are charged $$. It is pretty simple. Doesn't matter if you do behind the scenes jobs (and there are a TON) or on deck positions, everyone has to help out. We don't make 6&U parents do as much, but we still require some help. Those of you that think you are being "forced" to volunteer shouldn't sign up. It is just a part of swim that we need parents to run a meet.

Anonymous wrote:Swimming comes across as so elitist. The expensive pay-to-play model is bad enough but then you have forced volunteering or an expensive payout? I can't see how my mom would have been able to handle that. I'm now married to a successful college swimmer and it is funny that she is the one who isn't interested in being involved in the toxic competitive swim culture.

Not all pools are toxic. Ours isn't.

Anonymous wrote:Coordinating summer swim volunteers is a thankless job. Bottom line is you need 40+ parents to step up each meet - often more for home B meets. You need people willing to fill the slots - and many jobs require training, so you only have a few people to rotate in. The NVSL pool my kids swim at has some fabulous families - parents who step up time and time again to marshal, time, run the snack bar, get certified in S&T, etc. - and many are also doing the 'behind the scenes' tasks as well. Our team reps have sadly not had the backbone to enforce the volunteer requirements. Some parents volunteer once or twice or not at all. Knowing some parents are not signing up or showing up does impact other families who are making effort to fulfill their family's volunteer obligations. For all you parents who are volunteering, your kids will appreciate it - if they don't already.

Our current pool does a great job at coordinating. They don't ask parents and just assign each family to a task each meet. Problem solved. You get volunteered if you don't state your preferences.

Swimming comes across as so elitist. The expensive pay-to-play model is bad enough but then you have forced volunteering or an expensive payout? I can't see how my mom would have been able to handle that. I'm now married to a successful college swimmer and it is funny that she is the one who isn't interested in being involved in the toxic competitive swim culture.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I volunteer to be a timer when I can get a babysitter (probably every third meet) but when I don’t I have a 4 year old that cannot be unsupervised near a pool. When my other kid is older, I will volunteer more. I assume that many of the U8 families also have other little kids. Their time will come when their kids are older.

Nope. This is my first year without an 8U swimmer and 6th year with swim team. We have always volunteered and then some. Don’t participate in the activity of you cannot commit to the volunteer requirements. Your child care issues are not everyone else’s problem.

That's not really fair and the teams should have babysitters as volunteers. Our pool the parents all look after each other's kids but even if you are volunteering and have a younger swimmer its an issue as someone has to watch that child at the pool while they are waiting to swim. We left a team where some parents were nasty to the families who did volunteer complaining that our kids were not being properly supervised at meets (we'd put them all in one spot together and parents would rotate but its hard to volunteer and supervise your kid at the meets). Thankfully the new pool is different and everyone looks after each other's kids so its a non-issue. You are pretty nasty to complain about people not volunteering when they have legit issues like child care. It IS everyone's problem and being part of a team is helping each other out. If one person is volunteering and you are not, step up and watch their kid.

Wow. Someone should coordinate childcare volunteers?
Options include : your spouse, a babysitter, not signing up for that meet.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I volunteer to be a timer when I can get a babysitter (probably every third meet) but when I don’t I have a 4 year old that cannot be unsupervised near a pool. When my other kid is older, I will volunteer more. I assume that many of the U8 families also have other little kids. Their time will come when their kids are older.

Nope. This is my first year without an 8U swimmer and 6th year with swim team. We have always volunteered and then some. Don’t participate in the activity of you cannot commit to the volunteer requirements. Your child care issues are not everyone else’s problem.

That's not really fair and the teams should have babysitters as volunteers. Our pool the parents all look after each other's kids but even if you are volunteering and have a younger swimmer its an issue as someone has to watch that child at the pool while they are waiting to swim. We left a team where some parents were nasty to the families who did volunteer complaining that our kids were not being properly supervised at meets (we'd put them all in one spot together and parents would rotate but its hard to volunteer and supervise your kid at the meets). Thankfully the new pool is different and everyone looks after each other's kids so its a non-issue. You are pretty nasty to complain about people not volunteering when they have legit issues like child care. It IS everyone's problem and being part of a team is helping each other out. If one person is volunteering and you are not, step up and watch their kid.

Where is the other parent? Why aren’t they watching the kid?

Or actually do get a sitter or mother’s helper to watch the kid at the pool.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I volunteer to be a timer when I can get a babysitter (probably every third meet) but when I don’t I have a 4 year old that cannot be unsupervised near a pool. When my other kid is older, I will volunteer more. I assume that many of the U8 families also have other little kids. Their time will come when their kids are older.

Nope. This is my first year without an 8U swimmer and 6th year with swim team. We have always volunteered and then some. Don’t participate in the activity of you cannot commit to the volunteer requirements. Your child care issues are not everyone else’s problem.

That's not really fair and the teams should have babysitters as volunteers. Our pool the parents all look after each other's kids but even if you are volunteering and have a younger swimmer its an issue as someone has to watch that child at the pool while they are waiting to swim. We left a team where some parents were nasty to the families who did volunteer complaining that our kids were not being properly supervised at meets (we'd put them all in one spot together and parents would rotate but its hard to volunteer and supervise your kid at the meets). Thankfully the new pool is different and everyone looks after each other's kids so its a non-issue. You are pretty nasty to complain about people not volunteering when they have legit issues like child care. It IS everyone's problem and being part of a team is helping each other out. If one person is volunteering and you are not, step up and watch their kid.

Where is the other parent? Why aren’t they watching the kid?

Coordinating summer swim volunteers is a thankless job. Bottom line is you need 40+ parents to step up each meet - often more for home B meets. You need people willing to fill the slots - and many jobs require training, so you only have a few people to rotate in. The NVSL pool my kids swim at has some fabulous families - parents who step up time and time again to marshal, time, run the snack bar, get certified in S&T, etc. - and many are also doing the 'behind the scenes' tasks as well. Our team reps have sadly not had the backbone to enforce the volunteer requirements. Some parents volunteer once or twice or not at all. Knowing some parents are not signing up or showing up does impact other families who are making effort to fulfill their family's volunteer obligations. For all you parents who are volunteering, your kids will appreciate it - if they don't already.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I volunteer to be a timer when I can get a babysitter (probably every third meet) but when I don’t I have a 4 year old that cannot be unsupervised near a pool. When my other kid is older, I will volunteer more. I assume that many of the U8 families also have other little kids. Their time will come when their kids are older.

Nope. This is my first year without an 8U swimmer and 6th year with swim team. We have always volunteered and then some. Don’t participate in the activity of you cannot commit to the volunteer requirements. Your child care issues are not everyone else’s problem.

That's not really fair and the teams should have babysitters as volunteers. Our pool the parents all look after each other's kids but even if you are volunteering and have a younger swimmer its an issue as someone has to watch that child at the pool while they are waiting to swim. We left a team where some parents were nasty to the families who did volunteer complaining that our kids were not being properly supervised at meets (we'd put them all in one spot together and parents would rotate but its hard to volunteer and supervise your kid at the meets). Thankfully the new pool is different and everyone looks after each other's kids so its a non-issue. You are pretty nasty to complain about people not volunteering when they have legit issues like child care. It IS everyone's problem and being part of a team is helping each other out. If one person is volunteering and you are not, step up and watch their kid.

Anonymous wrote:I volunteer to be a timer when I can get a babysitter (probably every third meet) but when I don’t I have a 4 year old that cannot be unsupervised near a pool. When my other kid is older, I will volunteer more. I assume that many of the U8 families also have other little kids. Their time will come when their kids are older.

Nope. This is my first year without an 8U swimmer and 6th year with swim team. We have always volunteered and then some. Don’t participate in the activity of you cannot commit to the volunteer requirements. Your child care issues are not everyone else’s problem.