College swimmers coming back to swim rec league swimming is weird and kind of pathetic.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a question in the opposite direction, about HS seniors and college freshmen super seniors. If a kid will turn 19 during the last days of HS senior year, I assume that means their last season of summer swim has to be the season after their junior year of HS, not the year of their HS graduation?

Nope. 19 after June 1 = 18 for summer swim. That’s also why you see some college swimmers come back to NVSL after their freshman year in college. One was a league record breaker this summer.

What about 19 just before June 1? That means no swimming even if you're a HS senior at the time, correct?

Correct, they would not be able to swim their senior year as age is based on age on June 1 and not tied to school year.

Although NVSL dive did change their policy that you could still dive at 19 if you had just completed HS.

Eh, my club swimmer has a Jan 31 birthday. It sucks but is what it is. Makes them work harder to get the next age group’s cuts early, and won’t matter anymore once they turn 15.

Change the names of the divisions from 9-10 year olds to “juniors” or whatever, and then define “juniors” as those born between xx/yy and xx/yy. Then no one will have anything to complain about. It’s the fact that an 11 year old is swimming in a so-called 10u group that is absolutely wrecking some people’s brains. Change the name. It’s not an 10u group. It’s a 6/2/2013-6/1/2015 birthday group.

People complain less about sub optimal swim birthdays in club swim, truly. And it’s partially because by the time their swim times actually mean anything, they are 15 and classified as a “senior”, so everyone’s on the same playing field. I have a club swimmer who ages up before a big annual travel meet and he doesn’t mope about it, he just goes for the next age group cuts. And it might blow your mind that there are 12, 13, and 14 year olds swimming in senior meets next to 22 year olds, and no one is clutching their pearls about how unfair it is that little Susie, who just finished 7th grade, had to compete for a finals spot against a college swimmer.

But I understand that a fair playing field is important to rec summer swim, so I think renaming groups and defining each group as a 2 year age group makes the most sense. It’s not fair for the kids who happen to be at top of the bday heap to get such vitriol. They are in the correct age group, it’s just labeled incorrectly.

You can't have kids age up on their birthdays because the season is too short and it would be chaos for teams in terms of figuring out who would swim in which relays and which events. It also does suck for a kid to go from swimming 25 or 50 (and practicing for that) and then swimming 50 or 100 midseason specifically because the short season means they won't have a chance to acclimate. This is different from club swimming where the season is long and it's easier to ease into a new distance and teams (and swimmers) have more time to prepare.

The people demanding they cutoff be changed to August 1 or whatever are being especially petty because this would not change the fact that kids with certain birthdays would be advantaged. I have a kid with a August 5 birthday. She will be just days shy of her 9th birthday when she's competing against 7 year olds. This is "unfair" to the 7 year olds and would still be "unfair" if the cutoff was August 1st. On the other hand she spent an extra year on pre-team when the other kids in her grade aged into the 7-8 and that was a little sad for her. She's also regularly the smallest in her grade and that can be tough in other sports where the cutoffs don't benefit her. Oh well that is life.

Also it is just summer swim. It really does not matter that much and my kids have had years where they did great and that was fun and they also had years where they were consistently the slowest in their age group and they still had fun because they were going to meets with their friends and spending days in the pool and there was the banquet and Fridays and that's really the best part anyway.

Some of you are way to fixated on like the one or two times your kid lost to a child "swimming down" by one month. Let it go. Teach your kid that sometimes that's how it works.

Anonymous wrote:The age up date should be one day a before my kids birthday. That’s the most fair date, sorry I don’t make the rules, it’s science

Haha, I like it!

Someone is always going to be unhappy.

Anonymous wrote:A cut off of August 1, may have kids swimming under the age for part of the season. There is no perfect solution.

Which is exactly how little league baseball works btw

A cut off of August 1, may have kids swimming under the age for part of the season. There is no perfect solution.

Anonymous wrote:On our team, in the younger ages, most of the divisionals swimmers were swimming in the “wrong” age group. 11 year olds swimming as 9/10. 9 year olds swimming as 8&under. In the older kids, many of those dominating came back from college to swim a final year.

This rule was literally cooked up in a back room by the parents of summer birthday kids. It should be done away with. We follow USA Swimming rules for everything else. We should for aging up as well.

Name the team or at least division. This isn’t an issue in our division 12 team.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is an end of May birthday. It is what it is. The cutoff has to be somewhere.

The cutoff should be Aug 1. The kids will be swimming their correct age.

Will they? It doesn’t really matter where you make the cut off.

The cutoff should be August 4.

Though in few years I can see that is should change to June 21.

You can see the original rule book here:

https://www.mynvsl.com/documents?folder_id=19998

It was June first in the original rules. The rule was changed for a short period of time and then changed back because it was an administrative nightmare.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If your child is a swimmer, there is always a birthday that isn’t as good.
Short Course Champs, PVS - March 20-ish
NCSAs - March 27-ish
Summer league all over the entire U.S.! - June 1st
Long Course Champs, PVS - July 20-ish

You know who has the worst birthday? Late Feb and early March birthdays. They get screwed for short course champs & NCSAs, and aren’t that much older at Long Course Champs.

If your child summer swims and plays travel baseball, a May birthday may stink for summer league but is awesome for travel ball.

FWIW, my child has an October birthday and is 9. And my child likely made All-Stars in two events today.

Not surprising. Fall birthday kids do well in summer swim.

OP’s child is 9.

And probably older than 40 percent of the kids in the 9-10 age group. Obviously a strong swimmer. Strong swimmers do when regardless.

It’s the kids whose parents think they are good but really aren’t that get hurt by the “bad” swim birthdays. And then you have the kids who are marginal but look good only when they are older than everyone else because they have “good” swim birthdays.

Anonymous wrote:You can’t keep records for children that will be in different age groups within a single season.
Planning heats, relay teams, etc. can not happen if kids are aging up and doubling the amount of water they swim (25 m to 50 meters with a turn).

I really don't understand any of these arguments.
the records are, e.g. 9-10 boys. Whether or not someone changes age group during the season has nothing to do with the records.
Planning heats and relay teams? At least on our team, the relays tend to change some from week to week b/c one kid bumps another kid on the ladder, or one kid is sick or out of town etc. I don't know what kind of planning this is going to mess up.
Admittedly a kid who goes from swimming 25s to swimming 50s is probably going to have a rough end of the season, as do many newly 9 year olds...