Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Swimteam and summer pool are cheapest activities around if you are tightening your belt (esp. if you've already paid the membership and are just looking at summer fees). 2 income families have been dealing with summer swim team way before COVID when we were all in the office. I doubt RTO is having that big of an impact. Neighborhood demographics may be impacting swim team size just as much as the economy and RTO.

It doesn’t seem like the cheapest option to me when both parents are working. Sure, it’s cheaper than spending the summer in provence, but pool membership fee + summer swim fee + babysitter fees + time off work to volunteer all adds up. Especially the babysitter. Alternatively, parents could work and drop their kids off at full day camp for less money.

Our team is $130 per kid. We would be pool members without swim team so that cost doesn’t count.
I’m sharing a nanny with a neighbor whose kids are also on swim team and paying $405 per kid, per week. That below the average camp cost with extended hours to 5/5:30pm. Bonus - I don’t have to drive my kids all over Arlington twice a day or pack lunches.

Anonymous wrote:Love your kids. Don’t send them to camp. Send them to the pool to hang out and have a real childhood summer.

I’m on our club’s board and new membership inquiries have evaporated. We’ve had maybe three so far this spring. I’m sure that will affect swim team registrations.

Anonymous wrote:Our swim team enrollment is about 50 less swimmers than last year. We’ve seen pool many families not renewing their membership across all age groups. Job uncertainty is coming into play. Many families are tightening up their spending in anticipation of job loss.

Anonymous wrote:Love your kids. Don’t send them to camp. Send them to the pool to hang out and have a real childhood summer.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Swimteam and summer pool are cheapest activities around if you are tightening your belt (esp. if you've already paid the membership and are just looking at summer fees). 2 income families have been dealing with summer swim team way before COVID when we were all in the office. I doubt RTO is having that big of an impact. Neighborhood demographics may be impacting swim team size just as much as the economy and RTO.

It doesn’t seem like the cheapest option to me when both parents are working. Sure, it’s cheaper than spending the summer in provence, but pool membership fee + summer swim fee + babysitter fees + time off work to volunteer all adds up. Especially the babysitter. Alternatively, parents could work and drop their kids off at full day camp for less money.

What camps are you sending your kids to that are cheaper than a babysitter? For one kid yes. Once you are paying 500.00-700.00 plus a week for camp for multiple kids a sitter makes a lot more sense. Unless you are doing crappy camps.

NP…love how out of touch DCUM parents are. I never paid $500-700 per kid per week for camp. And no they weren’t “crappy”.

That said once we had 2 kids on swim team we hired a sitter. Didn’t make as much financial sense when we only had 1 kid on swim. It was slightly more expensive than camps, but not astronomical. We reduced cost by staggering schedules so kids were with sitters a little less and only doing sitter for the swim team weeks. Then doing camp or going on vacation the other weeks.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Swimteam and summer pool are cheapest activities around if you are tightening your belt (esp. if you've already paid the membership and are just looking at summer fees). 2 income families have been dealing with summer swim team way before COVID when we were all in the office. I doubt RTO is having that big of an impact. Neighborhood demographics may be impacting swim team size just as much as the economy and RTO.

It doesn’t seem like the cheapest option to me when both parents are working. Sure, it’s cheaper than spending the summer in provence, but pool membership fee + summer swim fee + babysitter fees + time off work to volunteer all adds up. Especially the babysitter. Alternatively, parents could work and drop their kids off at full day camp for less money.

What camps are you sending your kids to that are cheaper than a babysitter? For one kid yes. Once you are paying 500.00-700.00 plus a week for camp for multiple kids a sitter makes a lot more sense. Unless you are doing crappy camps.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know how our registrations are yet, but I have always thought our pool was not very accommodating for working parents (and I stay home). I try to help other families as much as I can, but feel like this summer is going to be really hard for a lot of families.

Practice schedules are “the way they always have been” rather than trying to allow for 10&u to get to summer camp by 9. Not to mention the crazy expectations for Monday and Wednesday afternoon meets.

I don’t know what the solution is, but maybe this is the year more teams will figure it out?

As someone who has always worked full time in the office with little flexibility and who is a swim team rep there really isn’t an easy solution. We struggled when our kids were little. We had summers where we had a sitter take kid to swim then to camp late. Then when we had 2 kids on swim we hired summer sitters.

So I get that it’s really tough for full time working parents. If we move younger kid practices earlier the SAH parents whine about having to get their kids out the door and to the pool by 7:30am and that still may be too early or even too late for working parents/kids headed to camp Afternoon practices are tricky because general pool members don’t want to lose pool space for swim team. Plus with B meets and dive meets they can’t happen every day. Kids also tend to be tired from long days at camp so they don’t get as much out of practice or even show up much.

All of this. Unless your pool has an additional lap pool, pool space is limited. The general membership already tends to feel like swim team gets priority, with meet closures and after school practice, and they balk at additional lanes being taken up for practice when they want to be able to relax at the pool in the early evening.

We're at pool with a separate lap pool and members still complain that the swim team uses the pool too much. It is a no win.

I wrote the above about the challenges. We also have 2 pools and still get complaints. Lap swimmers get upset if we use the lap lanes and if we add additional lap lanes we need to close diving boards and that also gets complaints.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Swimteam and summer pool are cheapest activities around if you are tightening your belt (esp. if you've already paid the membership and are just looking at summer fees). 2 income families have been dealing with summer swim team way before COVID when we were all in the office. I doubt RTO is having that big of an impact. Neighborhood demographics may be impacting swim team size just as much as the economy and RTO.

It doesn’t seem like the cheapest option to me when both parents are working. Sure, it’s cheaper than spending the summer in provence, but pool membership fee + summer swim fee + babysitter fees + time off work to volunteer all adds up. Especially the babysitter. Alternatively, parents could work and drop their kids off at full day camp for less money.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Swimteam and summer pool are cheapest activities around if you are tightening your belt (esp. if you've already paid the membership and are just looking at summer fees). 2 income families have been dealing with summer swim team way before COVID when we were all in the office. I doubt RTO is having that big of an impact. Neighborhood demographics may be impacting swim team size just as much as the economy and RTO.

It doesn’t seem like the cheapest option to me when both parents are working. Sure, it’s cheaper than spending the summer in provence, but pool membership fee + summer swim fee + babysitter fees + time off work to volunteer all adds up. Especially the babysitter. Alternatively, parents could work and drop their kids off at full day camp for less money.

Anonymous wrote:Swimteam and summer pool are cheapest activities around if you are tightening your belt (esp. if you've already paid the membership and are just looking at summer fees). 2 income families have been dealing with summer swim team way before COVID when we were all in the office. I doubt RTO is having that big of an impact. Neighborhood demographics may be impacting swim team size just as much as the economy and RTO.