Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On big teams a lot of younger kids could care less about A meets

Agree. When they are younger, there are just as many non-A kids as A kids. They all have a good time. It's about 13+ where the divide starts. The kids at A meets and all the adjacent extra meets spend hours and hours together. Of course they are a clique. The social dynamics of older kids also get more complicated. At our large higher division pool, most non-A meet teens just drop out.

I hazard to say older kids drop out of swim there are a multitude of reasons including other interests like other sports where there's a big summer season component (e.g., lacrosses, baseball), other camps. I don't know that i would pin the the reason why older kids drop out solely based on "oh, I'm not fast enough to swim in A meets".

Long time summer swim parent here. I don't know. The same names show up year after year for the A meet. You can watch them age through the team. If what you were saying was the main cause and it had zero to do with being in A meets, an equal proportion of the A kids would end up dropping out. Seems kind of notable that the A meet kids all stay and the B meet kids mostly drop out as teens.

It is what it is. It's a structure that creates 2 different experiences kids are having. What teenager is going to keep hanging around to spend a long evening at a B meet with a silly theme and go to some pep rallies. Most of them aren't. The B meet swimmers who stick around as teens on our team end up junior coaches. Which that makes sense to me. A paid job and leadership opportunity.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just read through this thread as I used to swim (but my kids do not) so many posts brought back memories of my summers from many, many years ago.

I am in a way relieved to hear of all the drama these days with summer swim, club level swim, etc. My kids play soccer competitively and I often wish that they had gotten into more "objective" sports where the decision for advancement is not based on a coach's subjective observation but an objective measure like a clock. It is almost a relief to hear that even in a time-based sport like swimming the parent drama exists!

My kids do soccer and swim. I find soccer less stressful. The way they evaluate players is definitely more ambiguous, but my oldest seems to come out on the good side of that at least for now. He is a hard worker, unselfish, and really hustles on defense so I think that those things work in his favor as opposed to a kid with an ego always asking to play up front. And in a team sport there is at least some appreciation that they all have different roles to play and that they have to play as a team to succeed. Not too many politics yet, maybe we have been lucky.

The way summer swim is done here really does pit friends against each other, and certain parents egg it on. I get very annoyed when I hear my friend’s kid talking smack to mine and hearing their parents try to motivate them to specifically beat my kid in races. I tell my kids it’s about doing your own best times and however that plays out in the ladder is what it is. The A meet/B meet structure creates a haves vs. have nots dynamic that goes against the message that summer swim is for fun. And sending out the ladder is nice for transparency but bad for parents who obsess over everyone else’s times. I loved summer swim as a kid but as a parents it’s kind of a love/hate.

All the sports have ways they go about stratifying kids and playing favorites. The problem with team sports are you have to have scout teams/players. What I didn't like about soccer is they automatically decline penalties if there is no advantage for stopping play, and all of the coaches kids just happened to know where they could get away with nasty fouls. We had to sit and watch a former head coaches daughter play striker, but couldn't out run a turtle, game after game wide open path to the goal getting run down and tackled. In the end they just wanted to practice tackling on my daughter. Even though she scored a goal as striker in the two minutes she played it all season.

I agree about the B meets. If you don't make an A meet you're clearly getting less value out of the activity. In our team the A meet kids seldom go to team practices or talk to the other kids. Even when they do go to practices they have special lanes only year round swimmers can swim in. Coaches don't even respect speed my DD had a better time trial time but they skipped her in line for the A meets.

Save your money and get a pool membership. Just another day at the competitive spa.

Come on. Is this for real? special lanes only for year-round swimmers. Even among year-round swimmers, there's a diverse range of abilities.

You wouldn't believe it, but yeah. One year they had an assessment those were for the lanes where the kids "knew all the strokes", but as you mention there is a diverse range of abilities. So, I was told (I wasn't there the first day), they just said these are for year-round swimmers even the slow ones. They do subdivide the two lanes, slow year-round swimmers and fast year-round swimmers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On big teams a lot of younger kids could care less about A meets

Agree. When they are younger, there are just as many non-A kids as A kids. They all have a good time. It's about 13+ where the divide starts. The kids at A meets and all the adjacent extra meets spend hours and hours together. Of course they are a clique. The social dynamics of older kids also get more complicated. At our large higher division pool, most non-A meet teens just drop out.

I hazard to say older kids drop out of swim there are a multitude of reasons including other interests like other sports where there's a big summer season component (e.g., lacrosses, baseball), other camps. I don't know that i would pin the the reason why older kids drop out solely based on "oh, I'm not fast enough to swim in A meets".

Long time summer swim parent here. I don't know. The same names show up year after year for the A meet. You can watch them age through the team. If what you were saying was the main cause and it had zero to do with being in A meets, an equal proportion of the A kids would end up dropping out. Seems kind of notable that the A meet kids all stay and the B meet kids mostly drop out as teens.

It is what it is. It's a structure that creates 2 different experiences kids are having. What teenager is going to keep hanging around to spend a long evening at a B meet with a silly theme and go to some pep rallies. Most of them aren't. The B meet swimmers who stick around as teens on our team end up junior coaches. Which that makes sense to me. A paid job and leadership opportunity.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just read through this thread as I used to swim (but my kids do not) so many posts brought back memories of my summers from many, many years ago.

I am in a way relieved to hear of all the drama these days with summer swim, club level swim, etc. My kids play soccer competitively and I often wish that they had gotten into more "objective" sports where the decision for advancement is not based on a coach's subjective observation but an objective measure like a clock. It is almost a relief to hear that even in a time-based sport like swimming the parent drama exists!

My kids do soccer and swim. I find soccer less stressful. The way they evaluate players is definitely more ambiguous, but my oldest seems to come out on the good side of that at least for now. He is a hard worker, unselfish, and really hustles on defense so I think that those things work in his favor as opposed to a kid with an ego always asking to play up front. And in a team sport there is at least some appreciation that they all have different roles to play and that they have to play as a team to succeed. Not too many politics yet, maybe we have been lucky.

The way summer swim is done here really does pit friends against each other, and certain parents egg it on. I get very annoyed when I hear my friend’s kid talking smack to mine and hearing their parents try to motivate them to specifically beat my kid in races. I tell my kids it’s about doing your own best times and however that plays out in the ladder is what it is. The A meet/B meet structure creates a haves vs. have nots dynamic that goes against the message that summer swim is for fun. And sending out the ladder is nice for transparency but bad for parents who obsess over everyone else’s times. I loved summer swim as a kid but as a parents it’s kind of a love/hate.

All the sports have ways they go about stratifying kids and playing favorites. The problem with team sports are you have to have scout teams/players. What I didn't like about soccer is they automatically decline penalties if there is no advantage for stopping play, and all of the coaches kids just happened to know where they could get away with nasty fouls. We had to sit and watch a former head coaches daughter play striker, but couldn't out run a turtle, game after game wide open path to the goal getting run down and tackled. In the end they just wanted to practice tackling on my daughter. Even though she scored a goal as striker in the two minutes she played it all season.

I agree about the B meets. If you don't make an A meet you're clearly getting less value out of the activity. In our team the A meet kids seldom go to team practices or talk to the other kids. Even when they do go to practices they have special lanes only year round swimmers can swim in. Coaches don't even respect speed my DD had a better time trial time but they skipped her in line for the A meets.

Save your money and get a pool membership. Just another day at the competitive spa.

Come on. Is this for real? special lanes only for year-round swimmers. Even among year-round swimmers, there's a diverse range of abilities.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On big teams a lot of younger kids could care less about A meets

Agree. When they are younger, there are just as many non-A kids as A kids. They all have a good time. It's about 13+ where the divide starts. The kids at A meets and all the adjacent extra meets spend hours and hours together. Of course they are a clique. The social dynamics of older kids also get more complicated. At our large higher division pool, most non-A meet teens just drop out.

I hazard to say older kids drop out of swim there are a multitude of reasons including other interests like other sports where there's a big summer season component (e.g., lacrosses, baseball), other camps. I don't know that i would pin the the reason why older kids drop out solely based on "oh, I'm not fast enough to swim in A meets".

Long time summer swim parent here. I don't know. The same names show up year after year for the A meet. You can watch them age through the team. If what you were saying was the main cause and it had zero to do with being in A meets, an equal proportion of the A kids would end up dropping out. Seems kind of notable that the A meet kids all stay and the B meet kids mostly drop out as teens.

It is what it is. It's a structure that creates 2 different experiences kids are having. What teenager is going to keep hanging around to spend a long evening at a B meet with a silly theme and go to some pep rallies. Most of them aren't. The B meet swimmers who stick around as teens on our team end up junior coaches. Which that makes sense to me. A paid job and leadership opportunity.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On big teams a lot of younger kids could care less about A meets

Agree. When they are younger, there are just as many non-A kids as A kids. They all have a good time. It's about 13+ where the divide starts. The kids at A meets and all the adjacent extra meets spend hours and hours together. Of course they are a clique. The social dynamics of older kids also get more complicated. At our large higher division pool, most non-A meet teens just drop out.

I hazard to say older kids drop out of swim there are a multitude of reasons including other interests like other sports where there's a big summer season component (e.g., lacrosses, baseball), other camps. I don't know that i would pin the the reason why older kids drop out solely based on "oh, I'm not fast enough to swim in A meets".

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just read through this thread as I used to swim (but my kids do not) so many posts brought back memories of my summers from many, many years ago.

I am in a way relieved to hear of all the drama these days with summer swim, club level swim, etc. My kids play soccer competitively and I often wish that they had gotten into more "objective" sports where the decision for advancement is not based on a coach's subjective observation but an objective measure like a clock. It is almost a relief to hear that even in a time-based sport like swimming the parent drama exists!

My kids do soccer and swim. I find soccer less stressful. The way they evaluate players is definitely more ambiguous, but my oldest seems to come out on the good side of that at least for now. He is a hard worker, unselfish, and really hustles on defense so I think that those things work in his favor as opposed to a kid with an ego always asking to play up front. And in a team sport there is at least some appreciation that they all have different roles to play and that they have to play as a team to succeed. Not too many politics yet, maybe we have been lucky.

The way summer swim is done here really does pit friends against each other, and certain parents egg it on. I get very annoyed when I hear my friend’s kid talking smack to mine and hearing their parents try to motivate them to specifically beat my kid in races. I tell my kids it’s about doing your own best times and however that plays out in the ladder is what it is. The A meet/B meet structure creates a haves vs. have nots dynamic that goes against the message that summer swim is for fun. And sending out the ladder is nice for transparency but bad for parents who obsess over everyone else’s times. I loved summer swim as a kid but as a parents it’s kind of a love/hate.

All the sports have ways they go about stratifying kids and playing favorites. The problem with team sports are you have to have scout teams/players. What I didn't like about soccer is they automatically decline penalties if there is no advantage for stopping play, and all of the coaches kids just happened to know where they could get away with nasty fouls. We had to sit and watch a former head coaches daughter play striker, but couldn't out run a turtle, game after game wide open path to the goal getting run down and tackled. In the end they just wanted to practice tackling on my daughter. Even though she scored a goal as striker in the two minutes she played it all season.

I agree about the B meets. If you don't make an A meet you're clearly getting less value out of the activity. In our team the A meet kids seldom go to team practices or talk to the other kids. Even when they do go to practices they have special lanes only year round swimmers can swim in. Coaches don't even respect speed my DD had a better time trial time but they skipped her in line for the A meets.

Save your money and get a pool membership. Just another day at the competitive spa.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On big teams a lot of younger kids could care less about A meets

Agree. When they are younger, there are just as many non-A kids as A kids. They all have a good time. It's about 13+ where the divide starts. The kids at A meets and all the adjacent extra meets spend hours and hours together. Of course they are a clique. The social dynamics of older kids also get more complicated. At our large higher division pool, most non-A meet teens just drop out.

Anonymous wrote:On big teams a lot of younger kids could care less about A meets

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree about the B meets. If you don't make an A meet you're clearly getting less value out of the activity. In our team the A meet kids seldom go to team practices or talk to the other kids.

Sounds like your B meet swimmers are getting more out of the activity if they're the kids at practice every day

Anonymous wrote:I agree about the B meets. If you don't make an A meet you're clearly getting less value out of the activity. In our team the A meet kids seldom go to team practices or talk to the other kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just read through this thread as I used to swim (but my kids do not) so many posts brought back memories of my summers from many, many years ago.

I am in a way relieved to hear of all the drama these days with summer swim, club level swim, etc. My kids play soccer competitively and I often wish that they had gotten into more "objective" sports where the decision for advancement is not based on a coach's subjective observation but an objective measure like a clock. It is almost a relief to hear that even in a time-based sport like swimming the parent drama exists!

My kids do soccer and swim. I find soccer less stressful. The way they evaluate players is definitely more ambiguous, but my oldest seems to come out on the good side of that at least for now. He is a hard worker, unselfish, and really hustles on defense so I think that those things work in his favor as opposed to a kid with an ego always asking to play up front. And in a team sport there is at least some appreciation that they all have different roles to play and that they have to play as a team to succeed. Not too many politics yet, maybe we have been lucky.

The way summer swim is done here really does pit friends against each other, and certain parents egg it on. I get very annoyed when I hear my friend’s kid talking smack to mine and hearing their parents try to motivate them to specifically beat my kid in races. I tell my kids it’s about doing your own best times and however that plays out in the ladder is what it is. The A meet/B meet structure creates a haves vs. have nots dynamic that goes against the message that summer swim is for fun. And sending out the ladder is nice for transparency but bad for parents who obsess over everyone else’s times. I loved summer swim as a kid but as a parents it’s kind of a love/hate.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just read through this thread as I used to swim (but my kids do not) so many posts brought back memories of my summers from many, many years ago.

I am in a way relieved to hear of all the drama these days with summer swim, club level swim, etc. My kids play soccer competitively and I often wish that they had gotten into more "objective" sports where the decision for advancement is not based on a coach's subjective observation but an objective measure like a clock. It is almost a relief to hear that even in a time-based sport like swimming the parent drama exists!

My kids do soccer and swim. I find soccer less stressful. The way they evaluate players is definitely more ambiguous, but my oldest seems to come out on the good side of that at least for now. He is a hard worker, unselfish, and really hustles on defense so I think that those things work in his favor as opposed to a kid with an ego always asking to play up front. And in a team sport there is at least some appreciation that they all have different roles to play and that they have to play as a team to succeed. Not too many politics yet, maybe we have been lucky.

The way summer swim is done here really does pit friends against each other, and certain parents egg it on. I get very annoyed when I hear my friend’s kid talking smack to mine and hearing their parents try to motivate them to specifically beat my kid in races. I tell my kids it’s about doing your own best times and however that plays out in the ladder is what it is. The A meet/B meet structure creates a haves vs. have nots dynamic that goes against the message that summer swim is for fun. And sending out the ladder is nice for transparency but bad for parents who obsess over everyone else’s times. I loved summer swim as a kid but as a parents it’s kind of a love/hate.