Anonymous
Post 04/25/2026 11:00     Subject: lack of volunteers
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:People should hire a teenager to do their volunteer commitments if they don’t want to. I know a bunch of teenagers that would jump on timing a meet for babysitter type pay.

But really, it’s sad that people are so disengaged. We saw it in other sports too, we were always coaching rec teams.


If parents are willing to pay the fine instead of volunteering, why can't the teams do this? My kids have never done swim team and never will but if the pool was willing to pay them $15-20 an hour to work the snack bar or time the races, they would gladly do it.


Because teams run on volunteers, and this would be another task to manage when parents are fully capable of doing it.


I get that but apparently the parents aren’t stepping up to volunteer and are willing to pay to get out of it. So let them and you’ll have a better chance of these teens who are getting paid will show up.

You could also set up a system where teens looking for a little extra money can sign up at the pool as available to take timer shifts for a certain amount per hour. You will get the credit hours but you have to pay the kid taking your shift. My 14 year old would definitely sign up to take some B meet timer shifts to get some extra spending money (MCSL so they don’t swim at B meets before someone asks). This way you are not just buying out while the shift still sits unfilled.
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2026 08:26     Subject: lack of volunteers
Anonymous wrote:If you can’t commit to the hours to volunteer, then your kid(s) don’t get to participate on the summer swim team.

I think that’s that fuss. You can’t say you want your kid to participate in an activity and also say you don’t have time to make the activity run.


THIS. Dh and I are both working parents and we both make time to volunteer for summer swim because we recognize how much it takes to make the experience happen for the kids. Most of the parents who volunteer the most are working parents. It’s hard and tiring, but it’s part of the activity.

If you don’t want to put your time in, that’s totally fine, but then don’t sign your kids up for summer swim. Put them in another camp or activity that doesn’t need as much volunteer time to run. And that’s fine! But don’t act like you’re busier than the rest of us but your kid deserves to have the fun and be part of the team if you’re not planning to help in any way. Something has to give.
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2026 08:15     Subject: Re:lack of volunteers
I volunteer precisely to keep an eye on my kid who cannot be trusted to make it to deck half the time. I can’t understand how people go to these hours long meets and just sit there playing on their phones. Get up and do something for a few hours! Make some friends!
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2026 08:08     Subject: Re:lack of volunteers
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It's hard to find the time to volunteer for anything if you work full time, but summer swim is particularly rough. It starts in June when school is still in session and there's a flurry of end-of-year school activities. In our case, my kids are still in school for the first 3 weeks of the season and it's madness. On top of that, there is often overlap with spring or club sports wrapping up for the season. It's non-stop for nearly the entire month.

My kids are old enough now that I can let them manage themselves during the meets and they'll keep track of their events, and I can volunteer during the meets. But that wasn't the case when they were younger! There is no way my youngest would've made it to any of her events if she was left to manage herself during meets.


I am so tired of that excuse that your kids are so helpless they need you hovering. There are so many coaches and helpers in the team area. Let them know of your concern the kid might get distracted and let them do their job while you do one of your own.


You know every team is different right? The coaches on our team don’t watch the kids who aren’t in the water. They are there to coach not babysit. And there are approximately 40 kids in under 8 group alone. Our team is huge. There are no “helpers” watching these kids. That’s a joke. So yeah, when my 6 year old swam one 25 free and then had nothing to do for the next 3 hours, someone had to keep an eye on her. Too bad.

Let me guess: you’re also the person who complains when people don’t pay attention to their kids and let them go wild.


Exactly wrong. I think kids SHOULD go wild at a summer swim meet. I think they should make friends and the little ones should look up to the big kids who generally will set a good example if random adults aren't there lurking. I think this should all stay in the team area where trouble is minimized. People calling their kids out of the team area for curated snacks and supplemental "coaching" is a problem.
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2026 07:53     Subject: lack of volunteers
If you can’t commit to the hours to volunteer, then your kid(s) don’t get to participate on the summer swim team.

I think that’s that fuss. You can’t say you want your kid to participate in an activity and also say you don’t have time to make the activity run.
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2026 07:49     Subject: lack of volunteers
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:People should hire a teenager to do their volunteer commitments if they don’t want to. I know a bunch of teenagers that would jump on timing a meet for babysitter type pay.

But really, it’s sad that people are so disengaged. We saw it in other sports too, we were always coaching rec teams.


If parents are willing to pay the fine instead of volunteering, why can't the teams do this? My kids have never done swim team and never will but if the pool was willing to pay them $15-20 an hour to work the snack bar or time the races, they would gladly do it.

The pools don’t run swim teams or meets. Volunteers do. Further, there is no money in summer swim team budgets to pay volunteers. A single meet requires 18 timers, several officials, multiple marshals, and an entire data/tables staff. At $20/hour pp, the cost would be in the thousands per meet.
Summer swim is volunteer-run. If you want to participate, you help. If you absolutely can’t, then sure, a family could choose to pay someone to volunteer on its behalf. But to suggest a pool or team could simply pay people for these roles is extremely unrealistic.


The first person is asking a fair question, and the second response actually highlights why the model needs to change.
If a single meet requires dozens of critical roles and cannot function without a huge unpaid labor force, then parents are not "volunteering" in the casual sense, they are staffing the operation. That is real labor.

The idea that there is "no money" is also a choice, not a law of nature. Budgets can be adjusted. Fees can be structured with volunteer credits, opt-out fees, sponsorships, paid core staff, or hybrid models where some roles are compensated and others remain volunteer. Many youth activities already do exactly that.

What has changed is family life. In many households, both parents work, schedules are packed, and free time is limited. Time has become more valuable than it was for prior generations. Paying a fee instead of giving hours is a rational tradeoff for many families.

And let's be honest, timing races, snack bars, data entry, marshaling kids, and meet logistics are operational jobs. Pretending those jobs must only be done for free because "that's how summer swim works" is outdated thinking.
If the program is valuable, then labor should be valued too.


I think most people understand that and that's why the fees to swim are relatively low. If people think money is tight now, they won't be able to afford swimming fees when all the operational labor expenses are included. In my experience swim clubs are upfront about the expectations of parents to make it happen. Why are people agreeing then reneging on their obligation? Stop signing up if making it happen isn't possible for your busy schedule. Cut the freeloading kids if their parents don't step up.
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2026 07:45     Subject: lack of volunteers
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:People should hire a teenager to do their volunteer commitments if they don’t want to. I know a bunch of teenagers that would jump on timing a meet for babysitter type pay.

But really, it’s sad that people are so disengaged. We saw it in other sports too, we were always coaching rec teams.


If parents are willing to pay the fine instead of volunteering, why can't the teams do this? My kids have never done swim team and never will but if the pool was willing to pay them $15-20 an hour to work the snack bar or time the races, they would gladly do it.

The pools don’t run swim teams or meets. Volunteers do. Further, there is no money in summer swim team budgets to pay volunteers. A single meet requires 18 timers, several officials, multiple marshals, and an entire data/tables staff. At $20/hour pp, the cost would be in the thousands per meet.
Summer swim is volunteer-run. If you want to participate, you help. If you absolutely can’t, then sure, a family could choose to pay someone to volunteer on its behalf. But to suggest a pool or team could simply pay people for these roles is extremely unrealistic.


The first person is asking a fair question, and the second response actually highlights why the model needs to change.
If a single meet requires dozens of critical roles and cannot function without a huge unpaid labor force, then parents are not "volunteering" in the casual sense, they are staffing the operation. That is real labor.

The idea that there is "no money" is also a choice, not a law of nature. Budgets can be adjusted. Fees can be structured with volunteer credits, opt-out fees, sponsorships, paid core staff, or hybrid models where some roles are compensated and others remain volunteer. Many youth activities already do exactly that.

What has changed is family life. In many households, both parents work, schedules are packed, and free time is limited. Time has become more valuable than it was for prior generations. Paying a fee instead of giving hours is a rational tradeoff for many families.

And let's be honest, timing races, snack bars, data entry, marshaling kids, and meet logistics are operational jobs. Pretending those jobs must only be done for free because "that's how summer swim works" is outdated thinking.
If the program is valuable, then labor should be valued too.

I hate to break it to you, but club swimming works this way too. So does collegiate swimming, at least for timing.
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2026 00:08     Subject: lack of volunteers
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:People should hire a teenager to do their volunteer commitments if they don’t want to. I know a bunch of teenagers that would jump on timing a meet for babysitter type pay.

But really, it’s sad that people are so disengaged. We saw it in other sports too, we were always coaching rec teams.


If parents are willing to pay the fine instead of volunteering, why can't the teams do this? My kids have never done swim team and never will but if the pool was willing to pay them $15-20 an hour to work the snack bar or time the races, they would gladly do it.

The pools don’t run swim teams or meets. Volunteers do. Further, there is no money in summer swim team budgets to pay volunteers. A single meet requires 18 timers, several officials, multiple marshals, and an entire data/tables staff. At $20/hour pp, the cost would be in the thousands per meet.
Summer swim is volunteer-run. If you want to participate, you help. If you absolutely can’t, then sure, a family could choose to pay someone to volunteer on its behalf. But to suggest a pool or team could simply pay people for these roles is extremely unrealistic.


The first person is asking a fair question, and the second response actually highlights why the model needs to change.
If a single meet requires dozens of critical roles and cannot function without a huge unpaid labor force, then parents are not "volunteering" in the casual sense, they are staffing the operation. That is real labor.

The idea that there is "no money" is also a choice, not a law of nature. Budgets can be adjusted. Fees can be structured with volunteer credits, opt-out fees, sponsorships, paid core staff, or hybrid models where some roles are compensated and others remain volunteer. Many youth activities already do exactly that.

What has changed is family life. In many households, both parents work, schedules are packed, and free time is limited. Time has become more valuable than it was for prior generations. Paying a fee instead of giving hours is a rational tradeoff for many families.

And let's be honest, timing races, snack bars, data entry, marshaling kids, and meet logistics are operational jobs. Pretending those jobs must only be done for free because "that's how summer swim works" is outdated thinking.
If the program is valuable, then labor should be valued too.
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2026 00:05     Subject: lack of volunteers
Anonymous wrote:why does it seem so hard to get anyone to volunteer to help these days?

is it a generational parent thing that parents w younger kids just assume someone else will do it?

it takes a village but it doesn’t seem to compute as the older parents look to pass the torch


Maybe because younger parents are drowning while older generations still act confused about why no one is lining up for unpaid labor. Many of us are working demanding jobs, managing two-income households, paying insane housing costs, and trying to actually spend what little free time we have with our kids.

The old model of endless parent volunteering was built in a different era with more stay-at-home parents, lower costs, and more free bandwidth. That world is gone.
So no, it is not that younger parents think "someone else will do it." It is that we do not have the time or margin to subsidize everything with free labor while being lectured by the generations that handed us this mess.
If it "takes a village," then maybe the village should adapt, fund help, streamline expectations, or compensate people instead of guilt-tripping exhausted families.

Personally, I am happy to pay a fee to have someone do the work properly. That is how the real world works. Nothing in life is free anymore, and pretending we still live in some carefree social experiment era is disconnected from reality.
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2026 00:02     Subject: lack of volunteers
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:People should hire a teenager to do their volunteer commitments if they don’t want to. I know a bunch of teenagers that would jump on timing a meet for babysitter type pay.

But really, it’s sad that people are so disengaged. We saw it in other sports too, we were always coaching rec teams.


If parents are willing to pay the fine instead of volunteering, why can't the teams do this? My kids have never done swim team and never will but if the pool was willing to pay them $15-20 an hour to work the snack bar or time the races, they would gladly do it.


Your kids can get a job at the pool if they want paid. Except coaches everything is volunteer including snack bar.
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2026 00:01     Subject: Re:lack of volunteers
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It's hard to find the time to volunteer for anything if you work full time, but summer swim is particularly rough. It starts in June when school is still in session and there's a flurry of end-of-year school activities. In our case, my kids are still in school for the first 3 weeks of the season and it's madness. On top of that, there is often overlap with spring or club sports wrapping up for the season. It's non-stop for nearly the entire month.

My kids are old enough now that I can let them manage themselves during the meets and they'll keep track of their events, and I can volunteer during the meets. But that wasn't the case when they were younger! There is no way my youngest would've made it to any of her events if she was left to manage herself during meets.


I am so tired of that excuse that your kids are so helpless they need you hovering. There are so many coaches and helpers in the team area. Let them know of your concern the kid might get distracted and let them do their job while you do one of your own.


You know every team is different right? The coaches on our team don’t watch the kids who aren’t in the water. They are there to coach not babysit. And there are approximately 40 kids in under 8 group alone. Our team is huge. There are no “helpers” watching these kids. That’s a joke. So yeah, when my 6 year old swam one 25 free and then had nothing to do for the next 3 hours, someone had to keep an eye on her. Too bad.

Let me guess: you’re also the person who complains when people don’t pay attention to their kids and let them go wild.


They need to assign parents to babysit. We had someone complain to me that our kids were hanging out and it annoyed them while we were volunteering. I told them we were doing the best we can but they need to step up and take these jobs so we can sit and watch our kids or stop complaining as they could also help and watch these kids. They shut up after that.
Anonymous
Post 04/24/2026 23:17     Subject: lack of volunteers
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:People should hire a teenager to do their volunteer commitments if they don’t want to. I know a bunch of teenagers that would jump on timing a meet for babysitter type pay.

But really, it’s sad that people are so disengaged. We saw it in other sports too, we were always coaching rec teams.


If parents are willing to pay the fine instead of volunteering, why can't the teams do this? My kids have never done swim team and never will but if the pool was willing to pay them $15-20 an hour to work the snack bar or time the races, they would gladly do it.

The pools don’t run swim teams or meets. Volunteers do. Further, there is no money in summer swim team budgets to pay volunteers. A single meet requires 18 timers, several officials, multiple marshals, and an entire data/tables staff. At $20/hour pp, the cost would be in the thousands per meet.
Summer swim is volunteer-run. If you want to participate, you help. If you absolutely can’t, then sure, a family could choose to pay someone to volunteer on its behalf. But to suggest a pool or team could simply pay people for these roles is extremely unrealistic.
Anonymous
Post 04/24/2026 22:56     Subject: Re:lack of volunteers
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It's hard to find the time to volunteer for anything if you work full time, but summer swim is particularly rough. It starts in June when school is still in session and there's a flurry of end-of-year school activities. In our case, my kids are still in school for the first 3 weeks of the season and it's madness. On top of that, there is often overlap with spring or club sports wrapping up for the season. It's non-stop for nearly the entire month.

My kids are old enough now that I can let them manage themselves during the meets and they'll keep track of their events, and I can volunteer during the meets. But that wasn't the case when they were younger! There is no way my youngest would've made it to any of her events if she was left to manage herself during meets.


I am so tired of that excuse that your kids are so helpless they need you hovering. There are so many coaches and helpers in the team area. Let them know of your concern the kid might get distracted and let them do their job while you do one of your own.


You know every team is different right? The coaches on our team don’t watch the kids who aren’t in the water. They are there to coach not babysit. And there are approximately 40 kids in under 8 group alone. Our team is huge. There are no “helpers” watching these kids. That’s a joke. So yeah, when my 6 year old swam one 25 free and then had nothing to do for the next 3 hours, someone had to keep an eye on her. Too bad.

Let me guess: you’re also the person who complains when people don’t pay attention to their kids and let them go wild.


🧐
Anonymous
Post 04/24/2026 22:13     Subject: Re:lack of volunteers
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It's hard to find the time to volunteer for anything if you work full time, but summer swim is particularly rough. It starts in June when school is still in session and there's a flurry of end-of-year school activities. In our case, my kids are still in school for the first 3 weeks of the season and it's madness. On top of that, there is often overlap with spring or club sports wrapping up for the season. It's non-stop for nearly the entire month.

My kids are old enough now that I can let them manage themselves during the meets and they'll keep track of their events, and I can volunteer during the meets. But that wasn't the case when they were younger! There is no way my youngest would've made it to any of her events if she was left to manage herself during meets.


I am so tired of that excuse that your kids are so helpless they need you hovering. There are so many coaches and helpers in the team area. Let them know of your concern the kid might get distracted and let them do their job while you do one of your own.


You know every team is different right? The coaches on our team don’t watch the kids who aren’t in the water. They are there to coach not babysit. And there are approximately 40 kids in under 8 group alone. Our team is huge. There are no “helpers” watching these kids. That’s a joke. So yeah, when my 6 year old swam one 25 free and then had nothing to do for the next 3 hours, someone had to keep an eye on her. Too bad.

Let me guess: you’re also the person who complains when people don’t pay attention to their kids and let them go wild.
Anonymous
Post 04/24/2026 20:52     Subject: lack of volunteers
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:People should hire a teenager to do their volunteer commitments if they don’t want to. I know a bunch of teenagers that would jump on timing a meet for babysitter type pay.

But really, it’s sad that people are so disengaged. We saw it in other sports too, we were always coaching rec teams.


If parents are willing to pay the fine instead of volunteering, why can't the teams do this? My kids have never done swim team and never will but if the pool was willing to pay them $15-20 an hour to work the snack bar or time the races, they would gladly do it.


Because teams run on volunteers, and this would be another task to manage when parents are fully capable of doing it.


I get that but apparently the parents aren’t stepping up to volunteer and are willing to pay to get out of it. So let them and you’ll have a better chance of these teens who are getting paid will show up.