The only other option summer leagues have is the change the cut-off date to the last day of the summer league season (eg, 7/31). This choice would piss-off the people whose children are 7/30 birthdays and legitimately [age 10] but having to swim in 11-12. The current rule is better.

I have a late June birthday kid that barely makes A meets, even when they’re older than their age group. I have a winter birthday kid that makes IAS every year, beating kids that are older than their age group because of their summer birthdays. The age cut-off is only one tiny piece of the puzzle contrary to what many seem to claim. Size, athleticism, genetics, natural talent, and hard work are far more important to swimming than a two month age advantage. Someone will always be advantaged or disadvantaged by a cut off, no matter when it is and it’s simply unreasonable to age-up on your birthday during a 7-week, team-based season.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:it does stink though. End of may birthday going up against those 2 years older. All the top swimmers on our team and we have many are summer birthdays.

But there is really no fair equitable way to do it, unless like in the winter where you swim your actual age/ age up on your birthday.

Summer swim is 2 months.

It seems like a logistical nightmare to have kids swim in two different age groups if they have a summer birthday. If the cutoff was in May, then kids with spring birthdays would be complaining.

A bunch of kids changing age groups in the middle of the season is not a solution.

It is a logistical nightmare which is why they don't do it. It's summer swim.

Years ago NVSL did this age up on your actual birthday. part of the rule also included that in order to swim at all stars you had to have a time in that age group. So if you swam divisionals as a 14 and made all stars, but then aged up to 15 in the week in between you could not swim All Stars even if the time you got in he 13-14 group was faster than the top 18 in the 15-18 group.

it's a logistical nighmare to age up on actual birthday in a 7 week swim season. Do people really think a 7 week difference makes or breaks things? Either way you slice it there will always be kids on the younger and kids on the older side.

I have one spring b-day and 1 summer b-day and both have made all stars. Age matters some, but so does just being a top swimmer.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:it does stink though. End of may birthday going up against those 2 years older. All the top swimmers on our team and we have many are summer birthdays.

But there is really no fair equitable way to do it, unless like in the winter where you swim your actual age/ age up on your birthday.

Summer swim is 2 months.

It seems like a logistical nightmare to have kids swim in two different age groups if they have a summer birthday. If the cutoff was in May, then kids with spring birthdays would be complaining.

A bunch of kids changing age groups in the middle of the season is not a solution.

It is a logistical nightmare which is why they don't do it. It's summer swim.

Hence why June 1 is the cutoff in many leagues across the country for many years.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:it does stink though. End of may birthday going up against those 2 years older. All the top swimmers on our team and we have many are summer birthdays.

But there is really no fair equitable way to do it, unless like in the winter where you swim your actual age/ age up on your birthday.

Summer swim is 2 months.

It seems like a logistical nightmare to have kids swim in two different age groups if they have a summer birthday. If the cutoff was in May, then kids with spring birthdays would be complaining.

A bunch of kids changing age groups in the middle of the season is not a solution.

It is a logistical nightmare which is why they don't do it. It's summer swim.

Anonymous wrote:The irony in all this is, most kids with advantage summer birthdays that dominate NVSL swimming 50s, get absolutely crushed in the real LSC swimming world, including PVS.

One day, the world will finally awaken to what a true joke summer league is and all the 'all star' fanfare associated with it.

This is a REC league FFS. Most rec leagues have All Stars opportunities. It’s a chance for the kids who don’t commit year round to have a higher level of competition and, given the volume of swimmers, it really is a high honor to be chosen.

The real joke is that the vast majority of club swimmers will never swim on scholarship, only a tiny fraction will make the Olympic qualifiers, and only a tiny fraction will ever make a living out of swimming. As is the case with pretty much every “elite” child sport from hockey to baseball to soccer to gymnastics. The best we can ever really hope for from these things is a love of sport, fitness, and developing some positive character traits. Is it worth the $25k or more people easily spend when you could get the same from rec leagues? Someone whose been through it would have to tell me. .

This is idiotic because there will always be a kid who is oldest in the age group and that kid will always have an advantage, especially in certain groups where you see a lot of development between youngest and oldest.

I have a kids with an August 1 birthday. Even if you changed the rules, he'd have an advantage certain years because he's swimming against kids who are mostly younger than him, some as much as two full years. Yes it's unfair but there's literally no way to make it fair unless you created age groupings that were so narrow as to make differences irrelevant. Shall we have all kids born in 2015 between January and March swim in their own separate group? Meets could last for 12 hours and many kids would be swimming alone. Then more kids could "win"! Does that sound good?

Please just accept that sometimes the rules are not an advantage to you, personally, and move on. There are lots of ways in which my kid's August birthday is a negative for him (people are always out of town on his birthday, he's one of the youngest in his grade, etc.). We empathize with him when this stuff is hard but tell him sometimes you just have to make the best of it.

When these kids are grown none of this crap will have mattered.

Anonymous wrote:I have one kid born at the end of May and another at the end of August. Sure, it would be better for the May birthday kid to be born a few days later to June 1st, but it's life. We deal with it.

Same situation here. Any cutoff has winners and losers. My may kid still loves swim - and the extra competition has driven him to be a better swimmer

It's a two year age bracket regardless of whether the kid has had their birthday or not yet that summer. No kid is ever more than 2 years older than yours.

Anonymous wrote:it does stink though. End of may birthday going up against those 2 years older. All the top swimmers on our team and we have many are summer birthdays.

But there is really no fair equitable way to do it, unless like in the winter where you swim your actual age/ age up on your birthday.

Summer swim is 2 months.

It seems like a logistical nightmare to have kids swim in two different age groups if they have a summer birthday. If the cutoff was in May, then kids with spring birthdays would be complaining.

A bunch of kids changing age groups in the middle of the season is not a solution.