Poolside chat - new year, new racing!

@Madcats yes I was!

@ReluctantSwimMum sounds like we were all in the same place! I think that age group had a similar effect too, the gaps due to Covid meant they started later, so then take a bit longer to progress

and @whereonthestair i can definitely see that it would have been really hard for young para swimmers over the Covid period with difficulty in accessing pools and specialist coaching at points when clubs often had very little access

We have lost a generation of swimmers including para swimmers in our club. My DS is 14 but there is then a 4 year gap to the new group coming through. They just didn't learn to swim especially the disabled swimmers who often need 1-1 lessons to start with, and while our club was good at trying to keep para sessions running when they could it wasn't economic. The adults drifted into wheelchair racing/frame running as it was outside.

I am grateful our coaches always accepted that swimmers like my son needed some pool time as they couldn't just go out and run or even go for a walk when you can't walk!

With the able bodied boys I know they stayed with swimming if they'd already joined the clubs at 8 or 9 but those below didn't join after they had done learn to swim. And those behind were still doing learn to swim with a gap swim 18 months to 2 years in the middle.

One of the people I talked to at Swim England said they were still having to adjust times and standards as the effect was long term and they didn't want to lose more swimmers. They thought it would be one year or maybe two but they need to do it again.

Age 11
(12 this year for county purposes!)

Our meet was in Somerset 👀 @Madcats I like the mixed heats as they just focus on doing their own best swim because they aren't directly competing with everyone in their heat. Somehow it works well psychologically - although I know I'm impatient waiting for the actual result to trickle through afterwards!

I do think we are seeing a greater effect from covid than we predicted.

Various reasons and across all ages.

Here the 8/9/10yo that would have started meets and moved onto counties are making counties now later. And agree those at top end of lessons who would have moved over to club either didn't or went back a year or so behind their previous trajectory. Also far less access to lessons for those already learning must have had an impact on moving swimmers on.

Ds was 15 so had just come into his body and testosterone so had to re start building up again and many of the 15yo who had developed early left over the year we came back because the other boys caught up and the break seemed to close the gap further because they struggled more to get back to where they were than the later developers did to catch them up - iyswim?

We are still seeing girls outweigh boys but we saw that before covid.

Good point about indoor vs outside sports and the trends of what sports different sexes tend to participate in - that hadn't occurred to me.

@Eccle80 you weren't down in Somerset, were you? Are you Midlands?

@Madcats I do think that is a factor. At the age the 11-13 year olds were at the start of covid, most would either have fairly recently joined a swimming club or still be in the upper end of lessons. So my theory is some that might have gone on to join a swimming club never went back to lesson to finish them, or those new to club swimming moved onto other things by the time pools opened again. So as you say maybe worse for boys as the more popular sports for boys are outdoor and restarted sooner, whereas dance and gymnastics were indoor so couldn’t either. I know my own 12 year old says if he had still been in lessons at that time he wouldn’t have gone back to them.

We were at a meet this weekend too with the same thing, so either it is a new trend or we were at the same one 😂. Both mine said they liked it for giving closer competition, though eldest said some of the girls his sort of age weren’t as keen.

@Hellocatshome i agree on that too, most seem to be finishing lessons later, the pool closures and then loss of progress from the time off meant it’s taken longer to get through swimming lessons, and also then resulted in a backlog to start lessons as the spaces are filled with older ones.

That's strange we have no 15 year old boys, but quiet a few 12 to 14 year old boys. Our problem is getting them in and keeping them in the younger age groups as the 7/8/9 year olds seem less far on in their learning to swim journey than they used to be, I think that must be covid lockdown related.

Funny that you should say that, Eccle.
We were at an Open Meet this weekend (we've not been doing them recently).

We have a huge void of boys age 12-15, particularly 13 year olds.

I can't help wondering whether those boys just moved onto rugby, football and hockey or cricket after lockdowns as at least the outdoor sports were able to start sooner than swimming.

The meet we were at experimented with something new (to me, anyway). Open and Girls swam in heats together (but medals were awarded separately for each sex). It made for good racing in the faster heats . It might have been because of the swimmers involved, but it seemed a much "nicer" meet. Some of the older teens can be a bit bolshy, but there was none of that.

Well done to your swimmer @ReluctantSwimMum, sounds a successful day, hope they enjoyed it. What age are they? My younger one is in the 13 age group for counties etc, and my impression is that age were affected by Covid in that some have maybe been later joining clubs if they were still in lessons when Covid hit - mine had just been in the club a few months aged 8. His age group were very thin on the ground at counties in 2022 and 2023 though there were a lot more this year, which maybe reflects more joining clubs later (though they did also make the times a bit easier too)

ReluctantSwimDad was on gala duty this weekend - 7 hours on Saturday in a leisure centre was too much for me to bear!

Two PBs for our swimmer, though admittedly one was based on an entry time averaged up(?) as it was the first go at the event: medal for 200m backstroke.

I've checked the entry times for regional champs and it's phenomenal how far off the times are 😳 I'm not bothered as DC just loves swimming, not competing as such. I wonder if this is a COVID effect - I think someone mentioned this above - I know the coach said something when we moved up a couple of weeks ago about how DC and peers "should have" moved up a year ago (but we were never asked), so maybe they mean we are a year "behind" (only joined the club in late 2021, but perhaps means we are a year behind, as who knows what would have happened without lockdowns, maybe we would have joined earlier?)

Glittertwins: we may have been at the same meet and that may have been my DS who had a stinker of a weekend!! (I strongly suspect we're in the same club!!) Had a terrible day 1 and managed a tiny PB in 100Fly on day 2. hoping for a better weekend next weekend.

@Teateaandmoretea great well done Mini Tea

Yay - another great pb.

It's great to see them all starting the LC season well. Let's hope they all continue to have a great season 🤞

Dd1 swam a 1 second pb yesterday too - but for a 100. Still pretty big pb at her age 😂. Her underwater off the dive was bad too she came up too early. The event she then went to the meet to do was distinctly average in all the excitement.

Our top squad sounds similar to yours @Eccle80.

It’s interesting hearing how all the different squad structures differ. We’re a small club so the top squad includes people who have been to nationals and people who have never been to counties. We also have more than one squad training in the same session so the lines between squads can be quite blurred. We don’t have high training hours either.

Well done to @Hellocatshome DS, amazing pb on a 50! It sounds hard if you’re expected to spend a lot going to meets further away. It’s such an expensive sport

Well done to your DS @Hellocatshome. 1 second off is great.

It's worth becoming a member as you get all sorts of opportunities cheaper.

cpsport.org

Well done... My DS never listens, but then I don't usually know what I'm talking . I only the other hand do listen and will enter my DS into the CP meet. Thanks for the tip.

Yay - what a great pb at the end of a meet! A huge pb over 50m too!

Well it was worth hanging about for his 50 today. a 1 second PB on a time he set 3 weeks ago and he has conceded I may have been right about making the most of the underwater part of the race. Which is I believe the first time I have been right since he became a teenager 🤣

Ds did the junior para nationals a few times and it a good competition because it has age groups.

It's hard because para is normally swam as open and rarely even split into juniors and open.

CP sport do some good swimming meets too if your ds would qualify under their entry criteria? Ds did some competitions with them before classification as a guest as his is a neuromuscular condition.

Thanks, that's really helpful. DS can't swim fly (and probably never will given that would require both legs and a certain kind of coordination when he has neither) so that knocks out fly and IM. He's only competitive in free when he swims it as back, but we try to swim 50 and 100 free as front crawl given there seems little point in swimming it as backstroke when there is a 100 back anyway. Given his age we just struggle to know what to enter. However he mainly swims as physio atm so competition was just a way of encouraging him to keep training, it's just odd when the nature of the competition is he is always competing against himself but I think that's the best we can do.

Hi whereon my da didn't start to swim at a club until he was 12. He entered 50's and 100's because he was best at those and L3/4 meets did t often offer anything above that anyway.

His condition is degenerative so he also could do more at that younger age.

He wasn't classified until he was 17. He then started competing mainly in events for his classification and did 50m fee, 100m back, fly and free and 400m free.

It's only been this year he's pretty much dropped all but freestyle because he's not good at the other strokes really and because British para swimming g told him at british last year to work on his 400m free (which he focussed on 50/100 before that!)

He will do an odd back or fly if at club meet but he's not competing at these meets anymore. He's also done odd 800m free at meets as his coach said it's part of training for 400m!

Currently he's just racing 50/100/400m free but he's doing meets where he really needs to be on it for his target races and isn't competitive enough in the others to qualify to race them anyway!!!!!

At a younger age I would be doing all strokes and distances that are for their classification and a distance up to build the aerobic capacity but I'm not a coach so am just advising as a parent.