Poolside chat: Calling all parents of competitive swimmers!

[Marypoppins19]

I thought it might be helpful to share our highs/lows/questions/thoughts in one place. Who’s joining me!?

Ds started well! Pb for his 50 free. Pretty good achievement as well as flat blocks and not the adjustable ones he's use to!
Went downhill from there 🤦‍♀️😂

Sounds like we had a similar day, @itsgettingweird !

Small pb 50 free and then all others v close to pb all weekend. Now head down for more mocks. Good thing was he seems recovered from leg injury at last from September. Just needs back up.

Through a combination of pool closures and family stuff DD has had no squad for 3 weeks. I suppose she'll be well-rested but I think training will be tough this week.

We have 6 days at Counties to look forward to in the coming month. I know they try to be inclusive with generous QT's but I really wish they could do 10-14s and 15+ on different days for the sprints, preferably for everything. If nothing else it gets blooming expensive, what with driving an hour+ each way...paying for entries..paying to spectate. At least DD seems happy with her race suits for now.

Travel mug at the ready!

Mad ours are over 6 days too but it's relays and LD one weekend. 14U another and 15+ another. However ours are NOY generous with times - in fact we are one of the hardest counties to get into. Some races only accept top 14. And our consideration times are 1-2 seconds quicker than some counties auto times.

We are back on full training schedule so have a 2 hour session to look forward to later on

I’ve seen ‘consideration times’ mentioned in a few places. What are they and how do they differ to entry times? We’re in Yorkshire and don’t see consideration times anywhere

Yorkshire here too. Extremely generous qt. ridiculously so. You cannot move for the amount of kids! Very spread out over three weekends, one of which is sprints Saturday and teams Sunday. We aren’t going at all this year as mocks are on for first two weekends and he would rather revise, he doesn’t want to swim sprints and we don’t have enough for a team! I will save a fortune in entry fees ! 15 swims I’m not paying for 😀

We used to have consideration times for northern zonal when DS first swum. I imagine if they don’t have enough kids making qts they will look at those who achieve consideration time

Gosh county times do vary! Just looked at a random one - Hampshire if anyone lives there? They have qt and consideration. DS would only have 9 qt time rather than 15 and the other 6 would be consideration times only aged 16 category. I’m always surprised Yorkshire are so generous as we are such a big area with some very big clubs. They must need the brass from the entry fees .... am allowed to say that as a local lass!

widow our county (Somerset) only use QT's (so there are over 300 girls swimming some of the sprints).

Other counties have quicker QT's, which guarantee swimmers a competition place, and will also look to see how many children have considerations times before deciding who will be invited to swim in that race.

We are £6/race here plus £3/day spectator. I seem to remember 50p/race or more goes up to National coffers.

£6 a race here too. Bargain compared to our internal galas

Esther were Hampshire! Ds is s a second off consideration times for his age. He's going through classification application atm and will probably be S10 (poss 9 but it's got tougher) so he could probably be quite good as a para swimmer!

Mad ds dad is from Somerset and he has QT there. He wanted to 'now if he could swim under that county - he was gutted when I said it didn't work like that

Gosh! They are different! Ours are quicker than Yorkshire, but slower than Hampshire, pretty close to Somerset actually.

£4.50 per race here.

And we only take the top 15-30 swimmers dependent on age and race compared to other counties who take anyone who gets the time!

@itsgettingweird - that is a tough county to swim in!

We don't get consideration times anymore. It's interesting to see how the aggregate changes year on year to produce the QTs for the following. Also how many of the counties swim the meet in SC vs LC. We find the county times are often tougher to qualify vs the regional.

It's is. And I've said before how much I've heard people say there's a difference in counties and said how I looked it up.
I think I've gone the other way where I hadn't realise other counties times were so much slower in some cases and they didn't have the cut off. I guess if you're Hants like me we don't know any different to the tough times and very few actually swimming and don't realise it's not the case nationally.

It probably evens out though in the end.
If your are a finalist or definitely a medal winner in Hants you're probably more likely to go onto regionals and nationals. I do know Hampshire clubs and south east clubs do tend to have quite a good turn out in nationals and national finals. And I suppose as the idea of counties is the first rung of that ladder if you can't make it that far you know it from the off!

I think that's why I find Yorkshire QTs so odd, bearing in mind we have City of Leeds, City of Sheffield and numerous other clubs that punch well above their weight - Skipton, Doncaster Dartes, etc

Hampshire alone has Portsmouth, Fareham, Winchester, Rushmoor, Southampton, channel isles and IOw which are very good and other strong clubs such as Alton and Basingstoke.
We are a smaller club but have 2 national level swimmers and 1 was a NC last year!
Chuck regionals in and you add the east clubs (which I don't know) but other clubs such as Guildford and Crawley etc.
It's a tough area. I don't know why it's different but I assume geographically because we are a built up area and have a number of cities we have a larger number of clubs? I know some people travel 45-60 minutes to swimming club chatting to other Laurent's of swimmers out of county. Here there are 4 within a 20 minute drive! Then another 4 (at least!) within a 30-40 minute drive (without rush hour traffic!) and if we did 45-60 minutes there's probably about 12-14 clubs!

I don't think it really has a long term effect because nationals etc are top in asa tables so everyone has equal chance. It's just what's available at lower level!
My ds can't get level 1 meet times in Hants but we can travel to Dorset or W Sussex and he can compete that level! But I think it's best to compete level 3 as he does because realistically that's the level of swimmer he is. He works hard and tries hard but his disability will always effect his well he swims against same aged children.

Yep we are city of Sheffield and put loads through to Yorks, NERs etc
Entry times make little sense to me

It's a tricky one, isn't it?

I've not been involved with swimming long enough to give sensible examples but I hear so many stories about the kids who are good at 10/11 being overtaken in their mid-teens.

How do you motivate a young swimmer who is very likely to have a late growth spurt, has excellent technique etc....but tries for years and years to get County QTs in a "difficult" County? I can think of a couple of boys who have stuck with it and will probably go onto do Open Water/triathlons (parents are/were keen swimmers) but most switch to hockey/rugby/cricket years earlier.

Mad it is a dilemma. However the times drop less as they get older so if they are really near one year you can show them others hit X time and drop slowly but they are still in the window to drop a few seconds.

My ds won't because of his physical disability but he knows that so he's pretty sensible about it.

I think several county champs are starting this weekend, so if this is your swimmer, I wish them lots of luck! A couple of weeks off for us before the madness begins.

Yes ours start this weekend. DS only in relay team so his isn't for another couple of weeks.
Open meet week after that. Club comp week after that. Then 2 disability meets followed by a level 1 LC easter meet but he doesn't have many times for that as we've already discussed ours are hard!

Season is definitely getting into full flow!

Wishing all the DC good luck for the Counties (ours start with relays next weekend). Graze snacks all seem to be on offer at Waitrose if that is of any use to anybody.

Hope weird is making some progress with DC's classification (is that the right word)?

Local gala warrants a fish and chip supper for us , which I hope will compensate for the baking and freezing I need to do this afternoon.