Poolside Chat: parents of competitive swimmers

[2ducksandI]

Seems I managed to fill the other thread with talk of taking fridges to away galas! And I didnt even mean a fridge I meant an electric cool box So I've started another thread. Hope you all find it.

A friend who teaches at 6th form college said the most organised students she ever teaches are the swimmers!

I think there are loads of great transferable skills they get from swimming- a DQ in your first event at a meet but having to brush yourself off to get back on the blocks for the next race and learning to race yourself for PBs rather than your teammates/ chasing medals are two big ones that spring to mind.

Doing it because you love swimming rather than because you love winning is so important.

Sadly being a swimmer had not made my ds organised

He's autistic though and has poor executive function. He's getting there but it's not a skill that come easily to him!

But I agree it teaches so much more than just how to swim. Resilience is a huge transferable skill that comes from swimming.

Hi Poolsiders, I have been lurking for a while now but would like to join in to ask your advice:

My DD aged 10 was picked from our local swim school to join the squad. She has been in the squads for 18 months now and competing for a year. She now trains 4 times per week with two land based sessions. She loves training so far (even early starts and in the winter), typically swims first or second in her lane, has moved up squads regularly, and gets particularly good feedback about her technique from the very experienced head coach. When I get down there (not often due to work and toddler) he often pulls me aside and gives me rather cryptic little titbits about how good she is.

I think he does this because he knows there is one big problem here: she is a skinny little shrimp and her times in competition are nowhere near state qualifying (in Aus). I keep reading that kids' times drop rapidly in their first few years but hers haven't - she got her PBs at the beginning and has been stuck since, qualifying times stretching away into the distance now as the next state meet is a week after she turns 11.

I was never a swimmer and I don't want to come across as a nightmare swim parent to the coaches, so help me out here: what is happening?? How can she look great in training and like she is swimming in concrete in competition? Should I raise it with the coaches and, if so, what should I be asking please?

@ElfinsMum if the coaches aren't worried then thats usually a good indication that you dont need to worry. If the technique is there then the times will come as she grows. All kids develop differently. My DS is small and just about keeps up with his peers times. His coach always tells him its a long game and to just keep going because one day he will grow and then the faster times will come.

@elfinsmum I obviously don't know what the state qualifying times are like in Australia and what that's equivalent to in UK terms.

There are lots of reasons why she would look better in training than in competition. One is that she is better at distance swimming and this will show with age. One is that she needs to grow and get stronger for sprinting. Another possibility is that she likes to be in control and holds back at meets as she is worried about completely running out of steam (my 12 year old does this).

One way re: speed is that some swim faster in relays as they get more carried away with it being in a team. So are there any team events that she can do?

That also sounds very intense to me in terms of training at 10 so she's probably being compared some fairly fast swimmers.

@Teateaandmoretea Yeah, I know, I'm not thrilled at the amount of training. Our club is pretty small and uncompetitive too. The standard of the young kids at the big clubs is both amazing and sort of awful because I now have more insight into what they must be doing to swim like that.

I don't really know about the relative comparisons re state times here v county times in UK. We're in WA so our state is only the size of a large county in the UK...but swimming is a big, mainstream sport for kids here: about 5 of the girls in my daughter's PS class are in local squads.

My daughter doesn't hold back per se but she does worry a lot about doing something wrong and being DQed. The meets here are huge (650 swimmers at the meet last weekend, yes we have been v lucky to be able to keep swimming through Covid so far...) and they apply the rules really strictly right down to the 8 year olds. At every event, some kids leave in floods because they have done tiny things wrong 😳 But yeah, I'm sure she could swim a bit faster if she wasn't stiff as a board with nerves!

We just had the state relay champs and she did get picked but she got given the butterfly leg of the medley relay. She was easily the slowest swimmer in the slowest leg of the slowest heat....but they are still teaching fly with fins on in practice so I'm hardly surprised and not bothered about that one. She does prefer relays because of the team thing, you're right.

Just to note that at licensed meets in the UK you do have to apply the rules strictly to ensure a level playing field. For instance, we had a disability swimmer missing a good part of one arm and we still had to report a one handed touch to the referees (they obviously wouldn’t DQ because the swimmer had a disability card - not that the swimmer ever did a one handed touch, they were brilliant at simultaneous finishes).

Yes my da has to hand his disability card in because he gets DQ at breastroke but then doesn't because he had an exemption 'to attempt'.

Elfin we were always told at a young age technique matters. It's usually the fast bigger built swimmers who don't develop technique who suffer in the end. Good technique keeps the stamina up. Girls between 9-15 are very up and down. They get better speed when they hit puberty and grow but when they start their periods they can have another slump whilst body adjusts to the fluctuating iron levels

Just popping on to reassure Elfin to trust the coaches. I say this as a parent of a 14 year old, who has been club swimming since she was 9. My daughter was that minnow, trying to catch up with the girls who had been squad swimming for 6-18 months longer than she had. Good technique inevitably overtakes brute force by the mid-teens (particularly for the boys).

Open meets are frankly terrifying - the blocks are different (and probably the kid before has fiddled with them) the water is cold. The waiting around makes them anxious, especially if a fellow competitor is flapping. Our first few open meets were a disaster (and some races still are, but it is less obvious to anybody other than the swimmer and coach).

The thing about mistakes is that you try to learn from them. Try not to obsess, but pick one aspect to try to do better next time.

Totally agree with madcats.
I also remind my ds if he gets annoyed at not Pbing that they train on a cycle. This time of year (in the U.K. season anyway!) they are training hard. They have counties currently but they aren't tapering for it because they are training up reading for regionals.

Also that no one swims a 0 time. No one can just always get quicker and quicker.

What helped my ds was finding some you tube videos of world and olympics where swimmers win gold but not with a pb. Seeing the top top swimmers also in the same boat really helped him.

So its just been confirmed our counties is going to be no spectators so DS will be doing his first counties alone. Luckily it is held at our home pool so he shouldn't be too intimidated. I will be a nervous wreck though!

This is crazy @Hellocatshome. We’re Warwickshire - one spectator per competitor allowed during plan B with Covid pass. This weekend it’s normal pay on the door. Why are there such differences?

@Teateaandmoretea no idea why they have made this decision, we are at a club gala this weekend and its spectators on the door just like the pre covid days 🤷‍♀️

we are at a club gala this weekend and its spectators on the door just like the pre covid days
I've realised I don't mean club gala I mean a little level 3 gala but with many clubs there whatever you call them.

Covid obviously prefers faster swimmers 🤷🏻‍♀️

That’s a shame @Hellocatshome, is there a live stream? Ours is having spectators with reduced capacity, but live streaming too.

@Hellocatshome our counties are also no spectators - I wonder if we live in the same county . It’s disappointing, but I do enjoy the lack of stress that not observing brings!

Ours in no spectators either! We have live stream!

Ours say it's due to capacity numbers. You can allow more swimmers this way 🤷‍♀️

Our club’s meets were always no spectators - we didn’t even have enough seats for competitors.

Our recent big gala had over 800 kids, and no spectators as that was the rule at the time. But we've have really struggled to squeeze in if parents had been there. I think they thought a lot more kids would drop out of swimming over the various lockdowns!

Could I join you? My DD (16) is a club swimmer but one of the least competitive people there is and has gradually opted out of meets (she has never qualified for counties, partly because of lack of competitive edge and partly because of unfortunately timed injuries). In fact Covid did her a bit of a favour as it allowed her to train between lockdowns, which she loves, without the pressure to compete. I suspect she would have given up by now in normal times. She only trains about 3 times a week now. The club are prepared to overlook this as they need to keep their numbers up, finances are a bit strained at the moment (I am a committee member and concerned). Are other people's clubs doing OK on the financial front? We have so many problems with our main pool provider.

Welcome @ExtremelyDelighted- the more the merrier. I am midway between newbie and old hand, with a swimmer who swims well when she feels like it.

Here I was popping back to announce that our council pool is going to start letting our kids back into the changing rooms and you are all chatting away about spectators!!

No live stream or spectators for Somerset. I've not sat as a spectator since February 2020.

I'm not close enough to our club finances to comment with certainty, but we had a massive hike in pool fees and had to give up some of our swim time. We are definitely subsidising public sessions.

Each swimmer is paying £4.80/hour to swim 4 hours a week. This is for a club run by volunteers, where senior squad could swim 9 hours/week pre lockdown (for about the same price).

@madcats I never thought of looking at it on a per hour basis. I've worked it out and I'm currently paying £1.44 an hour for 13 hours a week, 10 hours swimming and 3 hours land training. So now I feel like I'm getting a bit if a bargain.

Same here hello. I pay £109 a month and ds swims 16 hours and land trains 3 hours a week

This is the main city club though who use just the one pool and have about 300 swimmers I reckon over all the squads

Our main problem is getting the young learner swimmers in, the pool company aggressively market their own lessons, don't let us promote the club on site other than a tiny noticeboard in a corner where no one goes, keep all the best pool slots for their own lessons, keep putting up the cost etc. Also cancel on us at very short notice sometimes. Under the previous management it was a lot more co-operative. We use several pools spread over a fairly wide area because we are rural, that doesn't help either.