Poolside chat - new year, new racing!

[Glittertwins]

Hope this works, am rubbish at this!

Eek! I haven't heard this said, but can well believe it! I wouldn't be surprised if it contributes to the coaches' nightmare of extreme competition in the lanes during training too (rife with our younger swimmers!). We want the drills done right, not fast! 🤯

It's interesting trying to catch up with all this chat to see what the structure of other clubs is. We don't have a hold-up on moving young swimmers up because there aren't 'middle squads' as such but two senior ones: one for the better ones and another one which takes those who are good but not that good. Everyone moves up at a certain age into one of the two squads. The second senior squad used to be a bit of a desert for unenthusiastic swimmers but it now has plenty of pool time and very good coaches, so a fair few swimmers who are not doing too well at 12 move up to the better senior squad after a while. (They've recently started a regionals/nationals oriented squad from the most promising swimmers from any squad and they get a bit more pool time and specialist training as well as training in their usual squads.)

I've thought about moving DS to a bigger club several times, then had to reject the idea because I'm a single parent and couldn't get him to training as well as work (and the distances to training would be significant). Anyway, chronic illness would probably mean that he couldn't keep up with a demanding training schedule for long anyway, so he'd probably get asked to leave anyway by some of the harder headed clubs. It's hard though as one of his best mates moved.

We used to have some competitive parents when the kids were younger too. But I'm told that music parents were much worse!

They chilled out and the friendly (but fierce) competition between the kids became one of the things which made some of the swimmers really good in a smallish club.

Our club move dependent on how fast they are in training if they are competing and there is space. If there’s room at the top you can’t hold a load of swimmers in lower squads, preventing others moving up. It causes financial problems too. Unless those squads are also full ….

The more chilled parents happens when they realise there’s always another set of superhumans above and they develop differently.

Yes, it's fascinating to learn how other clubs split the swimmers!
Our performance (national and faster regional) squad is quiet as the head coach is overly very protective on who gets in. The competitive squad is full, as are all squads below except the very lowest, which are equivalent to the highest end of the SE Learn to Swim programme.
The squads are supposed to be based largely on what level you are qualifying at. Working towards counties (either due to age or ability) is the lower end of the middle groups, achieving county times should be upper middle, achieving counties finals/working towards regional times should be competitive. All squads have multiple lanes split by speed (and sometimes willingness to engage), so competitive will have a few 11yos up to regional open age swimmers. The issue is a whole lane in all 3 lower and upper middle squads being full solely of stagnated swimmers, plus an over-zealous guarding of the performance squad (IMO).

We used to be similar but in the end you have to match the squads to the swimmers you have rather than the ones the head coach wishes they had. The trustees forced the hand at ours - the club was losing money with a waiting list at the bottom. It wasn’t sustainable.

I think we are similar to @Teateaandmoretea now. Our squad move criteria was really strict and it has had to be changed in relation to who we have now after covid because we (and the sport as a whole) lost at least one entire age group as they never returned. One squad DS was in has changed so much in that now the minority of them meet the criteria he had to meet whereas in his time in the squad, it was a hard line and 100% met the criteria.
Clubs have to work with who they have and help develop them rather than who they want to have.

Da joined his club after covid so I don't know about changes.

We do have club squad criteria though and as far I can tell the swimmers they have still fit it.

Performance squad runs as junior, senior and national and junior and senior make counties and aim for regionals and some juniors and seniors make nationals. National squad is swimmers who made British and home nationals the previous season so that definitely is "national squad" on the sense of the criteria.

The reason some juniors and senior performance swimmers that make nationals don't swim with national squad is age. Juniors tend to be 11-14, seniors 13-15 and nationals 15+.

The highest squad is still nationals qualifiers. The rest of it is now more or less SE pathway for sex/age banding and also relative speed to peers as opposed to the strict speed criteria of old.

We then have junior, intermediate and senior competitive.

Juniors is 9-12 yrs, inter and senior 12+ dependent on ability and number of hours they want to commit to.

These swimmers are generally achieving county times and some aim for regionals.

Junior competitive with transition either to the performance stream or up though competitive stream.

Our senior swimmers will transition across through competitive and performance in both directions dependent on other factors including the number of hours they want to commit. Generally in year 10 as exam work ramps up.

Before they reach these 2 streams we have an academy (top SE level stream) and juniors swim squads with swimmers generally being 7-12 hrs old.

But with it being a bigger club we have the number of swimmers needed to do this and make it work financially as well as practically.

We also get a large number of swimmers from the small feeder clubs transitioning at 14 when they do transition to bigger clubs from surrounding towns.

We have a quite a few large clubs in our county and they are spread out so all seem to get fed into equally which I think keeps the county competitive and contributes to the ability to run how we do?

All I really know for certain is ds is a swimming nut who loves it, loves his club and the environment, loves his coaches and continues to improve - so alls good

Ours have some speed criteria I think but I don't know how or it's it's applied.

Probably because it certainly doesn't apply to ds because he can't do kick or breast and so he adapts what's being swam or wears fins so I've never really looked at it!

He'd still be in learn to swim if they were strict on every bit of criteria I think 🫣😂

Speed relating to county times/ regional times

Ah yes we have that and I'm pretty sure it's generally adhered to! Maybe odd 1/2 swimmers who don't quite make times but are close

Happy Mothers Day all fellow Swim Mums! Spending mine at a gala as per usual.

It is strange how clubs that are all doing essentially the same thing do it so differently from each other. I wish our club had a Regional but not quite National level squad as this would be DSs best fit. Apart from if they had an Open Water squad which is even less likely to happen. As it is he is the lowest level performing kid in the squad and I dont think that's great for his self esteem but he refuses to move club and leave his friends which is understandable.

Happy Mother's Day all.

My DS squad stream are all away at a meet this weekend as first weekend of national window. We didn't go for various reasons which is probably a good thing as I'm also really unwell with this cold and sore throat thing going around.

But by the sounds of things it's also a monumental shit show of a meet.

They're not where we are 😉

That sounds like a positive thing for you!

Ds will swim a few times in the window but as he travelled to Aberdeen last month and we go to london next month I thought we could cope without travelling in March as well 😂

Just managed a LC PB on the 400 so quite happy

@Glittertwins well done to Mini Glitter. The gala we are at is only a shit show in that most of our swimmers look like they are swimming through treacle. Not sure whats happened to them but whatever it is has happened en masse. 1 PB for DS so far and hoping for 1 today but other than that the whole thing has been a bit meh.

Yay - well done mini glitter 🥳

To be fair, there aren't many PBs here either. First LC meet for us as our counties are SC so anything coming close to a PB is a good thing. It's a baseline if anything. One of DS friends has had a stinker of a weekend so far but am sure he will recover.

itsgettingweird when your DS was younger how did you decide which events he did? I hope you don’t mind me asking but as you may recall my DS is a para swimmer and he and I find it so difficult to know what he should aim for, other than improving his pb. He swims with a para squad but the others largely don’t wish to compete and the two who do are both adult women, so not really comparable to a 14 year old boy. The squad was decimated by covid as this a bit younger than DS didn’t learn to swim when they were younger, and those a bit older went to university and therefore swim with their uni or gave up. Some of the younger ones are joining now but not yet wanting to compete, especially those who are likely to be in the lower classes rather than coming out at S10/s9. We have yet to meet another wheelchair using swimmer who isn’t an adult but my recollection is there were loads pre covid in the clubs. DS isn’t good enough to get any specialist advice and seems to be in a bit of a gap with his age and particular disability.

He has a couple of junior national para times, but not quite regional multiclassification, he’ll probably pick up one more junior para national time and qualify in three events, but he has no chance for the others unless he goes down a class when older.

He did counties, but basically will win the multiclassification events in our county by entering. He has a lot of medals, but typically where he was the only competitor.

He did a couple of regional para events which he enjoyed but as far as I can see they are all in autumn.

He was going to go to one of the national qualifiers mainly to try long course as they are the only long course events my club goes to but that would have him going from level 4 meets into level 1 meets and that seems a bit random and then his body got completely exhausted so decided against, he won’t get a non junior national para qualification time yet.

He enjoys swimming but sometimes I think he enjoys the training more than the competing as that is what the other paras do. Then other times he gets super competitive but not sure where he can sensibly compete.

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.

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.

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.