Half my life at swim meets

Triathlon Forum
1

Or so it seems. I’m writing this thread as kudos for my youngest daughter. Forgive the indulgence, but it is about swimming. My daughter is 12 and this is her eighth year on a swim team. The first four years were community summer teams and the last 4 years both the community team and a year round USA Swimming team. We have alsways been supportive and never pressured her to go to practice or enter meets. It’s been her initiative to stick with it and she works very hard at it. At her age now, in 7th grade, swimming has become an important social and self-esteem network. She says it gives her peace. That’s about as good as it gets in junior high.

She does work hard at it and has competed in 7 meets since Sept. While dedicated, she has never been a great swimmer. She can ribbon and sometimes medal in the community league, but at the USAS events the times just run away from her, until this year. Sometime over the summer the swimming fairy visited her in her sleep. Saw it as soon as practice started this fall. The technique was better. She all of a sudden got this lean and muscular look.

Now there are all kinds of qualifying times in USAS competitive swimming. Regional, Zone, National, Motivational…… and she had never hit any of them. Along comes the first swim meet of the year and she’s doing the 50 breast, 50 free and 100 IM. The 50 breast starts and it’s like I’m watching a whole different person swim. We look at her time, check the heat sheet and OMG, it’s a Regional Level II qualifying time, same thing in the 50 free and the 100 IM. She has now set qualifying times in every event she’s done, in every swim meet and got to swim her first Level II Championship meet. She’s now very close to setting Division II times in 2 events and the 50 free is staring to really be her specialty. The next swim meet she has decided to concentrate on freestyle and is swimming the 50, 100 and 200 free, as well as the 50 breast.

Absolutely way cool and her happiness just fills the house. Just wanted to share this with the swimmers out there in ST land.

Cheers,
Ric

2

Hurrah for Ric’s daughter!

And thanks for being so supportive of her. Seems like swim parents are expected to really do a lot to help out their kids and their kids’ programs. Without all the effort that y’all put into making clubs and meets run well, the sport just wouldn’t exist in the USA.

3

Kudos to you & the Mrs. for giving her some good DNA and for not being the typical “sports parent”. Few things are as cool as watching your children accomplish a goal that they’ve worked hard to achieve. Well done!

4

that’s cool man. way to be supportive.

Dan
www.aiatriathlon.com

5

Congrats to her and way to be supportive. Her improvement is actually something special: Usually kids rock from the beginning (my sister age 8 to 17, esp. in breastroke and (less so) in ski racing) or they are always just mediocre (me, age 8 to 17 in everything sport-related) … For a kid to suddenly get fast or really good at a sport after many years of trying is really really cool … Times? As I recall, 12-year-old girl swimmers can usually beat 12-year-old boys.

6

congrats to your daughter!!! tell her to stick with it swimming ROCKS

7

Congrats to her, and kudos to you for being a supportive swim parent. I never realized how much time my parents gave up for me as a swimmer until I was out of school and could see beyond my own little life. They gave up entire weekends for 15 years, lots of money, time with my brother since he didn’t swim. And I owe them so much for it. Swimming was the best part of my early life.

8

I know exactly how you feel. This is my daughter’s third year swimming with a team. In about 20 minutes, I’m leaving to go and work at a fundraising bingo for 4 hours … too much fun to describe :slight_smile: Next weekend she swims a 50m back, 100m back, 200m back, 100m free, 100m IM, and 400m free plus 3 relays in the hopes of getting a few more qualifying times for the short course regional meet in February. I always volunteer as a timer at meets so next weekend I’ll be at the pool for many hours. She just turned 11 at the end of October and I can hold her off in freestyle still but anything else, the little 80lb, 4ft 9in. fish leaves me in her wake :slight_smile:

9

Well done! The day we took our kids to swim practice to the first time was one of the greatest moves we made as parents. Swimming and water polo has been a great sport for our family. The kids and parents tend to be the nicest around. That’s a good thing because, as you said, you spend a lot of time together.