The reason you put kids through swimming - the parents don’t have to hear the kids voices when they’re swimming. Silence is golden.
That’s assuming the parents can take kids to the pool and are not commuting to go earn a living though!
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I’m in Charleston, SC - no high schools have pools but most have swim teams. It’s a fall sport (Aug - Oct), always no cut, and they end up doing a lot of practices at local community and private club pools - many of the summer league teams (not fancy clubs) rent out pool space to the high schools and the local rec departments rent to schools.
My son’s high school team requires club swimmers to come to HS practice, which is crazy to me since the club swimmers literally swim circles around the non-club swimmers and take up valuable lane space. Club swimmers are still usually going to morning club practice and HS in the afternoons or vise versa. Back in my day (HS state champs in 1998!), club coaches would NEVER let their swimmers miss club practice. I was one of the HS only kids but then we would ride the club swimmers to victory. By senior year, I was the pity case they tossed on the 200 free relay - three guys heading to D1 programs and me.
I loved the experience, no way I was on the team if they made cuts. It helped get me into triathlon and swimming and triathlon continue to be a huge part of my life today.
I’m not disputing your assertion, I am thinking about how things are different here. Summer league swimming is inexpensive and a good introduction into the sport. It is not country clb league, its swimming at your neighborhood pool. The club teams swim at local HS which keeps costs lower, I think the cost is in the $150-200 per month through age 14.
Yeah, when you enter HS the cost can go up. Way up.
Rich is a subjective word, but with mean household income being $76K in Houston, you’d probably have to be above that to have the discretionary funds to swim. But I am a little uncofortable saying you have to be rich to swim. Atleast where I live.
Summer League swimming, at a city pool will be the cheapest way to get on a swim team for 6-7 weeks, with instruction often from the volunteers/meagerly paid kids in the older age groups of the swim team, aka junior coaches. Perhaps you’re lucky enough to have a head coach that actually coaches. Cost is about $250, plus swimsuit, goggles, etc. plus basic city pool fees, usuallly less than $1,000 and sometimes much less. You likely won’t improve that much with this as your only swim opportunity. Many summer league teams are actually part of clubs, often with multi thousand initiation dues and annual dues of $1,000 or more, and then add the swim team dues. Then there are country club summer swim leagues, that have often very high dollar initiation entries and annual dues.
Practices at many of these teams are morning hours, so you need a nanny, Uber, or a parent that doesn’t work or has very flexible hours. Otherwise, the kids aren’t getting to practice.
We have two kids that swim year round in a club, besides summer league and school leagues. I just looked at the last 12 months of billing from the year round club - $14,000. That total does NOT include the 5 travel meets (these generally require certain time cuts to compete) that required out of state travel, 3-4 nights of hotels per meet, time off work, gas, food, or equipment - a few tech suits per kid, per year. Just the hotels, gas, food, and tech suits add another $10,000. Also, every longer school vacation during the school year and summer break has practices that are during most people’s work day in the AM hours (and some PM hours for doubles) so you need a parent, or nanny, or Uber, etc. with flexible hours. Costs are easily quite a bit north of $25,000, without putting a value on the parents driving more than 25 hours a week (plus) kids to practice - 14 -15 workouts between the two, hour round trip, and often most practices having two separate hour round trips, with parents in our case, taking turns one doing drop off and one doing pickup. We have Ubers periodically, but no nanny. Some people live closer to the club, of course, but we know some kids that live one hour away.
Having year round swimmers is a big family commitment from everyone involved. Having kids that are flying to regional or national meets adds even more money to the annual budget, but that is less common, unless your swimmer is nationally ranked and likely 14 or older. Some club teams will do travel meets to other club teams, requiring air travel, too.
Bottom line - the sport requires some extra discretionary income and flexible and dedicated parent(s).
What the …!? At the local swimming club in my city in Germany, the normal membership fee for kids who swim competitively is €20/month, and €40/month for those who are part of the elite performance centre programme. Even if you had two children who swam on an elite level, you would be paying less than €1000 per year in membership fees. It would almost certainly also mean that your children swim well enought that they qualify for attending the special school for athletically gifted children that is associated with the programme, which solves the problem of having to drive them to practice two times a day. $14,000 just in club fees for two children sounds completely insane in comparison.
Club fees include 10 swim meets they put on the throughout the year, which are 1-3 days long per meet, and can be from 1 to 6 sessions. Often up to 8 individual events can be swum, plus occasional relays, and some meets might have prelims and finals. Therefore, possibly up to 20 separate swims over a 3 day meet - see sample fees below from an actual/typical meet. The club fees-billings also cover the event entry fees for the five Tavel meets and those are almost always prelims and finals.
Two kids doing the above and there is a fee for every single event swum. The meet entry fees add up to quite a bit. That’s a total of 30 swim meets and associated entry fees. This budget doesn’t include school meets or summer league meets, or those associated costs (much less money).
The club fees pays the coaches, keeps the pool complex running, etc.
There are some kids that go to several meets a year that require air travel, and some that do international travel meets, and their expenses are higher.
My belief is that competitive swimming is inherently a middle class activity.
On the one hand, competitive swimming is likely to be very UNsatisfying for the rich. Large amounts of money will not buy massive privileges. Special tech, special coaches, special camps!! These things just can’t overcome a lack of training and talent!
Swimming is also difficult for the poor. Competitive swimming will require consistant, year over year practice. Poverty in the US - is often associated with instability.
Swimming is also unsatisying for the geneticly gifted poor. It doesn’t give one especialIy high social status. There are athletic scholarships. But a part-time job and some extra study- are more time/cost effective methods of getting ahead in education.
Here’s ChatGPT for one kid in high school on a serious club swim team.
Here is a single, final, high-end summary, assuming top-tier club coaching, heavier travel, and premium choices throughout.
Year-Round High School Club Swimmer (High-End Scenario)
Elite club • 15 meets/year • 5 out-of-state meets (4 hotel nights each) • 3 tech suits
Annual Cost Breakdown (Higher-End Assumptions)
1. Elite Club Coaching & Training
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Monthly dues: $275–$350
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Annual total: $3,300–$4,200
2. Registration & Team Fees
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USA Swimming registration
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Team admin / facility / insurance fees
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Annual total: $200–$400
3. Meet Entry & Coaching Fees (15 Meets)
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Higher event counts, championship meets
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Coach travel fees consistently charged
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Annual total: $1,200–$2,000
4. Travel Meets (5 Out-of-State, 4 Nights Each)
Premium but not luxury assumptions
Category
Annual Cost
Hotels (20 nights @ $190–$230)
$3,800–$4,600
Transportation (mix of flights + rental cars / gas)
$2,500–$4,000
Food (4 days × 5 meets)
$1,500–$2,000
Travel meet & coach fees
$500–$900
Travel subtotal
$8,300–$11,500
5. Tech Suits (3 per year — top tier)
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$450–$600 per suit
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Annual total: $1,350–$1,800
6. Gear, Equipment & Miscellaneous
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Practice suits, bags, goggles, fins, cords, replacements
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Annual total: $300–$600
TOTAL HIGH-END ANNUAL COST
Realistic High-End Range:
$15,000 – $20,000+ per year
Monthly Equivalent
- ~$1,250 – $1,650 per month
(Travel and championship months routinely hit $3,000+)
Straight Talk
For families in elite year-round programs with real travel and championship expectations:
$15K–$20K annually is common and defensible
This is the same spending tier as national-level club soccer, hockey, or lacrosse.
If you want next:
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A college-recruitment-track comparison
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A “what if we cut 1 travel meet or 1 tech suit” sensitivity
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Or a side-by-side with private school tuition
I can walk you through that.
This strikes me as a particularly inappropriate use of Chatgtp.
The monthly dues seem correct.
The rest of this seems completely made up.
Why would you attend 5 out of state meets per year?
Regionals/National/Worlds? Winter and summer?
But you don’t usually have to pay for worlds.
And if you have world championships times, why travel to regionals?
This chatgtp thing seems to be imposing soccer/baseball/tennis/lacrosse level travel on swimming.
That’s what soccer was like for my kids.
With swimming - we spent a lot more time training and a lot less time traveling around.
I suppose some teams might make their Olympic kids swim regional meets. And make state level kids travel to watch regional and national meets.
But is that realistic?
I was curious what chat gpt would say. Our club has regional meets with AA or AAA type cuts needed to participate. This is very common for many swim clubs. If you’re making Futures, Juniors, etc. swim cuts, add in plane travel, which might include swimmers and parents. Some kids are doing International meets, too.
There are plenty of club programs much cheaper, as well. You could find recreation programs that just do swim training and highly encourage meet attendance, but the athlete chooses not to swim any meets. That might be $200 to $300 a month. Add more costs if attending any meets.
Things that are different here than what you are experiencing:
you are not allowed to charge an additional splash fee for a finals swim. I cannot believe that you would get doubled charged like that!
I logged into our account portal and my total costs for 2025 were 5860. That includes all coaching and meet fees. And that also included $420 that allows me to swim at the facility.
If you qualify for a meet national level meet, our local LSC will reimburse a significant amount of expense.
Excluding the national level meets, our club only does 1 travel meet per year.
Our Club is a TYR partnership Club. We have 500 members so we are big but not really big. When my son joined the club’s national team, we recieved the contact information of the teams TYR account rep and significant discounts: I paid $270 (each) for two tech suits last week. I don’t know if other clubs do this and how big a club has to be to qualify, but its been a big saver.
Our club has a fund that pays dues for swimmers experiencing financial hardship. We have like $50K in restricted funds that support that.
I don’t think I spent $10k last year in total.
We swim at a NoVa club several times per year as a guest. I know it is way more expensive there.
I just double checked the line item invoice and there actually are no finals fees at meets. There’s just the individual, relay, and a swimmer facility fee. Indirectly, finals meets always cost more - more travel or up and back to the pool, longer time spent in hotels or paying extra for a very late checkout, and more food on the road. Nice call out and pretty nice if you are all in under 10k including travel and hotels.