I think its worst for girls to be denied decent practice. Many high school programs still have girls practice as much or even less yardage than master teams. I read this on the net, that one girl commented that they only practice 2,000 yards, while the boys I remember in high school had workouts of yardage between 5,000 to 10,000 befored they tapered. So, this ruling hurts girl swimmers more. This is the state of Missouri of course. This is from Phillip Whitten on the swimming world news on the internet. We complain about college programs being elimnated for boys or young men but what about the unfair treatment of girls in high school sports that can't practice on a USA swim Team during their high school years.
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Reading this is interesting to me. I grew up in Va. swimming summer league and USS (with the same coach for both). The HS team was definitely a lesser quality program than the USS team I was on. Additionally, I didn't like the coach, and they also practiced way too early in the AM for my taste. I was sort of interested in swimming for the HS but the negatives outweighed the positives from my perspective. The only way I would have done it would have been to go to the HS meets only, and workout with the USS group but that was not allowed so I just decided not to swim HS. However, I certainly agree with the position that one should not be a half-hearted member of the HS team, because we had the reverse problem on our USS team. Because our HS team had a practice attendance requirement and our USS team did not, several kids would do just the HS practices and still come to the USS meets. (Guess what -- they did really poorly!) It forced our USS coach to institute an attendance policy for kids who chose to swim HS because we were having empty practices. Obviously different locales have different situations. Some HS teams are strong programs, etc. In my case, I don't feel I missed out on anything by not "doing it all" and swimming for both teams. Yes, it might have been nice socially speaking, but I stuck with swimming a lot longer than any of those kids who left our USS group so they could swim HS, and I am the only one of them swimming masters today.
Reading this is interesting to me. I grew up in Va. swimming summer league and USS (with the same coach for both). The HS team was definitely a lesser quality program than the USS team I was on. Additionally, I didn't like the coach, and they also practiced way too early in the AM for my taste. I was sort of interested in swimming for the HS but the negatives outweighed the positives from my perspective. The only way I would have done it would have been to go to the HS meets only, and workout with the USS group but that was not allowed so I just decided not to swim HS. However, I certainly agree with the position that one should not be a half-hearted member of the HS team, because we had the reverse problem on our USS team. Because our HS team had a practice attendance requirement and our USS team did not, several kids would do just the HS practices and still come to the USS meets. (Guess what -- they did really poorly!) It forced our USS coach to institute an attendance policy for kids who chose to swim HS because we were having empty practices. Obviously different locales have different situations. Some HS teams are strong programs, etc. In my case, I don't feel I missed out on anything by not "doing it all" and swimming for both teams. Yes, it might have been nice socially speaking, but I stuck with swimming a lot longer than any of those kids who left our USS group so they could swim HS, and I am the only one of them swimming masters today.
