Saw one of the more interesting articles about the past, present, and future aspects of competitive swimming on SwimInfo's website the other day from Wayne Goldsmith..
www.swiminfo.com/.../7720.asp
I think it provokes a great deal of thought in this arena and specifically within this group since many of us either participate, have friends/relatives who participate, or remember participating in competitive swim meets.
I particularly appreciate the parents perspective provided in the article. While I have little children (5 and almost 3 years old), the thought of going through what my parents did with me makes me hesitate to sign up for the first set of SwimAmerica lessons or summer club swim team to introduce them to swimming. While I swam through my school age years, I didn't really consider just what my parents had to go through right along with me.. I was always thinking about what i was going through. Wow!
Check out the article and see what you think...
Rob
Parents
Former Member
All good points.
One lesson to be drawn from the relative success of HS, REC and to some extent Y swimming is that these programs are organized to encourage participation and promote fun. Most of the complaints I hear from swimming parents of younger children concerns the meets and not the training aspects (most USA programs require no more than 2 practices up to 1 hour each for the younger swimmers). The meets are unbearably long for all but the few diehards (btw, I am one of the die-hards).
Swimmers do need to compete in meets at all ages. But I still think that dual-meet, tri-meet formats overcomes most of the objections about meets. Rivals can be local thereby eliminating the long drives. Dual meet format keeps the meets within the two hour range. All of these metrics compare favorably to other sports...in fact emphasis on dual meets would make swimming look better compared to ice hocky, soccer, lacrosse travel teams.
All good points.
One lesson to be drawn from the relative success of HS, REC and to some extent Y swimming is that these programs are organized to encourage participation and promote fun. Most of the complaints I hear from swimming parents of younger children concerns the meets and not the training aspects (most USA programs require no more than 2 practices up to 1 hour each for the younger swimmers). The meets are unbearably long for all but the few diehards (btw, I am one of the die-hards).
Swimmers do need to compete in meets at all ages. But I still think that dual-meet, tri-meet formats overcomes most of the objections about meets. Rivals can be local thereby eliminating the long drives. Dual meet format keeps the meets within the two hour range. All of these metrics compare favorably to other sports...in fact emphasis on dual meets would make swimming look better compared to ice hocky, soccer, lacrosse travel teams.
