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
Well, I agree that there are too many sports that kids do now. In the 1970's, the only other sport most swimmers did was water polo in some parts of the US. I didn't really get a chance to play that because it was all boys in high school and AAU water polo had a handful of teams for women. Also, back in the 1970's women's high school and college programs usually workout less yardage than the male programs. So, girls and women in order to be half decent had to a AAU age group background or at least a novice summer league background. Now the programs are equal or in some cases favor the women, so swimming on a club team is less important. Girls or women still develop earlier than guys in the sport, so going more to high school and college programs doesn't always help female swimmers since they can go to the olympics at 15 or 16 more so than male swimmers and need to swim prior to high school in order to reach the elite level. There are exceptions like Rachel K but more girls are like Miss Hoff.
Well, I agree that there are too many sports that kids do now. In the 1970's, the only other sport most swimmers did was water polo in some parts of the US. I didn't really get a chance to play that because it was all boys in high school and AAU water polo had a handful of teams for women. Also, back in the 1970's women's high school and college programs usually workout less yardage than the male programs. So, girls and women in order to be half decent had to a AAU age group background or at least a novice summer league background. Now the programs are equal or in some cases favor the women, so swimming on a club team is less important. Girls or women still develop earlier than guys in the sport, so going more to high school and college programs doesn't always help female swimmers since they can go to the olympics at 15 or 16 more so than male swimmers and need to swim prior to high school in order to reach the elite level. There are exceptions like Rachel K but more girls are like Miss Hoff.
