I'm a coach of a middle school girls swimming team. I'm planning on doing a Christmas swim where I pull different activities from a hat, and they do them. The activities are silly things like feet first 50, corkscrew 50, Santa's slay (pull another swimming while they hold onto your fee) stuff like that. I was wondering if you guys had any ideas for some fun things kinda like that.
One thing we did once was a follow the leader swim. The first person can go anywhere they want, switching lanes, getting out, jumping off the board, etc. The rest of the people have to follow like a line of ants. Kind of a conga line in the pool.
You can also take the lane lines out and have them play water polo in the deepend with chairs as goals. Just be careful--even if you tell them to keep the contact minimal, it seems like it always gets a little heated. Still, very fun alternative to swimming back and forth and "staying within the lines."
There was another thread somewhere that mentioned different peculiar meet ideas. Our masters coach sometimes does these relay races of sorts.
Two swimmers square off. If you do a non freestyle stroke and win, you get 2 points. If you do a non freestyle stroke and lose, you get 1 point. If you do freestyle and win, you get 1 point. If you do freestyle and lose, you get no points. And finally, if you swim the whole thing underwater (we were doing 50s, but if the kids are young, you could do 25s), you get 2 points regardless of whether you win or lose.
Complicated but kind of fun. You stop the "relay" after each pair takes off, then regroup.
One final idea is the golf game. You swim a 50 free as fast as you can, count your total number of arm strokes, get the time for the 50, and add the two together. I think the best showing on our team was 42. Someone swam the 50 in 26 seconds, took 7 strokes on the first length and 9 on the second for a total of 16. 26 + 16 = 42.
One thing we did once was a follow the leader swim. The first person can go anywhere they want, switching lanes, getting out, jumping off the board, etc. The rest of the people have to follow like a line of ants. Kind of a conga line in the pool.
You can also take the lane lines out and have them play water polo in the deepend with chairs as goals. Just be careful--even if you tell them to keep the contact minimal, it seems like it always gets a little heated. Still, very fun alternative to swimming back and forth and "staying within the lines."
There was another thread somewhere that mentioned different peculiar meet ideas. Our masters coach sometimes does these relay races of sorts.
Two swimmers square off. If you do a non freestyle stroke and win, you get 2 points. If you do a non freestyle stroke and lose, you get 1 point. If you do freestyle and win, you get 1 point. If you do freestyle and lose, you get no points. And finally, if you swim the whole thing underwater (we were doing 50s, but if the kids are young, you could do 25s), you get 2 points regardless of whether you win or lose.
Complicated but kind of fun. You stop the "relay" after each pair takes off, then regroup.
One final idea is the golf game. You swim a 50 free as fast as you can, count your total number of arm strokes, get the time for the 50, and add the two together. I think the best showing on our team was 42. Someone swam the 50 in 26 seconds, took 7 strokes on the first length and 9 on the second for a total of 16. 26 + 16 = 42.
