It's been cool for me over the last few years seeing and competing against a number of guys from both my age group and collegiate days. However, when I think back to my college team, in particular, I'm struck by how many guys are NOT back swimming and competing in Masters. I realize this is probably the wrong audience to ask (since we're back in the pool), but, since for me swimming & competing go hand in hand and I love swimming, I'm still puzzled why more people don't come back to the sport and to racing?
- Lack of knowledge about the range of performances in masters swimming - not every former swimmer is Mike Ross, Chris Stevenson, Paul Smith-esque when returning to the pool
Jim, great point. And not everyone was at that level to begin with. There are lots of articles and features featuring many of USMS' best performers in USMS Swimmer, the website, these forums, etc., and I think this is part of the reason why we find so many casual swimmers doing rec swim at our pools who see no benefit to joining USMS. I hear it all the time: "Masters - oh, that's for fast people, I'm not fast..." All of us here know this is a misconception... but is it?
Aside from the handful of these swimmers, there are tens of thousands of others who are working just as hard who break barriers of the non-world record kind. I think it would help to showcase more of the Average Joe and Joanna swimmer, who makes up probably 95% of our membership, and paint a fuller picture of the swimmers that make up USMS.
To address the thread topic, I think it would help if more people understood that most of our membership have a 40+hour/wk job and put our kids ahead of our own schedules and still somehow find time to squeeze in workouts and swim a meet or two now and then. That may help some of our missing comrades back into our sport.
- Lack of knowledge about the range of performances in masters swimming - not every former swimmer is Mike Ross, Chris Stevenson, Paul Smith-esque when returning to the pool
Jim, great point. And not everyone was at that level to begin with. There are lots of articles and features featuring many of USMS' best performers in USMS Swimmer, the website, these forums, etc., and I think this is part of the reason why we find so many casual swimmers doing rec swim at our pools who see no benefit to joining USMS. I hear it all the time: "Masters - oh, that's for fast people, I'm not fast..." All of us here know this is a misconception... but is it?
Aside from the handful of these swimmers, there are tens of thousands of others who are working just as hard who break barriers of the non-world record kind. I think it would help to showcase more of the Average Joe and Joanna swimmer, who makes up probably 95% of our membership, and paint a fuller picture of the swimmers that make up USMS.
To address the thread topic, I think it would help if more people understood that most of our membership have a 40+hour/wk job and put our kids ahead of our own schedules and still somehow find time to squeeze in workouts and swim a meet or two now and then. That may help some of our missing comrades back into our sport.
