Swimming Firsts

Teaching our kids to swim has always been a challenge.  Our first house (as a married couple with a kid) did not have a pool nearby, but we learned about a very good swim instructor who lived about 20 minutes away and taught lessons at her private pool.  So, we signed our daughter up for lessons with her, but by the time lesson began, we had moved to a new house almost an hour from this swim instructor's house.  It was tough for a parent to sit in the sweltering heat behind the pool (we were not allowed inside during the lesson) for over an hour during these sticky hot lessons.

Swim lessons with Mrs. Ann (June 2008)

The new house on the golf course had a pool and tennis club, but the fees were high for a such a rinky-dink pool with no lifeguards or swim team.   Plus, after our first year there, we put our house on the market (and we had it on the market every year for the next five years), so we did not want to pay the membership fee if we were about to move.  So we did not join the pool, but we did drive 45-60 minutes each way to get the kids five to ten swim lessons each year.  I'm not sure how valuable those lessons were, however, since we did not have regular access to a pool where they could practice those skills.

Our apartment last year had indoor and outdoor pools, so our kids did get to play in the water more, but there was no formal swimming instruction or lap swimming.   Our third house, which we are in now, does not have a pool in the community, but there is a fabulous private pool less than a mile away if you drive (or closer if you take the greenway by foot or bike) with a fabulous swim team, lots of swim instructors, tennis, playground, etc.  We decided to jump at our first chance to join a pool and the swim team.

Our new pool in April the day we joined

I have never been on a swim team, and I am not skilled in all the strokes, so I had no idea what to expect with swim team.  After the new parent orientation, I was so overwhelmed by the time commitment that we made our daughter choose between gymnastics team or swim team this summer (she chose swim team), and I pulled her out of some of the meets since they can last over 8 hours on days she has camps or we have other family commitments.  

I have recently learned that our little swim team (139 swimmers) is ranked #5 out of about 50 in the southern league, division 2, which is one of the best leagues in the state with Olympic swimmers coming out of this league.

Considering that our daughter has never belonged to a pool and has only had a week of lessons each year for approximately five years, I knew joining a team filled with year round swimmers who have been competing for the past five years would be a big challenge.  I assured her that my only goals for her were to make sure she was drown-proof and to strengthen her stamina, so she should not stress about her rankings on the team. 

She had never even learned to do the butterfly and only had one short instruction on the breast stroke before signing up for this team.  Mostly her lessons have been on pool safety, treading, freestyle, and  back stroke.

Her times for each event at the timed trials were terrible as we expected (and as were the times of all the other new team members), but I was just impressed that she could do the new strokes properly all the way across the pool.   She asked me to pull her out of the butterfly at the first meet because she just wasn't ready.  Most of the practices were cancelled the previous week due to thunderstorms, so she really just needed more time to learn the stroke and practice.

I really struggled at the timed trials as I tried to figure out my volunteer role as a "kid pusher" while not knowing anyone except for one gal from college who had left the faith to marry an atheist causing some awkwardness between us, thought I desire to rekindle that friendship.  While she watched me make so many goofy mistakes at those trials as I learned everything the hard way, looking and feeling clueless, she was probably too embarrassed to acknowledge that she knows me.  Her kids are experienced, fast swimmers.

My daughter began making lots of new friends (Gift #623), however, and seemed to enjoy everything about the time trials except for the fact that she did not win. She is very competitive and expects too much of herself.

Things really turned around for both us at the first meet, a home meet against one of the top teams in the league.  Even though she was swimming against some of the best swimmers in the state who had many years of year-round competitive swimming experience, she won her heat and came in 5th overall in the breast stroke out of 18 swimmers in her age group.  She did not do as well in the other strokes, but she improved her time on all of them compared to the time trials.  Even better, she insisted on getting put back in the butterfly event (which a few days ago she had insisted that I pull her out of because she was not ready) and came in 12th, which is a higher place than she got in freestyle or backstroke.  I love to watch her face challenges like she did with the beam in gymnastics and now with the butterfly in swimming.  Her faith in God helps her overcome her fears and her weaknesses! (Gift #624)

All this to say, she was up against some tough competition and having had no real swimming experience and only a few lessons here and there, she did awesome.  And she was even asked to fill in on the relay at the end of the meet, an event usually reserved for the faster swimmers.

By the first meet, I had mostly figured out what I was supposed to do as a volunteer kid pusher, and I met a really nice family whose daughter was in the same age group as our daughter.  They are new, too, so we are learning together.  Then I realized their daughter is one our daughter's closest friends. I'm meeting more people and feeling less like a fish out of water.  The meets are long, but they are rather fun though the 97 degree heat (heat index around 105) was difficult to endure for that long period of time.

The second meet of the season was an away meet against an exceptional team.  Our team got stomped.  It was not pretty.  It rained at the beginning of the meet, so my son and I sat under my umbrella trying to cheer her on while praying it would not thunder causing a rain delay, but the rain soon passed without any meet delays (Gift #625).

We were shocked to learn that our daughter had been selected to swim a lap in the initial relays.  She swam her one great stroke, the breaststroke.  She beat her PR in every event except the freestyle.  She and I both keep building friendships, which in my opinion, is the most important part of being on a swim team.  Both of our kids invited several friends from the pool to church and to Super Summer Adventure (VBS) this week, so I love the way they are using this pool time to reach others for Christ (Gift #626).

Our girl always gets a fast start.  Our son is taking swim lessons from Josh, the tallest coach pictured above.

I am very impressed with this swim club. It's run mostly by high school students, but the number of  social activities, the creative theme nights (the picture above shows the coaches dressed for "Neon Night"), the Big Shark/Little Shark mentoring program, the professional quality photography taken and published on line after every meet, the tech savvy heat sheets and record keeping for every swimmer tracking up to 1/100th of a second improvement, the logistics of organizing a hundred volunteers at every meet, etc. are all outstanding.  They pull it all off without a hitch yet in an easy going manner that makes it all fun without all the stress that could go with it (Gift #627).