Tuesday Night Lights: An ode to the summer swim team
One night last week, I spent five-and-a-half hours standing, dripping sweat, even after sunset, with a clipboard in hand and an empty stomach.
“Swimmers, take your mark!” A buzzer sounds. Another row of capped little swim team members dove in a nearby neighborhood pool, splashing my legs with pool water. I didn’t mind. It was a hot Raleigh summer night and the spray felt good. Other sweaty parents cheered as the group of 7 and 8-year-old girls tagged the opposite pool wall after completing a 25-yard freestyle heat. I cheered for a kid I knew from my son’s class last school year when she won her heat. Her toothy grin under pink goggles made me smile.
It was another Tuesday night summer swim meet.
For five summers now, our kids have been diving in as Harrington Grove Stingrays at our pool in northwest Raleigh. Starting in late May and ending in mid July, my kids go to practice four nights a week with swim meets every Tuesday night.
Yes, it’s a lot. Even just for the summer swim team kids. My son practiced at 6 p.m. and my daughter didn’t dive in until 7:30 pm for practice. We often had dinner by the pool. Sometimes it was takeout. Tuesday night meets can go late when swimming against other big teams. Lightning delay? We might be swimming until close to 11 p.m. Didn’t fit the whole meet in? See you Wednesday night.
For the uninitiated, swim meets can be best described as “organized chaos.” Getting there by 5 p.m. is tricky for families, but somehow we hustle and maneuver around other stressed and sweaty parents to find a spot with our tailgate chairs and all our stuff. Amazingly, we get kids checked in with their arms and backs marked. Sharpies indicate their individual swim number. Often I argued with my child about missing goggles we finally found in a separate bag or we battled over the importance of wearing a swim cap for a meet. I almost always lost that battle. “It’s too tight!”
All parents on our team are expected to volunteer for at least three meets. If I was a parent volunteer during a meet, I just hoped someone fed my kids, or they found the cooler I packed. If not, swim meets were the one time I let them get away with eating Doritos and Pixy Stix for dinner. I was too busy checking off names as Clerk of Course to pretend to care if they ate a vegetable. We don’t swim year-round. My kids are what I like to call “second and third heat kids.” They’re not the middle-lane-point-getter-record-breaking kids.
So why put ourselves through this for eight weeks each summer? For lots of reasons.
One that I point out each year is that of all the other extra-curricular activities they do, this is the one that could save their lives one day. It’s important for them to brush up on their swimming skills each year. Swim team is the fastest and cheapest way to do that, in my opinion. When my son was 5, swim lessons were less convenient and more expensive than signing him up for swim team with his older sister. He was with coaches in the water every day and learned quickly.
Most importantly, it’s the community of the team that makes it all worth it. Cheering on a kid I’ve known since he was in preschool as he wins a first heat for our team as a middle schooler is fun. Watching my kids do chants with their teammates before a meet and high five their fun, college-aged coaches is awesome. At the end of the season our long time Swim Team President “retired” after 16 years of calling meets as a dedicated volunteer. Kids who were scared to dive in back in May were awarded the Coaches Award by the end of July. It’s just cool to watch each year.
I’ve noticed a few things about the age divisions among the swim team kids. I’ll break it down for you here:
6 and Under Boys
Their swim jammers are a little loose. They shiver when they get out of the pool at practice. They like to talk about who’s lost teeth yet. Keeping those goggles on can be a struggle. One might be crying, but he is brave and finally jumps in.
6 and Under Girls
They have braids and freckles. Some of them are shy, others are giggling with friends. They are so cute, but so fierce when they finally learn a stroke they’ve been working hard on all season.
7 and 8 Boys
They are the loudest group. Any coach can tell you that. They like to push each other and yell. They ask funny questions. They still look for their parents for reassurance when they’re up on the blocks, about to dive in for a race. Despite the chaos, this group has learned a lot and is improving fast.
7 and 8 Girls
There are lots of hand-clap games while they gather to sit and wait for heats. If they’re not wearing the team suit at practice, their suits are colorful and fun. It’s easy to identify them in the pool. Some of these swimmers are thinking about year-round swimming. Their progress is fun to watch.
9 and 10 Boys
I silently giggle at this group because often they have learned a few bad words and use them wrong with their buddies. Despite getting carried away as a group, they will behave after parent volunteers correct them. Some are really getting to be fast swimmers and their races are fun to watch.
9 and 10 Girls
They are a very well-behaved group. They are almost always in the right spot for their heats. Some of these girls have been swimming year round and their improvement in the pool is fun to watch.
11 and 12 Boys and Girls
Both the boys and the girls have to start swimming 50-yard races by age 11. I watched my 11 year-old at the start of the season, worried what this might mean for her summer swim career. I hated the flip turn and the embarrassment of accidentally losing track of my direction in the pool. Once at 13 I kicked into the water the wrong way, thinking I was kicking off the wall. That flailing in front of everyone marked my last summer swimming with neighborhood kids on the team. My daughter nailed it for most of the season, minus one unfortunate run-in with the wall during a backstroke heat. She laughed it off and declared flip turns “no big deal.”
13 and up
Age divisions continue for 13-14 Boys and Girls as well as 15-18 Boys and Girls. By this point, teens have their niche, their friends and their sports. For many of them, showing up at the pool for summer swim team with 6 year-olds is not cool, but they do it anyways. For the serious swimmers, they know they can get extra practice for their year-round and school teams. The 15-18 year olds sometimes look like Olympic-caliber adult swimmers. You might hear about one swimming on scholarship at a university in the coming years. It’s amazing to see them race. They are strong. They hold pool records and their commitment to their sport shows.
They usually have a Senior Night for the kids graduating. I always tear up at the sight of that tall teen on the cusp of adulthood standing up on the blocks, looking into the pool they’ve been diving into their whole life. The announcer will talk about how that teen has been with the team for so many years and shares where they will head off to college just a few weeks after the last meet. It’s the same kid who started as a shivering 6 and Under swimmer, just like the kids staring up at them with admiring, goggled eyes.
Those moments make hot summer Tuesday nights worth every drop of sweat as a parent. Go Stingrays!
Amy Davis is a monogramming mom of three and fitness instructor with FIT4MOM Midtown Raleigh and web contributor for the historic Village District. She is a regular Go Ask Mom contributor.
