Discovery

Most swim parents complain about all the time we spend at meets. I was no exception.  The years flew by & we were going to more and more meets. It seemed I never had time for anything else. I complained a lot. Then suddenly one summer I was off the hook…and it was devastating.

It was a Saturday in June when I hurt my back. It didn’t seem too bad at first, but by evening I was too sore to make it up the stairs. I slept on the couch. During the night it hurt so bad that I began to wonder if pain can cause heart attacks. 

The kids were due to swim in a huge invitational the next morning at Ohio State University’s brand new, multi-million dollar, state of the art natatorium. We were all looking forward to seeing this place. Kids from many states were entered and my little guy was seated 2^nd in one of his breast strokes. He was chasing a state record and raring to go. My daughter’s freestyle was the best it had ever been, and she was super pumped for this meet too.

I realized during that long night there was no way I could go to the meet. By morning I knew my husband was going to have to accompany me to the ER, so he wouldn’t be going either. When he got up at 5:30 to start the coffee I told him. I also asked him to downplay it & not to let the kids know how bad I was hurting. I wanted them to be able to focus on their swims. He printed out directions to the facility for the kids and gave my daughter the car keys. As soon as they were out of the driveway I tried to stand up, that is when I asked him to call 911.

In hindsight, 911 may have been overly extreme, but I truly thought I was having a heart attack form the pain when I tried to stand up. In the ambulance on the way to the hospital they asked me to rate my pain on a scale of 1-10, I said “12”. Then I started crying about missing the swim meet.

I have never admitted that to anyone before today. What a surprise to discover that day in the ambulance how completely devastated I would be to get to skip a stupid swim meet. Go figure.

I missed two months of swim meets that summer while I recovered. I missed my first summer league meet in 12 years. I missed their state and sectional USA meets. I felt sorry for myself while I lay on the ice pack wondering how they were doing. Before then, I had not realized what an important part of our lives swimming had become. I was learning that I enjoyed this just as much as they did.

I suppose when a parent misses a meet now, they get constant text updates from their kids. It may be hard to relate to just what I was going through that summer. We were not big users of cel phones in those days though, & reception at our house is terrible. I just had to wait and wonder until results were posted.

There was a little bright spot though during the boy’s USA state swim meet. I was watching for live results to be posted on my laptop. After he swam his IM I got an e-mail from his future high school coach. It said, “Do you think he missed a wall?” Tears came to my eyes to know that coach was on a couch somewhere “watching” that meet too. Suddenly I felt like I was in the bleachers. I wrote back to him immediately. “He didn’t miss any wall, that is how he swims backstroke. Now you know what your project is next year.”

Deck the Lanes

 

As the kids got more serious about the sport and started swimming year-round, I often felt very resentful of all the meets scheduled in December. It was such a busy time trying to get ready for the holidays. I worked full time (in part to pay for their swimming),  and I needed every minute of the weekend to shop, cook, wrap, decorate…etc. Who had time to spend all weekend, or even one day in December, at a swim meet? Why couldn’t they give us a break from it then??

It was increasingly important to my kids though, and I soon found myself agreeing to attend just as many meets in December as we did the rest of the winter. I got used to writing my holiday cards while sitting in the bleachers. I learned what stores were next to each pool, no matter which city we were in, so I could run out to shop for gifts between events. I read cooking magazines and planned more than one holiday menu & grocery list while sitting at a swim meet. I ate the Christmas cookies they served to the timers that time of year, & formed a bond with other swim parents who were doing the same thing.                            

Last year was the first Christmas in more than a decade that I have not had to juggle holiday plans around swim meets. I finished the shopping earlier than I can ever remember. I wasn’t crazed & stressed the last weekend before Christmas. It felt wierd.

To my great surprise, I discovered that I missed traveling to the big invitationals that herald the start of the high school swim season. I missed seeing kids dressed swim suits and Santa hats.  I missed putting goggles, power bars & goofy swim caps in stockings. Go figure!

In some sick way I even missed watching a kid get up before dawn all during winter break to head off to the hardest practices of the year. It was truly humbling to watch them demonstrate that kind of commitment. It was a visual, daily reminder of the strength and character our children had developed.

Happy Hoildays to all the swimmers and timers and coaches out there. If you are still at the races this year, strap some jingle bells to your sandals and enjoy the ride while it lasts.

A MILE TO REMEMBER

My son swam his 1^st mile race shortly after turning 12. It wasn’t by choice; everyone in his practice group was required to swim it once that year. He was not looking forward to it, but he was not particularly stressed or upset about it either.

 His dad & I were timers for that race, as parents so often are for distance events. I felt proud at his calm focus when he stepped up on the block. As the race got under way we were surprised to see him keeping pace with the top seeded kids who had previous experience with mile races. We wondered when he would start dropping back. As the race wore on we were shocked to see him still matching them stroke for stroke. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe I should look to see what the time standard was for that event to qualify for states.

When he touched the wall and looked up to see his 2^nd place finish I told him he had just qualified for states!! That announcement would normally elicit a huge smile and a fist pump. Instead we got our second surprise of the day when he angrily responded, “That’s terrible.”  He continued on to say that he hated that race & now he would just have to qualify for more events than he was allowed to enter at sates, so he could scratch the mile. I thought he’d change his mind when he was more rested.

As we walked out to the car he told us. “If anyone ever makes me swim that race again I’m doing it butterfly”.

“What?”

“If I swim it fly no one will expect me to be fast, they’ll just be impressed if I finish it”.

Fast forward 5 years, junior year of high school, he has not swum any other mile races, just that one time. He’s a mid distance kid now, breaststroke & IM. At the end of that winter season and he’s chatting on deck with his high school coach. Coach had been a state champion in his day, and an NCAA star. Now a wife, a kid, and a law degree later he clearly no longer has the athlete’s physique he once had. Coach tells his swimmers he’s going to get back in shape in the spring.  Some kids may have laughed, some encouraged him. My kid says, “I’ll make you a deal. If you get in shape and swim the mile at our first long course meet next summer I’ll swim it with you but I’ll do it fly.”

With those words his fate was sealed. Coach worked his butt off all spring and by summer he looked like he’d dropped at least 20 pounds. He entered the mile…& so did our anti-distance kid.

My amusement changed to fear as the day of meet drew near. I was worried that a mile butterfly would injure our son and ruin his entire summer season. This was the summer we hoped college coaches would be watching him. I thought that surely his high school coach would talk some sense into him & call off this silly challenge. When that did not happen I hoped his current club coach would order him not to swim it.

None of that happened. Everyone was looking forward to this insane race, coaches included. On the day of the meet storms were forecast. It was an outside meet, so I started hoping that it would get canceled due to lighting.

That didn’t happen. The meet went slowly along. Parents and kids kept coming up to me and saying, “Is he really going to swim a mile fly?” I started feeling nauseous. The meet drug on at a snail’s pace. There were delays for weather, delays for malfunctioning timing equipment. I started thinking it would surely be too dark to swim before they got to that event.

That didn’t happen either. They turned on the lights & began to prepare for the mile.  Kids started gathering at the end of my son’s lane to cheer for him. Everyone on his club team stayed to watch, many of his high school teammates too. Some kids showed up just to watch this one event.  A girl on his team came over to me and said, “Don’t worry. I am going to watch from the side of the pool so if he has trouble in the middle of a lap I’ll be close enough to jump in & save him.”

OK, was that a joke or was she serious? I’ll never know but it certainly escalated my fears, especially when she did watch all by herself from the midpoint of the pool.

To say this was a race to remember is an understatement. The coach had his own mass of fans at the end of his lane. There was an incredible amount of noise & excitement as they dove in. Somewhere during that race my feelings changed from nervous fear to amazement at the number of fans that showed up to cheer for my stupid kid. I saw some old swim friends at the end of his lane that I had not seen in years.

As he plugged away lap after lap, my amazement gave way to love for all these great kids that were there for him, screaming encouragment for him on every turn. What a supportive close-knit team we have! What crazy wonderful people all these beautiful athletes were. The girl at the side of the pool never gave up her careful monitoring of his progress. It was a very moving experience to say the least. By the time he touched the final wall (two hands of course..and in last place) I had to admit I was really surprised to discover that I had actually enjoyed watching that race. He was right too, no one noticed or cared what his time was.

Also surprising was that he really wasn’t injured from it.In fact he was pumped by the whole experience. He even got a personal best in his 1^st race the next morning…and dislocated his finger on the finish. Yeah, it was a 50 free that threw a wrench in his summer season, not the mile butterfly. Go figure!

Finding Your True Colors

You can see this at any swim meet, crowds of kids clustered at the end of a lane cheering their team’s stars to victory. More often you can see small groups of three or four friends supporting each other in every event. Sadly, you will also see people swimming in absolute solitude. When these swimmers are on the blocks, or in the water, their teammates do not pay the slightest attention. No one is there for them when they bust their butt and make a personal best, or inch a few seconds closer to a distant qualifying time.

It is a big problem in this sport, that a kid on a “team” can feel so totally alone. No hard-working athlete should have to experience that.  Our coaches have tried to address this over the years; they strive to instill camaraderie amongst the entire, very large, team. It is not easy though, especially on a team that draws from swimmers all over the city and practices at several locations. It is especially difficult with teenagers.

One summer the head coach had had enough of the clicks and the bickering and the overall poor sportsmanship of his high school swimmers. During the last practice before senior champs he told them they did not deserve to represent this organization until they learned what it meant to be a team. No one was allowed to wear their team colors at champs; no team suits, no team caps, no clothes with the team mascot on it. If they showed up at the meet with any of that he would send them home!

When my daughter came home from practice with this news she was mad! We had just bought new team apparel and all her sweats and jackets were the team color. She had a cap she had earned for her work in distance practice that she cherished and that was banned too. “Not fair”, I heard. “I don’t want to swim the mile if I can’t wear my Distance cap.”

I wasn’t the happiest either. I try to support the coaches, even when I disagree with them, but I was  taking one of my few vacation days to travel to this meet, and now it was going to be a trip with a kid who was very angry &  stewing over what she saw as a whole group being punished for the actions of a few. I also thought it was a dumb move on the part of the coach, because how many teenagers really cared about team colors? I mean, really! I figured the ones who were hurt by this were probably not the main offenders. I surmised that kids who didn’t support their teammates didn’t care very much about wearing  team gear either. I really doubted the older kids, those returned from college to train with their old club team for the summer, would be fazed by this at all.

I was wrong.

It was a weird weekend. As soon as I took my spot in the bleachers it began to hit me just how much this mandate affected everyone, even the parents. Our team was nearly invisible on deck, they sat together, but with no banner or unified color amongst them they just looked like a random group of strangers.  They looked rag-tag and disgruntled. Coaches were also not wearing any sort of coach shirt, so they were hard to spot too.

During races it was very hard to follow our swimmers in an 8 lane pool without their team caps on. I started to realize what a large impact this “little thing” had on all of us. It was clear that it really did matter to all those kids. They swim for a strong team, we send some kids to sectionals, nationals and sometimes even World meets . Our swimmers have set records, won NCAA titles and even Olympic medals. This is a team kids are very proud to swim for! It hurt to see them unable to wear their pride in it.

Then I noticed something else. During the slowest heats there were some lanes with cheering groups at the blocks, big cheering groups,the kind you normally just see at finals, for swimmers who were doing well if they finished in 37^th place! You don’t see that at every meet. It was our kids, trying to earn back the right to wear their colors. As the meet worn on, that crowd got bigger and louder.

Soon the parent’s discovered that we didn’t need a team cap to see what lanes our swimmers were in. All we had to do was look for the lanes that had the biggest crowd cheering for them.

It was kind of cool to watch my daughter swim, because instead of her 3 or 4 closer friends cheering for her, the entire team was there, even those big mega college stars. I like to think that those older kids got to know their newer teammates better that weekend.  Everyone was paying attention to seed times & recognized when a fellow teammate dropped time or made a cut.

I thought surely our kids would win the right to wear their colors by finals, but no…When one of our relays won an event they were an embarrassing looking mismatched foursome on the top of the podium. They had a loud cheering section though.

 The next day our kids cheered even more boisterously. It made us laugh, and the whole natatorium was noticing the spectacle & trying to figure out what it was all about. Still, at finals our kids were standing on the podium without any team apparel.

On the third day I walked into the natatorium I saw our team banner was up. Then our kids filed in, everyone in team color from head to toe, standing tall & wearing the biggest smiles ever. I don’t know about the rest of the parents, but my eyes were watering. The team cheer never sounded so loud and proud.

The kids learned at lot that summer. I don’t remember much about what races were won, but I will never forget the lesson they learned about what it meant to be a team. I hope the kids never forget it either.

I see your true colors

Shining through

I see your true colors

And that’s why I love you

So don’t be afraid to let them show

Your true colors are beautiful

True Color Lyrics by Cyndi Lauper

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVROITE TRADITIONS?

I have always marveled at how much a simple ritual can instantly raise the spirits of an entire group, and elevate one’s pleasure in something.  We have experienced some really wonderful examples of it with our swim teams. Here are a couple of my favorites here.

Championship Water:

 Summer league, in this area, is where most kids get their first introduction to the sport. The young kids often feel very intimidated when they have to go to new pools to compete at away meets.  I remember one time during my son’s 1^st summer when he was so freaked out by a strange pool that he was not going to swim. His baby-sitter (a teenager on the same team) offered to swim warm-ups with his 6 & under age group to help him feel braver.  It worked a charm, but few kids are lucky enough to have a baby-sitter like that.

We had young coaches in those days and they had dozens of kids who had similar phobias about competing in unfamiliar pools. One coach came up with a great tradition to address this for our championship meet. At the last home practice before champs, they explained how athletes always swam best in their home pool. Then they put a small amount of water from our pool into a special jar and said that we were bringing our team’s water with us to champs, so that we could have our home team advantage there. They told the kids that it would make them feel like they were swimming in their own pool. At champs our team had a little ceremony before the meet. They gathered the kids on deck & poured the special water into the pool. Then they did the team cheer. I thought that was one of the most creative traditions ever, & believe it really did help those kids. The little ones felt like they had a secret weapon.

 When those beloved coaches retired a few years later we gave them a keychain with a few charms along with their gift, to remind them of their years with our team. One of the charms was a tiny bottle of our pool water. I always wondered if they knew how much that little tradition meant to those kids & parents. 

Alumni Meet

Some traditions are more about enduring support & camaraderie for a team. The high school my son swam for has an alumni meet to kick off their season every year. All the alumni are invited to come back and compete against the current school team. There is a dinner after the meet. This is held on the Wed. before Thanksgiving, because many of those who live far away are back in town visiting family.

 Some of these alumni are recent graduates who are competing for their colleges & universities. It is fun to see how fast they have become. The HS kids love trying to see if they can hold their own against those guys. Occasionally much older alumni will return and swim too, others they may just come to watch & cheer.  At the end of the meet they all stand in the center of the pool and sing their Alma mater.  It is a great testament to the life-long bond the kids who swim for that team form.

Please share your own traditions in the comment section below. Maybe some young teams & coaches will be inspired to create some great rituals of their own for a new generation of swimmers!

Better Than Any Medal

 

Someone once told me that it was no coincidence that she had met so many incredibly wonderful kids and parents through swimming. She thought it was because a parent, who was willing to let their kid swim, was a parent who was necessarily a very involved parent. They were people who were willing to take a kid to practice 5, 6 maybe 7 days a week, sometimes twice in the same day. A swim parent had to be willing to work at meets, standing in the heat & humidity for hours on end. They were parents who sat through meets that lasted countless hours to watch their kid swim for 3 minutes.

 An athlete who swims has to come to personal terms with the results of their own effort & ability. You can’t blame a slow race on a teammate. The athlete has to learn how to handle disqualifications, missing cuts by a fraction of a second, & tapers that don’t come together at the right time.  Also consider that most teams have practices that start at dawn (or before), since the pools are needed for more lucrative activities later in the day. I remember a swimmer once thanking his mom for waking him up for morning practice every day. He said, “I really appreciated her for that because it was actually still night when I had to get up.”

 I suppose there are other sports that make those kinds of demands on kids & dish out character shaping blows that a kid must work through, but how many teenagers are willing to get up and practice every day when “it is still night"?  What I have seen swimmers go through, surely is more extreme than the things an athlete in a mainstream sport typically encounters. It takes a special kind of kid to want to do that, and a special kind of parent to support them in it year after year.

 It is not just the body of a swimmer that this sport makes strong. It is clearly the mind too. When I think about all our family has poured into this sport, & all the experiences we have shared, it is no wonder that we have formed friendships that are every bit as solid as the muscle and confidence we saw grow in our kids during those years. We have met the most amazing people and made lifelong friends which I will forever be thankful for. They are the gold I earned without even realizing it was happening.

What is Success?

What is your definition of success? A man I know says it means it is time to find a new challenge for yourself.  No one understands that better than a swimmer. No matter what time standard you achieve, there is always another level of competition to strive for with a new set of qualifying times. In my mind, that is what makes the sport of swimming so great and so addictive. 

The sound of cheers erupting from the stands and on deck when a kid makes a difficult cut will make my eyes water & give me goose bumps every time.  It is a feeling people outside the sport may never understand.  Only the parents of the athlete may know the true story about what that kid has gone through before they met that goal. When the cheers are loudest, I know the victory was not an easy one.

As an 8 & under, my son felt like a bit of a star on his YMCA winter team. He had qualified for zones with his relay, and was anticipating earning several individual cuts the next year when he would be in the older half of his age group. The next fall however, he wanted to switch to a USA team. He knew someone who was excelling there, and he thought the tougher competition would make him faster.

  It was a rocky transition, new friends, new rules, new coaches, harder qualifying times…He got slower before he got faster while they taught him better technique. To top it all off, he was once again in the younger half of his age group, due to a different  way that leagues determines the groupings. It was clear to me that it would be another year before he would be qualifying for states (USA’s version of the Y’s Zone meet). I worried what would happen when his Y friend all headed to zones and he had no to elite meet to attend.

  He was determined he would get a cut though, and he inched closer and closer as the winter wore on. However at regional champs, he came up just short, event after event. This was his first experience with a three day meet, as well as with a prelims / finals meet. He swam morning and night every day, so by Sunday he was incredibly exhausted. Still his determination remained strong, and he made it to finals in one of the hardest events, 100yd fly. He told us during break between sessions that was the one he would get his cut in. As unlikely as it seemed at the beginning of the weekend, we were now beginning to believe him. Consequently the whole family went to finals to watch.

He was the 6^th seed in the top heat. At the 50yd turn he was in the lead and several seconds ahead of his morning time. I couldn’t believe my eyes! He was usually a kid who did best in the 2^nd half of a race, so this was incredible!

 After that turn though, something happened and every swimmer passed him by. At 75 yards he got out! It still breaks my heart to remember that all these years later. As he came over to the bleachers, fighting tears, he explained,” My goggles came down but I kept swimming. They were pushing water up my nose and making me drown. I would have kept going anyway but I saw the official’s hand go up and I knew I was DQ’d.”

He was devastated and so very tired. His season was over and he told me he was too humiliated to return to practice. He said he never wanted to swim again. After a night’s sleep we convinced him he should at least go to one more practice to congratulate the kids who did get their cuts and collect his ribbons. Fate smiled on us that day, when at practice he learned that he had swam so well over the weekend they wanted him to be on one of the state relay teams. I am sure that helped him recovered his pride and determination and stick with the sport.

The next fall he made his 1^st state cut at the very 1^st meet of the season. I knew because I used to time all his splits on my stopwatch in the bleachers. His coach did the same thing and she knew it too.  He missed the touchpad though, and all three of his human timers were distracted by something and did not stop their watch. Officially all they could give him was a time 1/100^th faster than the kid who touched after him. That was not a qualifying time. Oh was he was mad (me too)! One of the coaches just calmly told him to swim so fast next time that he smashed the standard so there could be no doubt.

One week later that is exactly what he did. When he looked up at the clock and pumped his fist all his friends on deck roared. For me, it was a feeling like no other. That was a very long and hard-fought victory for such a young kid.

That is what I remember every time I hear someone in the stands cheering for a kid who got a cut.