Summer Fun?

For about six weeks each summer, our lives are controlled by swim team. The kids practice five days each week, and when they aren't practicing, we are spending long afternoons and evenings at meets. It's fun, but exhausting. The biggest benefit, of course, is that at 6 and 9, the kids are terrific swimmers. Either of them could beat me in a 25 meter butterfly race (I look like a drowning victim when I try it), and they are catching me in the others.

While I realize that even a good swimmer can be swept away, the kids' knowing how to swim well is a great piece of mind. We spend so much time on or near the water, that I would be a nervous wreck if I thought they couldn't fend for themselves at all. Besides, when they are old like me, they will have a form of recreation that doesn't make their bodies hurt everywhere.

It's easy to tell whose kids are in their first year of swim team. These parents are green. They are the ones at meets without umbrellas, blankets, coolers. Naively, they think they can relax with a bottle of sunscreen and a can of diet soda...

Not so. Even though the coaches have strict rules about kids running around, the air takes on a certain level of hysteria. Pomeroy has 54 swim team members, around 30 of which attend any one meet. These kids range in age from 5 to 18, and they are all starving from the minute we arrive until the time we leave. The sun is either hot enough to pan-fry vegetables, or strangely absent from a hazy sky. The kids are either whining because they are hot and not allowed in the pool (NO swim team member can get wet except when he/she is competing), or freezing because they are wet on a surprisingly cool July day. Sounds fun, huh?

Add to that tears of disappointment, everyday arguments between 6-year-olds, and spilled drinks and snacks, and you have a typical day at a swim meet. Still, we come back, send our kids out to the edge of the pool, and force them to work their way down doing whatever stroke is required. Why? I guess because some day we hope they will be better people for it....better swimmers of course, but also people who understand competition, people who do their best every time they step up to the line, people who understand team work and commitment, people who understand the value of exercise. Or maybe they will be people who resent their parents for taking away their summers. Either way, we have a meet today, and we are going.