Welcome to the “Everything You Wanted To Know About Club Swimming” blog

We are taking questions that YOU, our members, ask and providing answers, or at least direction, to your inquiries.

If you come up with a question, feel free to post it via Google Forms at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeEzISOREs3VKU-XmphOJyc5CbAfWmz0iTMntHcG1dukTgLFA/viewform?usp=sf_link

Each week one of the coaches will tackle the questions and we’ll send out the responses to the entire team so everyone can benefit. Questions will be anonymous, so no one will know who asked them! (Some questions will be combined or edited for clarity)

January , 2024

Q & A Blog for parents 

My daughter wants to start swimming in meets, but we've never done that process before and we need some guidance. Can you walk us through how to get involved in our first meet?

Outstanding! Meets are great place to have fun with her friends and see where her progress is with her swimming! Swimmers in all of our practice groups are eligible to compete. We encourage our them to participate in meets, as that helps give them a focus as to why they are doing all this “stuff” in practice.

If she feels hesitant about signing up for a meet, have her talk with her coach to see if he thinks that she is ready. Not only will that help her learn to advocate for herself with adult authority figures, it will give the coach an opportunity to either affirm her goal or to direct her as to what she needs to do if she’s not quite ready to compete.

Now it’s time to sign up!

Please note: We only open up meets once we have received the meet information so you know what you are signing up for. Once the meet has been opened to sign up, there will be an “Edit Commitment “ button on the meet page.

How do we get feedback on how our kids are progressing (and acting!) when we never see the coaches? How can we get updates about progress and potential to progress?

With the restrictions in place to keep people off the pool deck during practice, we realize that it is not as convenient as walking up to a coach after practice to inquire about your child. However, we are happy to discuss your child’s progress – and any other questions you may have. (Hint: If your child is behaving particularly not in the best way where we need your guidance/input/support, we will contact you!).

There are several ways you can facilitate this:

1. Email the coach. You can find all of our email addresses on the team website. Go to the “About Our Club” tab > Coaching Staff
2. Set up a time to call and talk with a coach over the phone. You may do this by email or text.
3. Set up a time to talk with a coach before or after practice. Please be aware that during practice times our focus needs to be on the swimmers in the pool. Sometimes a coach may go immediately from running one practice group to running another. If your child is in that first practice group, it may not be feasible for a coach to talk with you immediately after his practice. In that case, one of the other options may be used.

After we sign up to swim in a meet, where and how do we pay the meet fees?

Once the club sends in its entries for a meet, a list is sent to our Office Manager for billing purposes. The amount you owe is added to your account. If you have elected to pay by credit card that amount will automatically be paid to the club. The amount you owe will be shown on your account statement, which comes to you via email at the beginning of each month. 

We post the amount you will owe for each meet on the meet page on our website so you know beforehand how much you will owe.

My child told me that she made a “B” time at a meet. What does that mean?

USA Swimming publishes the National Motivational Times table. This is a table of times by age group, gender, and events. The times listed on that table designate a swimmer as “B”, “BB”, “A”, “AA”, “AAA”, or “AAAA” in an event based on their best time. The times are based off of times swum by all USA Swimming members in a particular age, gender, and event. A percentile ranking is used.

We use those times as a way to let our swimmers set incremental goals as they progress in their swimming. At the end of each year, we present an award for new levels attained in each stroke.

You can access the table here: https://www.usaswimming.org/docs/default-source/timesdocuments/records/age-groups-2024-agmts.pdf?_ga=2.268283975.879925871.1644731989-399655197.1553655796