Last week I went to an age-group swimming meet for the first time in, oh, 45 years or so.
We were in Cincinnati visiting family, and our great niece and great nephew (ages 6 and 8, respectively) had their first meet of the season. Truth be told, the chance to see their meet was the prime reason for us making the trip.
When I was a kid, I took up competitive swimming when I was 9 or 10 years old. Thereafter, I dragged my parents to dozens if not hundreds of these meets.
If you’ve never been to one, age-group swim meets can stretch to a whole day or even weekend. As a kid, they are great; you have a handful of races to compete in, and in between you get to hang out with your friends all day. As a parent, they can absolutely kill your weekend, sitting around for hours and hours in the noise and chaos, waiting for your kid to swim his or her races, which last a about one or two minutes each.
I only realized this once I was an adult, so even though I basically swam from those 8-9 age-group days until I graduated from college (and my wife swam in college—it’s how we met), we never encouraged our own kids to follow in our wakes as swimmers. Soccer, baseball, floor hockey, basketball: those were our sports-parent gigs.
For my own parents, I wish I could tell them how sorry I am for putting them through all of that and, simultaneously, how grateful I am to them for going along with it.
Many, many years have passed now, and I’ve rediscovered an interest in swimming, both as a participant and as a spectator. I’ve always loved watching it in the Olympics, of course, but having recently gotten back to the pool myself, I find myself wanting to watch the sport at any level. I’m fascinated by stroke mechanics, and I have this (completely delusional, I know) feeling that I can diagnose problems with anybody else’s technique.
And so we found ourselves at a club dual meet in suburban Cincinnati. The noise and chaos was definitely there, along with the hours of waiting. But it turned out to actually be a lot of fun. Some of that was nostalgia, of course—it brought back long-buried memories: event numbers written on arms; “the bullpen”; and slower kids being lapped in four-lap races. One other long-buried memory: we used to take boxes of Jell-O mix to dip our fingers in and lick them throughout the day to get that “energy” from the sugar. I don’t know if that still takes place, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Anyway, the Cincinnati meet itself, with five or so age groups each swimming in about a dozen events, actually went off pretty well. Considering all of the moving pieces, everything was highly organized and even though, yes, it more than filled up the evening, it was fun.
After we got home from our trip, I was able to watch much of the U.S. Swimming Championships, which took place in Indianapolis while we were down the road in Cincinnati. Even though the skill levels were vastly different, having seen the age-groupers compete a couple of days earlier helped to flesh out the drama of the elite competition for me. The World Championships are coming up in Singapore later this summer, and you can bet I’ll be glued to the TV.
