Swim Team

This year, we joined the swim club near our house. Like everyone told us it would be, it was a wonderful way to spend the summer and keep up with school and neighborhood friends. We absolutely enjoyed it! One of the other benefits is the swim team, which Hope and Grant both did. I had two concerns going into it: could Grant even swim the whole length of the pool, let alone swim it multiple times? And it was a huge time commitment with practice every weekday and meets most Saturdays.

It turns out I didn't need to worry about Grant being able to swim at all. The coaches were great about working with them wherever their skill level started, and he was swimming the length after about two days. Neither of them has much stamina, and they both found it pretty challenging, but mostly in a good way. It was a little harder on Hope, because her age group swam longer lengths and she found it hard not to compare herself with her friends who've been doing swim team (and other aerobic sports) for a couple of years. She was very anxious and emotional during the first couple of meets, which was pretty hard on us both.

By the end of the swim team season they'd gotten a lot stronger, and made some good friendships - Hope enjoyed being with some girls from school, and Grant became buddies with a sweet kid who is one year older than him. Those reasons alone made it worthwhile. But it WAS an incredible time commitment, and none of us particularly enjoyed the super long Saturday meets. Maybe next year we'll just go to practices and skip the meets ;)