If you’ve ever lived with a cat and a dog, then you know that one of them eventually starts thinking and acting like it’s the other type of animal. And if you’ve ever lived with a cat and a dog, then you know it’s the dog that almost always loses this identity battle. Fido will start trying to move lighter and slinkier than he really is. He may even curl up on the couch with Tinkerbell. And if he’s really gullible, Fido will try jumping up on table tops and window sills. Even if he’s a 100-pound golden retriever with arthritic hips.
Swimmers often remind me of dogs that have been living in the company of cats for too long. They think they can move quickly on land, even nimbly, and they therefore persist in trying to move quickly and nimbly. They try to vault over starting blocks. They try to skip up and down bleacher steps. They try to skitter away after yanking a teammate’s swimsuit off him. They try.
I’m not sure whether the mental disconnect comes from being around non-swimmers who can walk without tripping, or if it comes from thinking that because they move quickly and nimbly through the water, they can also do so on land. Either way, like watching a dog that thinks he’s a cat, it’s a little strange. Funny, but strange.
And dangerous. In all the years that I have now known swimmers, I have got to say there are very few things left I have not known a swimmer to fall off of or into. Starting blocks, bleacher steps, pool gutters and guard ladders are just the obvious things. Chairs, tables, bookshelves, shrubbery and urinals are the less obvious things. Not a season goes by without somebody on Mr. Coach’s team getting stitches and having a really stupid story to go with them. He even had a set of identical twins who managed to get matching forehead gashes, several days apart and for completely different reasons. Seriously. (I got a little excited when the first one got his gash because it gave me a way to tell them apart. You can imagine my disappointment when Mr. Coach came home and told me the other one had just gotten a gash in the exact same place.)
And taper is probably when the stupidest stitch stories happen. It’s like the workouts drop just one lousy thousand yards in distance, and the entire breaststroke lane decides there’s never been a better time to brush up on their skateboarding skills.
And it’s not like it gets much better, even after their competitive careers are over. Exhibit A: Mr. Coach. Who was a college swimmer. A sprinter in fact. He now does triathlons. Every decade, whether he needs to or not, he and his bike go mano-a-mano with a moving vehicle. And guess who loses? Well, the last time it was Mr. Coach’s left collarbone and his bike frame which both ended up with hairline fractures, so he got a sweet new set of wheels out of the legal settlement.
But that’s not my point. My point is that swimmers are not cats. And you know what? They’re not even really dogs either. If anything, they’re fish and you don’t see fish riding bikes on ice, taking skateboards down the front railing of the library, or falling out of their closets. You just don’t.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
25 Random Things I Have Learned about Swimming
1. I’m pretty sure the reason I don’t need to use whitening tooth paste is because of the chemicals in the pool water.
2. I’m pretty sure the reason why Mr. Coach’s Max VO2 has dropped is because of the chemicals in the pool air.
3. A tough track workout makes you feel jack-hammered. A tough swimming workout makes you feel steam-rollered.
4. The lack of gravity-based pounding gives swimmers an undue sense of immortality.
5. There are more nerds and flakes per capita in swimming than in any other sport.
6. If you learn how to do the butterfly at a young age, it’s like riding a bike – you’ll never forget how. If you try to learn as an adult, it’ll be paint-by-numbers at best.
7. All the rule changes in breaststroke technique need to stop until I can do it.
8. Humming in order to learn how to not snork up water during a flip turn is an urban myth.
9. The wiggle-butt off the wall is the funnest thing about swimming.
10. Swimmers are more comfortable with nudity than they perhaps should be.
11. Being able to figure out splits in your head does not translate into marketable math skills.
12. You can’t completely zone out during a swim workout because then you lose track of where you are.
13. The day after doing yoga, you definitely take fewer strokes per lap.
14. Men cannot resist the urge to try and keep up with a woman.
15. A new swimsuit takes 10 years off how old you feel.
16. Yoshi is a freak of nature but we all respect and admire him for it because he clearly isn’t one of those "get a life" masters.
17. All 8-year-olds will tell you they’re going to the Olympics.
18. When their parents tell you the same thing, then you know the kid will be done with swimming by age 13.
19. Boys’ 8-and-under butterfly is comedy gold.
20. The best swim parents don’t know what their kids’ PRs are.
21. Some of the best swim parents are Australian: They won’t even cheer for their own kids in public because of TPS (Tall Poppy Syndrome: "tall poppies are made to be cut down").
22. Swimming will never get as much media attention (or the kind of media attention) it thinks it deserves.
23. But swim meets would definitely be more interesting for the inexperienced spectator if it borrowed some ideas from ice hockey – specifically, enforcers and relay power plays.
24. Swimmers who studied dance or the martial arts as kids generally take corrections better than those who didn’t.
25. It never gets easier to get in.
2. I’m pretty sure the reason why Mr. Coach’s Max VO2 has dropped is because of the chemicals in the pool air.
3. A tough track workout makes you feel jack-hammered. A tough swimming workout makes you feel steam-rollered.
4. The lack of gravity-based pounding gives swimmers an undue sense of immortality.
5. There are more nerds and flakes per capita in swimming than in any other sport.
6. If you learn how to do the butterfly at a young age, it’s like riding a bike – you’ll never forget how. If you try to learn as an adult, it’ll be paint-by-numbers at best.
7. All the rule changes in breaststroke technique need to stop until I can do it.
8. Humming in order to learn how to not snork up water during a flip turn is an urban myth.
9. The wiggle-butt off the wall is the funnest thing about swimming.
10. Swimmers are more comfortable with nudity than they perhaps should be.
11. Being able to figure out splits in your head does not translate into marketable math skills.
12. You can’t completely zone out during a swim workout because then you lose track of where you are.
13. The day after doing yoga, you definitely take fewer strokes per lap.
14. Men cannot resist the urge to try and keep up with a woman.
15. A new swimsuit takes 10 years off how old you feel.
16. Yoshi is a freak of nature but we all respect and admire him for it because he clearly isn’t one of those "get a life" masters.
17. All 8-year-olds will tell you they’re going to the Olympics.
18. When their parents tell you the same thing, then you know the kid will be done with swimming by age 13.
19. Boys’ 8-and-under butterfly is comedy gold.
20. The best swim parents don’t know what their kids’ PRs are.
21. Some of the best swim parents are Australian: They won’t even cheer for their own kids in public because of TPS (Tall Poppy Syndrome: "tall poppies are made to be cut down").
22. Swimming will never get as much media attention (or the kind of media attention) it thinks it deserves.
23. But swim meets would definitely be more interesting for the inexperienced spectator if it borrowed some ideas from ice hockey – specifically, enforcers and relay power plays.
24. Swimmers who studied dance or the martial arts as kids generally take corrections better than those who didn’t.
25. It never gets easier to get in.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Coaching Girls vs. Boys, Round 2
It’s time for more anecdotal evidence that girls and boys are different, especially when it comes to coaching a swim team.
Observation #1: Nicknames. If girls on a swim team give each other nicknames, they’re going to be cute permutations of the girls’ given names. "Hope" becomes "Hopi," "Ashley" becomes "Sassily," and "Kim" becomes "Kimba." When boys give each other nicknames, the names are going to be a reflection of a boy’s physical, mental or moral shortcomings.
There have been several standouts from all my years of swim-coach spousing. There was "Cakes," a name which had some murky connection to the guy’s hindquarters. Then there was "Weest" which is short for the French word "Egoiste" which came from a TV commercial popular at the time for a men’s cologne where a bunch of angry women are yelling "Egoiste!" out their apartment-building windows at a departing guy who apparently is a cad. This swimmer wasn’t so much a cad as he was just a very driven individual who would gripe at anyone who wasn’t training as hard as he thought they should – and that included senior citizens and small children.
My favorite nickname, though, has been "Crow" which is short for "Scarecrow" which came from the Wizard of Oz character who said, "If I only had a brain." But the truly scary thing is that all of the gentlemen upon whom these nicknames were bestowed will still answer to those nicknames when you see them at alumni events.
Observation #2: Displays of Team Spirit. If you need it committed to posterboard, then you’re going to need a girl. If you need it in day-glo colors and embellished with glitter glue, you are definitely going to need a girl. What you will get with boys, when it comes to displays of team spirit, are things that can only be shaved off or measured in decibels. That’s because boys stopped making posters of any kind somewhere around the fifth grade. They also don’t make adorable name-tags in the shape of dolphins or flip-flops for hotel-room doors and lockers. And if boys create any kind of a "Countdown to Conference" display, it’s going to be on a dry-erase board and its subject matter will be R- if not NC-17-rated.
Observation #3: The Details. Boys often show a blithe disregard for the details of daily living – like "eat more protein than sugar," "speed limits are not optional," and "if you don’t stop touching it, it will get infected." But when it comes to obsessing over details in the pool, boys are more apt to do this than girls. A girl might cry if you give her a set of 384 50s, IM order, but she’ll do it. A boy will do it but then he’s going to want to compare his splits from this time to the last time he did the set. A girl might look at another team’s roster just to see if there’s anybody she knows from high school or club swimming. A boy will have pulled up the roster, Googled all the names on it, downloaded his opponents’ times from wherever he can find meet results, and then prepared recommendations for a dual-meet line-up.
And Observation #4: Gift Giving. If girls are in charge of picking out a season-end gift for a coach, it will be something thoughtful like a gift certificate to a restaurant and they’ll include free babysitting. If boys are in charge, it’s going to be a homemade calendar with team pictures like the one above.
(Incidentally, here was Round One: http://mrscoachchronicles.blogspot.com/2008/08/coaching-girls-vs-boys.html)
Sunday, January 25, 2009
A Modest Buoyancy Proposal
While others debate the legality and morality of LZR and other new-technology suits, I have a more practical idea. I say who needs new technology when you can just go organic! Work with what you already have – your body! As long as you’re not planning to have children some day, the sky’s the limit!
For starters, let’s think creatively about the issue of buoyancy. Many athletes have the buoyancy of granite because of their low body-fat percentage. (Some people might call that "too skinny," but I personally prefer the term "adipose-challenged.")
So what do you do if you’re adipose-challenged and you want to improve your buoyancy but the blueseventies are on back order until 2010? Lipo-augmentation!
Lipo-augmentation is the reverse of liposuction, but this way, you put the float right where you need it and there is not an official in the world who’s going to go poking around to see what’s real and what’s added once it’s on the inside of you. Heck, if I could inject a pull buoy under each one of my butt cheeks, I would!
Furthermore, plastic surgeons would probably be willing to perform the procedure dirt cheap because the floundering economy has decimated their cosmetic-surgery revenues.
But why stop there? How about a little help for the genealogically challenged? You know who we’re talking about here – those poor athletes who, through no fault of their own, are not descended from Helga, the grape-stomping pride of the Rhine Valley with size 15EEEE feet (and mitts to match)? How wrong would it be to surgically widen those feet and hands? Maybe even get a little webbed-skin action going there between the digits? FINA would be hard-pressed to prove it’s wrong when you figure all we’re doing here is evening the playing field.
And besides, as long as you crank out a few records first, and the Amalgamated Surgeons Guild drops a few contributions in the right coffers, by the time everyone starts howling in protest, we'll be able to say, "Oh, that train already left the station, it's too late to bring it back."
Finally, who really needs their head to swim? Hydro-dynamically speaking, a skull can be a major drag through the water, not to mention the problems it causes when an athlete thinks he or she should think.
And if the entire head can’t be removed, perhaps some of it can be harvested for lipo-augmentation elsewhere in the body! After all, the fat heads of the swimming world deserve a chance, too!
For starters, let’s think creatively about the issue of buoyancy. Many athletes have the buoyancy of granite because of their low body-fat percentage. (Some people might call that "too skinny," but I personally prefer the term "adipose-challenged.")
So what do you do if you’re adipose-challenged and you want to improve your buoyancy but the blueseventies are on back order until 2010? Lipo-augmentation!
Lipo-augmentation is the reverse of liposuction, but this way, you put the float right where you need it and there is not an official in the world who’s going to go poking around to see what’s real and what’s added once it’s on the inside of you. Heck, if I could inject a pull buoy under each one of my butt cheeks, I would!
Furthermore, plastic surgeons would probably be willing to perform the procedure dirt cheap because the floundering economy has decimated their cosmetic-surgery revenues.
But why stop there? How about a little help for the genealogically challenged? You know who we’re talking about here – those poor athletes who, through no fault of their own, are not descended from Helga, the grape-stomping pride of the Rhine Valley with size 15EEEE feet (and mitts to match)? How wrong would it be to surgically widen those feet and hands? Maybe even get a little webbed-skin action going there between the digits? FINA would be hard-pressed to prove it’s wrong when you figure all we’re doing here is evening the playing field.
And besides, as long as you crank out a few records first, and the Amalgamated Surgeons Guild drops a few contributions in the right coffers, by the time everyone starts howling in protest, we'll be able to say, "Oh, that train already left the station, it's too late to bring it back."
Finally, who really needs their head to swim? Hydro-dynamically speaking, a skull can be a major drag through the water, not to mention the problems it causes when an athlete thinks he or she should think.
And if the entire head can’t be removed, perhaps some of it can be harvested for lipo-augmentation elsewhere in the body! After all, the fat heads of the swimming world deserve a chance, too!
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Are You There, God? It’s Me in Last Place
When I competed at track in college, I had a teammate who was very religious. Now I’ve been a church-goer all my life, so having a very religious teammate wasn’t, in and of itself, a big deal. Besides, the school I went to was a Catholic university, so a quick Sign-of-the-Cross before or after a race wasn’t unusual for anyone.
But this teammate was religious in a way that took that whole "Spread the Word" thing a little more seriously than most. Beth liked to hang out near the finish lines of races, hand out prayer cards and invite people to her Wednesday-night prayer meetings. But she didn’t hand the cards and invitations out to the runners who won. Beth was smart: She went after the folks who came in last, or close to it. That’s because she knew there’s nothing like getting your butt kicked hard to make a lifestyle change that doesn’t generate lactic acid seem more attractive.
Mr. Coach’s school is affiliated with the Methodist church, but they attract people of many different faiths to the school. I’ve modified more than one dinner menu for religious or philosophical reasons, and that’s cool. Food is a great way to learn more about how and why other people live their lives the way they do.
So Mr. Coach runs a swim team with plenty of room for spirituality on it. The only time he gets nervous, though, is when a kid suddenly discovers God (or any kind of Higher Power) in the middle of a season that hasn’t been going so well. It has been Mr. Coach’s experience that mid-season conversions rarely take – although if a kid is eating right, sleeping right, showing up for all the practices, getting good grades and then decides to start speaking in tongues, then that’s a spiritual awakening he can live with. But finding religion while short-cutting around the earthly obligations usually means somebody is just looking for the on-ramp to Miracle Highway.
Which reminds me of my fourth-grade teacher, Sister Caroline Mary. Before every test, Sister Caroline Mary would have our class repeat a prayer that she dictated to us.
"Dear God...," she said.
"Dear God...," my classmates and I repeated.
"I pray that I...,"
"I pray that I...,"
"Get what I deserve on this test."
Sister Caroline Mary would have made a great coach.
But this teammate was religious in a way that took that whole "Spread the Word" thing a little more seriously than most. Beth liked to hang out near the finish lines of races, hand out prayer cards and invite people to her Wednesday-night prayer meetings. But she didn’t hand the cards and invitations out to the runners who won. Beth was smart: She went after the folks who came in last, or close to it. That’s because she knew there’s nothing like getting your butt kicked hard to make a lifestyle change that doesn’t generate lactic acid seem more attractive.
Mr. Coach’s school is affiliated with the Methodist church, but they attract people of many different faiths to the school. I’ve modified more than one dinner menu for religious or philosophical reasons, and that’s cool. Food is a great way to learn more about how and why other people live their lives the way they do.
So Mr. Coach runs a swim team with plenty of room for spirituality on it. The only time he gets nervous, though, is when a kid suddenly discovers God (or any kind of Higher Power) in the middle of a season that hasn’t been going so well. It has been Mr. Coach’s experience that mid-season conversions rarely take – although if a kid is eating right, sleeping right, showing up for all the practices, getting good grades and then decides to start speaking in tongues, then that’s a spiritual awakening he can live with. But finding religion while short-cutting around the earthly obligations usually means somebody is just looking for the on-ramp to Miracle Highway.
Which reminds me of my fourth-grade teacher, Sister Caroline Mary. Before every test, Sister Caroline Mary would have our class repeat a prayer that she dictated to us.
"Dear God...," she said.
"Dear God...," my classmates and I repeated.
"I pray that I...,"
"I pray that I...,"
"Get what I deserve on this test."
Sister Caroline Mary would have made a great coach.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Past the Point of No Return
There comes a point in many workouts beyond which the brain stops functioning but the mouth keeps going. Many people, in the throes of an anaerobic delirium, will start jibber-jabbering about all kinds of things.
Mr. Coach has one athlete right now who has earned himself the nickname of "Blackberry Pie." That’s because when his lactic-acid-to-blood ratio soars, he starts babbling about blackberry pie he once had on a trip to Arizona.
A lot of people talk about food when they reach this point in a workout. As a result, you can figure out which way they swing when it comes to food vices – sugar or salt. You don’t hear a lot about booze, though, thank goodness. The idea of alcohol just doesn’t appeal at that point.
Other people will veer in the direction of pop culture. They’ll hallucinate about hot actors, actresses, models and rock stars with whom they don’t have relationships but now imagine they do. Or they’ll start singing songs, usually badly. Random snippets of comedy routines or movie dialogue will pop out. My personal favorite is the Bill Cosby "Tonsils" routine which ends with the young protagonist gasping out, "Ice cream, we’re gonna eat ice cream," after surviving his tonsillectomy. To me, at this point, it makes perfect sense.
But, unfortunately, the direction that most "Point of No Return" babbling goes is straight into the intestines. It’s like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in reverse: Once you’ve eliminated (as it were) higher-order thinking, all you’ve got left are basic body functions. Mr. Coach, when he was training a few times for marathons, delighted in coming home after a 20-miler and telling me about all the stupid poop jokes that he and his tenured-professor buddies had come up with. As soon as the extra oxygen left his system, he had to admit the jokes really weren’t that funny but after Mile 15, he insisted, they had been.
College athletes, trapped in a pool, aren’t much better. The stuff that passes (as it were) for humor at this point in a workout wouldn’t even make the grade on the worst possible Funny or Die video.
Some coaches, of course, will insist on silent focus and commitment to workout purpose. Their athletes, of course, just shift to nonverbal language – the crossed-eyes, the tongue-hanging-out and the head-cocked-to-one-side expressions of exaggerated exhaustion and, of course, the soundlessly eloquent obscene gesture under the water’s surface.
Once released from their coach’s clutches, they’ll uncork the babbling in the locker room where it continues all the way to the dinner table. And with a few thousand calories back in the system after dinner they’ll regain control of their minds and mouths – until the next day when they start the journey all over again.
Mr. Coach has one athlete right now who has earned himself the nickname of "Blackberry Pie." That’s because when his lactic-acid-to-blood ratio soars, he starts babbling about blackberry pie he once had on a trip to Arizona.
A lot of people talk about food when they reach this point in a workout. As a result, you can figure out which way they swing when it comes to food vices – sugar or salt. You don’t hear a lot about booze, though, thank goodness. The idea of alcohol just doesn’t appeal at that point.
Other people will veer in the direction of pop culture. They’ll hallucinate about hot actors, actresses, models and rock stars with whom they don’t have relationships but now imagine they do. Or they’ll start singing songs, usually badly. Random snippets of comedy routines or movie dialogue will pop out. My personal favorite is the Bill Cosby "Tonsils" routine which ends with the young protagonist gasping out, "Ice cream, we’re gonna eat ice cream," after surviving his tonsillectomy. To me, at this point, it makes perfect sense.
But, unfortunately, the direction that most "Point of No Return" babbling goes is straight into the intestines. It’s like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in reverse: Once you’ve eliminated (as it were) higher-order thinking, all you’ve got left are basic body functions. Mr. Coach, when he was training a few times for marathons, delighted in coming home after a 20-miler and telling me about all the stupid poop jokes that he and his tenured-professor buddies had come up with. As soon as the extra oxygen left his system, he had to admit the jokes really weren’t that funny but after Mile 15, he insisted, they had been.
College athletes, trapped in a pool, aren’t much better. The stuff that passes (as it were) for humor at this point in a workout wouldn’t even make the grade on the worst possible Funny or Die video.
Some coaches, of course, will insist on silent focus and commitment to workout purpose. Their athletes, of course, just shift to nonverbal language – the crossed-eyes, the tongue-hanging-out and the head-cocked-to-one-side expressions of exaggerated exhaustion and, of course, the soundlessly eloquent obscene gesture under the water’s surface.
Once released from their coach’s clutches, they’ll uncork the babbling in the locker room where it continues all the way to the dinner table. And with a few thousand calories back in the system after dinner they’ll regain control of their minds and mouths – until the next day when they start the journey all over again.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Just Look at the Parents
I can’t believe that no one else has noticed this, but I checked out the USA Swimming swimmer database and guess what? Neither one of the Obama kids is registered! OK, maybe they’ve just been doing summer park-league stuff so their results wouldn’t be showing up there, but if their parents haven’t gotten them in the water by now, then I think somebody needs to talk to them. Now.
Why? Well, just look at the parents! According to the dad’s Myspace page, he’s 6' 1.5" tall and he is clearly built like a butterflyer. Yes, we all know he’s into basketball because we’ve seen the pick-up game videos, but that guy has a wingspan and a half on him. And about 5 percent body fat. (Incidentally, I don’t care how you voted. Or even how I voted. This isn’t about politics. This is about swimming. Which, as we all know, is far more important.)
But speaking of more important, have you seen the mother? According to knowledgeable sources (on the Internet), SHE’s almost 5'11" and built like Dara Torres from the looks of it. Plus, according to those same sources, she’s got a 6' 6" brother. OK, so the brother’s into basketball, too. That just means the wrong coaches got to this family first. We’ve still got time on our side here. Plus a couple of other factors.
For one thing, basketball (along with most other sports) is a contact sport and that can’t be a good risk for the offspring of the leader of the free world. And while swim practice could be considered a contact sport, swim meets are not, so swimming would be a much safer sport for them to do. Even if their lane mates’ parents worked for the Bush administration.
And the relative safety of swimming should make life much easier for the Secret Service agents who will be assigned to protect these girls. Although seriously, wouldn’t you love to be there the first time another parent got all up in the coach’s grill because one of the Obama kids got her kid’s relay spot? Do you think the Secret Service agent would utilize one of those Mr. Spock death grips on the shoulder or just a stun gun on the crazy mom?
But back to the Obama girls and their genetic destiny. The bad news may be that they don’t yet have flip turns. The good news is they’re moving to a hot bed of swimming activity. And while everyone else has been fixated on which academic school the Obama girls will go to in Washington, D.C., the more important issue for the swimming community is which club should get them. The Potomac Valley Swimming LSC lists 38 clubs in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. By the start of the outdoor season, one of you better have those girls in the water.
And while you’re at it, see if you can slip the parents some info about masters swimming.
Why? Well, just look at the parents! According to the dad’s Myspace page, he’s 6' 1.5" tall and he is clearly built like a butterflyer. Yes, we all know he’s into basketball because we’ve seen the pick-up game videos, but that guy has a wingspan and a half on him. And about 5 percent body fat. (Incidentally, I don’t care how you voted. Or even how I voted. This isn’t about politics. This is about swimming. Which, as we all know, is far more important.)
But speaking of more important, have you seen the mother? According to knowledgeable sources (on the Internet), SHE’s almost 5'11" and built like Dara Torres from the looks of it. Plus, according to those same sources, she’s got a 6' 6" brother. OK, so the brother’s into basketball, too. That just means the wrong coaches got to this family first. We’ve still got time on our side here. Plus a couple of other factors.
For one thing, basketball (along with most other sports) is a contact sport and that can’t be a good risk for the offspring of the leader of the free world. And while swim practice could be considered a contact sport, swim meets are not, so swimming would be a much safer sport for them to do. Even if their lane mates’ parents worked for the Bush administration.
And the relative safety of swimming should make life much easier for the Secret Service agents who will be assigned to protect these girls. Although seriously, wouldn’t you love to be there the first time another parent got all up in the coach’s grill because one of the Obama kids got her kid’s relay spot? Do you think the Secret Service agent would utilize one of those Mr. Spock death grips on the shoulder or just a stun gun on the crazy mom?
But back to the Obama girls and their genetic destiny. The bad news may be that they don’t yet have flip turns. The good news is they’re moving to a hot bed of swimming activity. And while everyone else has been fixated on which academic school the Obama girls will go to in Washington, D.C., the more important issue for the swimming community is which club should get them. The Potomac Valley Swimming LSC lists 38 clubs in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. By the start of the outdoor season, one of you better have those girls in the water.
And while you’re at it, see if you can slip the parents some info about masters swimming.
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