Poppies in the Stands

Last week, for the first time in many years, I got to actually sit in the stands and watch an entire age-group meet.  I watched every heat of every race, jotted down times, chatted with a couple of mom friends, dealt with the Loudest Family on the Planet, suffered a mild case of heat prostration, and fought to get my heat sheet back from some free-loading loser who parked herself near me and asked to look at my program and then didn’t give it back until I demanded it back.  It was all wonderful.

See, for the last eight years, I’ve had to spend most of my time at these meets “in camp,” where the kids wait to get summoned for their races.  As I explained to one of my mom friends who wanted to know why it took me so long to get out of camp, it’s partially because I grew up near New York City.  I assume the worst of everyone when it comes to my children’s safety.  I also don’t have very high expectations of their ability to get to the bullpen or blocks by themselves.  We used to get rid of our daughter for hours inside the house by sending her off with instructions to bring back a (fill in the blank).  That didn’t work with our son.  Even if you gave him a list of 14 things to fetch, he would fetch them all in about five minutes flat.  But Little Mr. Coach would and has consciously chosen a Pokemon-card trading battle over an A-final.  So in camp I stayed.

But now our youngest child has arrived at the 11-12 age group and he is showing signs of, well, some would say maturity, but I would say it’s just a Machiavellian feel for what he’s got to do if he’s going to get what he wants (either more games for his Nintendo DS or a later bed time).  So at his first indoor meet this year, I decided I was ready to sit in the stands. 

And I have to give myself props for how it went.  I have come a long way in my ability to tolerate loud swim-parent behavior.  It’s been an issue because I’m not a screamer.  I find that if I yell during my kids’ races it short-circuits something between my eyeballs and my brain, and I end up not really seeing or remembering their races.  So, you say, just videotape them.  Not really a videotaper either.  So I watch pretty quietly and that way I can absorb what I’m seeing.  And I’m not alone in this regard, though I have to cross the Equator to find other parents like me.

A few years ago, when we lived in Australia during one of Mr. Coach’s sabbaticals, our kids swam for a club there.  I’ll never forget the meet where I was sitting on the edge of the pool as my daughter swam by in the backstroke.  Because I was right there and she could see me, I figured I better say something so I leaned over and, at a volume that would be considered conversational at an American age-group swim meet, I said, “Go, honey!” 

About a dozen Australian parent heads slowly turned as one to look at me.  Then they all slowly swiveled back to reaffix their gazes on the pool. 

“What did I do?” I whispered to one of my new Australian friends.

“You cheered for your own child,” she whispered back.

“OK?” I said.

“You don’t do that,” she replied. “TPS.”

There are many things I love about the Australian nation -- their desserts and dairy products probably foremost -- but their swim parents rank way high up there, too.  TPS, as I found out, is what they call “Tall Poppy Syndrome.”  Tall poppies are “made to be cut down.”  In other words, you and your swollen pride are just asking for trouble if you publicly express a desire to see your child do well at something.  You can – and should – cheer for other people’s children, but you don’t cheer out loud for your own.

Call it superstition, call it unrealistic, call it a bit too much humility, but I think it’s a great concept.  And you can’t criticize a nation of swim parents who, when their children make the Australian Olympic team, don t-shirts with the acronym POOS printed on them (which stands for Parents Of Our Swimmers).

So, ever since I got back from Australia, I haven’t felt bad about being a non-screamer.  And this time, my first time back in the stands for an entire meet, I sat there, cheered a little bit at a conversational volume for my son, and I didn’t get riled up about other people screaming.  It felt good to be a short poppy.

Great Moments in Age-Group Swimming History

As the indoor season for all my little 10-year-old and under friends begins, I find myself thinking fondly about all the good times I’ve enjoyed because of them.  It’s like I sometimes say to my own children, “I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing near you.”  And so it is with these swimmers as I record a few Great Moments in Age-Group Swimming History which have happened near me.

1)  The Who Knew DQ:  The first time Little Mr. Coach swam a 25-yard backstroke, he was disqualified -- for walking.  He was only 6 years old at the time, so I wasn’t expecting much.  But by that point, I had already been through five years of his sister’s swimming and she was a backstroker, so I thought backstroke DQs at that age were pretty much limited to turning over to look for the wall at the end.  It wasn’t like the breaststroke where raising an eyebrow at the wrong time can get you disqualified.  Well, Little Mr. Coach not only turned over, but he also decided to take a stroll.  And somebody has taken the time to formally enter it in the rules books that walking (during any race for any stroke) is a crime against the aquatic gods.  I learned something new that day.

2)  The Domino Effect:  During one meet this past summer, a chain of wrongful starts began and could not be stopped for several heats.  It started in the 6 & Under freestyle when a kid from the following 8 & Under heat got confused because there was no one in his lane for the 6 & Under heat, so he dove in when the 6 & Under race started.  Despite the best efforts of several coaches and parents, the wrong-heat starts continued through all the heats and both genders of the 8 & Under kids before order could be restored.  It’s just the siren call of the empty starting block.  Kids cannot resist it.

3)  “If Two Trains Leave Their Stations…”:  This was probably my all-time favorite Great Moment in Age-Group History.  It happened this summer in an 8 & Under freestyle relay.  Two boys (OK, let’s be real here – Great Moments almost always happen with boys) were poised on either end of the 25-yard pool.  Boy #1 was swimming lead-off.  Boy #2 on the opposite end was the second leg.  The race starter gave the command, “Swimmers, take your marks…BEEP!”  And in went Boy #1 and Boy #2. 

It took a few seconds before the crowd realized the two boys were swimming straight at each other, and then the screaming began, trying to stop them.  They never heard the crowd.  But miraculously, the boys somehow managed to not collide and they safely reached the opposite sides of the pool and then the whole relay was disqualified. 

Someone said to me, “I wonder what they thought when they went past each other.”  I’ll tell you what they thought.  One of them was thinking, “I hope they haven’t sold out of sloppy joes at the food stand yet.”  And the other one was thinking, “Maybe if I promise to eat a baggie of grapes first, Mom will let me get the Sour Patch Twizzlers.” 

You know I’m right.

Pool Polling

Every election season we read all about the polls being taken on the candidates and issues.  And we all stop answering our phones so as to avoid being polled.  I have a little advice for the pollsters:  If you want to get accurate information for your polls, hang up the phones and come to a swim practice.

It didn’t take long for Mr. Coach and me to realize that age-group swimmers, and even most college-age swimmers, are mirrors (and mouthpieces) for their parents’ political opinions and voting activities.  You are not going to find many seven-year-olds who vote differently than their parents.  If they could vote.  Which they usually think they can.  And you get to hear about it because a lot of talking goes on in a swim practice. 

I can’t tell you the number of times Mr. Coach has come home and said, “You’re not going to believe who’s a Democrat.” 

We live in a very politically conservative part of the world, so it’s always a surprise when you find out that someone’s a Democrat, although usually they’re a closet Democrat.  Well, until their kid tells everyone in her lane. 

As for politically extreme households, a really solid indicator of that is when a grade schooler knows about various issues on the ballot.  Your middle-of-the-road households, whether Democrat or Republican, tend not to have strong opinions, at least not that they’re discussing in front of the children, about issues like casinos, smoking or even state-constitution amendments to beef up farming regulations.  But your households that would say they “strongly disagree” or “strongly agree” about a ballot question do discuss these things in front of the children, and little Windchime and Thatcher will be more than happy to tell the Level 3 Mudskippers exactly how to vote on those issues.

I tell you all this not to make you more nervous about sending your kids off to swim practice.  You’ve got enough to worry about with the bat hangs and other breath-holding drills.  But if there are any hot political topics that you don’t want the other families on the team to know your opinions about, then you might want to be careful about discussing them in front of the kids. 

Oh, and don’t worry, Mrs. Postlethwaite, about the Level 2 Lungfish knowing what your credit rating is.  We had the coach explain it was just your age in dog years.

The Bullpen (aka The Seventh Circle of Hell)

Until the last night of summer swim league championships this past Tuesday, I had thought, “Maybe I’ll blog this week about how much fun it is to sit and eavesdrop on the kids, as they hang out in the team camp, waiting for their events.” This is how I get caught up on all the latest high school gossip and on my Pokemon card-trading strategies (Squirtle eventually evolves into Blastoise who can pull water cannons out of his shell and has 100 health points. Who knew?).

But then the mom who rounds up volunteers came looking for people to work the bullpen on the last night of championships, and there went my peaceful evening of eavesdropping. Oddly enough, in all my years of swim parenting and coach spousing, I had yet to work a bullpen. Now I know what I’ve been missing and I have the aching back and roughed-up vocal chords to remind me, just in case I forget.

The bullpen, for those of you who know how to evade volunteer coordinators, is the place at a meet site where swimmers are corralled, sorted into events and heats, told they can pee in the water if they really have to go that bad but they cannot leave the bullpen for the bathroom now, and then marched out to a pool deck where, half naked, shivering and surrounded by fully clothed, screaming adults with video cameras, they have been conditioned to fling themselves into cold water when a buzzer is sounded and they cannot get out again until they are exhausted and disoriented by oxygen deprivation. It’s like a cockfight, only less humane.

But I wouldn’t know how the pool part of the evening actually went that last night because I was working the bullpen. We had 64 chairs set up under a tent, eight rows of eight chairs each. For a little while, it was only 63 chairs until we figured out that some woman (in a Hermès scarf, I feel compelled to note) had stolen one so she could sit and watch her little muffin swim in the kiddie pool. I sent the bullpen mom with the loudest voice to go get it back. It wasn’t easy but she got the job done.

We chased hovering parents out of the bullpen – also not an easy job. Yes, I realize that all this chaos could be emotionally scarring for little Dagmar or Robespierre, but two minutes before we ship them out is not the time to rethink your decision to sign them up for the swim team.

We stared down TWA (Tweens With Attitudes) and threatened them with disqualification if their eyes didn’t stop rolling in their sockets. We negotiated with coaches who insisted that “the other half of the B relay is here…somewhere…they just might not make it to the bullpen…but don’t scratch them.”

And we did have the heart-warming experience of being able to put one alternate into a race when a kid did not show up for finals. Those first and second alternates are the ones who tug at your heartstrings because they do show up and stand outside the bullpen, waiting patiently and hoping against hope that they’ll get another chance to swim. As with my beloved 6 & Under swimmers, these are the kids who remind me why an aching back is a small price to pay for inspiration.

In Praise of 6 and Under

I used to think there was nothing better to watch in all of swimming than the 8-year-old & Under age group. But then our summer swim league added a 6 & Under age group, and suddenly Wednesday nights in July got a whole lot better.

“But, Mrs. Coach!” you say. “You’ve been to national meets and seen amazing feats of swimming. You’ve been to an Olympic Trials meet and seen world records happen. And just last night, you were parked in front of your laptop, watching the U.S. World Championship Trials, live and uninterrupted by commercials. Surely one of those meets was the best thing ever to watch in swimming!”

To which I say, “Have you ever seen a 6 & Under 25-yard backstroke?”

We’re talking two, sometimes three, minutes of dramatic intensity, the likes of which Shakespeare himself couldn’t match. There is always, and I do mean always, the quivering excitement of the start. There are legs and arms akimbo, bouncing off lane lines like protons and neutrons inside a nuclear reactor. There are near-drownings (when was the last time you saw that at an Olympic Trials)? There is the agony of victory when somebody finishes the race with their noggin, and there is the thrill of defeat because last place always gets a rousing and heartfelt ovation from the crowd.

There is not a single kid out there who is not giving it his or her all -- an “all,” I might add, that is accomplished without the assistance of buoyancy-aiding, high-tech suits, although occasionally some of the boys finish without their suits if they didn’t tie the drawstrings tight enough.

And there is not a single kid out there who is going to take that race home with them to fuss and fume and obsess about, because most of them have the attention spans of gnats at this age. They’re only in it for the chili dogs and Cherry Slushies.

None of them are going to flunk a drug test because they bought a “bad batch” of Flintstones Chewables. None of them are academically ineligible to compete because some of them haven’t even started school yet. And the only way any of them will end up in an embarrassing YouTube video is if their parents put it there to show the relatives out in Oregon.

So you can have your world-record swims in perfect pool conditions. You can take your collegiate Division I prospects and give them all ice bags for their blown-out shoulders. You can have your Olympic Hopeful 12-year-olds. The only races I will drop everything to watch this summer are the 6 & Unders: They’re everything that’s great about this sport.

It’s Never Too Early to Prognosticate

…And finally we get to the centerpiece event of this year’s Tattimuck County Parks and Recreation League Championships – the Boys’ 10-and-Under 100-yard Medley Relay. But to assess the players this year, we have to go back two years to the Boys’ 8-and-Under edition because that’s the last time this particular set of swimmers went head to head.

Two years ago, it was the Killer Sharks of the Mango Park Swim Club who took the title, not so much because they were the fastest quartet but because they were the only team that wasn’t disqualified. Led by backstroker Fred “Floater” Zingermann, the team also featured breaststroker Jonathon “Two-Hand Touch” Wing, butterflyer Charley “Wiggle” Wiggins and anchor freestyler Sam “Scooter” Schnipke. And two years ago, they put together a performance that left even their parents stunned and speechless. Insiders say the Mango Park boys are older and more legal than ever, even though they lost Wing to the country-club league when his dad got a promotion at work. According to their coach, Mindy Schwicker, the game plan is to have Rafael Esterhazy, a 7-year-old with a pituitary-gland disorder and hands the size of dinner plates, swim up an age group for the breaststroke leg.

The Killer Sharks likely will be challenged by their annual nemeses – the Waterbugs of the Waterloo Aquatics Racing Team. The Waterbugs – comprised of backstroke specialist Lindeman Farnhauser, breaststroker Chavis Rodriguez and the interchangeable flyer-freestyler twins, Rick and Dick Postlewaite – have always been something of a wild-card team in the league, prone to record-setting swims one week and flagrant DQs the next. Their own coach, Dorfy McDufferman, has described the team thusly: “One half of this relay is medicated and the other half should be.”

Also challenging for the title might be the Sea Stars of the Southwest Swim and Racquet Club. The Sea Stars are a new team in the league this year, having voluntarily moved over from the country-club league. The Southwest Swim and Racquet Club itself went bankrupt in January but the swim team has continued to practice, using the Pfeiffer-Newton family’s backyard 50-meter pool as its home facility. The Pfeiffer-Newtons’ son Tanqueray is the team’s anchor. While some in the league question whether the young man, who is already shaving hair off many different parts of his body, is actually 10 years old, the threat of legal action from his parents has convinced the league to allow him to compete in this age group. Pfeiffer-Newton is joined on the relay by backstroker Kirk Sphincter-Howland, breaststroker Stansbury Thurman-Dobbs and butterflyer Ashley Hinker-Wheaterman.

Despite the fact that both the Waterbugs and the Sea Stars look better on paper, we’re going to have to stick with the Killer Sharks and pick them to win this year’s title. They have proven, time and again, they have the stubbornness to keep their strokes legal and the slow reaction time to prevent false starts.

Decisions, Decisions

It’s that time of the year when swim parents face some serious choices: concession stand or event timing, split recording or raffle ticket shilling, ribbon writing or hiding in the bathroom so the volunteer coordinator doesn’t find you and make you wait out front for the pizza delivery guy. Summer-league swimming is a machine that runs on volunteerism, and the sooner you figure out what you can tolerate, the more sane you’re likely to be by the end of the meet.

In the past, I’ve usually volunteered to write up what gets posted on the team’s Web site (schedules, directions to meets, meet summaries, and step-by-step instructions for how to put a swim cap on for all our newbie parents). This year I decided to take a break from the writing (due in no small part to the fact that we’re avoiding too much contact with one of the summer coaches who stiffed us $419 in USS team tuition – long, sordid story there). So instead I’m concession-standing it. I’d like to think I’m helping the team every time I talk a kid out of that second chili dog, 10 minutes before his or her next swim.

Mr. Coach usually gets commandeered to run the timing system at home meets which only makes sense since he’s the only one who really understands how it works, though he’s been trying to train other people so he can see Little Mr. Coach swim occasionally.

Neither one of us volunteers for backup timing duties because we know what a few hours of standing on a concrete pool deck will do to your legs. Nothing good, I can tell you. Likewise with running the cards on which the event hand-times are jotted down, back and forth to the folks working the timing system console. One mom who swam competitively often volunteers to be a stroke judge, but she rarely DQs anyone, least of all her own flutter-kicking butterflyer child. And then there are always the parents who volunteer to do backup timing but only for the lanes their kids are swimming in. But that’s why there’s at least two adults working each lane.

Yes, summer-league volunteering is a carefully choreographed dance of mixed motivations and even more mixed results. Yet somehow in the end it all works and, of course, the kids never realize how much work goes into making their meets happen.

How the Deck Was Won

As we head into the outdoor swim season now, parents find themselves challenged with a fundamental shift in the viewing situation. With indoor swimming, there is usually tiered seating in stands, so you’re able to get a decent view of the pool from just about anywhere in a natatorium. It might get a little uncomfortable if you’re sitting next to one of those Sunday New York Times toters (like me) but you’ll be able to see the pool (if you can just chill out and deal with the rustling paper, it’s not like I’m blocking your view).

Outdoor swim meets are like the Wild West – lawless, uncivilized and based entirely on the concept of squatter’s rights. If you’re the first one to park your chair on the deck next to the starting blocks, that view is yours -- until somebody else puts another chair in front of you. Doesn’t even matter if your chair happens to be of the wheelchair variety. I’ve seen people block out their own grandparents when there’s still an inch of deck space to be snagged.

I tend to utilize the in-and-out method of outdoor-swim-meet spectatorship myself, sort of like the nomadic Native Americans who moved to follow the animals they hunted. I place my chair as far from the meet as possible but where I’m still able to hear the P.A. system announce events. Then, when there’s an event I want to see, I walk over, scootch in where I’m least likely to encounter resistance, watch and then leave. But like the Native Americans, I have been displaced many times and I am a little bitter about it.

But many parents like to stake out turf and defend it to the death (or the end of the meet, whichever comes first). One way to make this work is to bring your entire extended family. There’s this one family in our summer league that always manages to snag the most primo viewing spot on the far side of the pool near the leisure-pool slide: It’s a narrow peninsula of space that defies turf warring. They get it by showing up early, armed with lawn chairs, food coolers and a fairly extensive record of involvement with the local court system.

And then others will employ the “if it’s covered with a towel, it’s mine” strategy (I’ve heard this is how Wyoming was settled.) This strategy is used in the tiny stands which seat about 27 people. The coaches have tried to place limits on just how many seats can be saved, but that rarely works because parents who have been coming to these meets for years do whatever they want. In my humble opinion, anyone who has not seen Wednesday night TV in July since Clinton’s first term has earned the right to park their carcasses wherever they want. It’s how the deck was won.

The Visual Contact Rule

Mr. Coach has been a coach for a long time. We’re talking centuries now. But no matter how many years he coaches, no matter how fabulously his athletes do, he will never master the intricacies of the Visual Contact Rule. And why is that? Because he is not a mother. And never will be.

Let’s demonstrate the Visual Contact Rule with a factual anecdote.

Every summer, one or both of the Little Coaches compete on a park-league swim team. Every Wednesday evening during those summers, the Coach Family is headed somewhere within an hour’s drive to spend the next 4 to 5 hours on the perimeter of an outdoor pool, watching kids of all shapes, sizes and ages defy the rules of organized swimming.

On one such Wednesday evening, I had some work to finish up with the newspaper I write for, so Mr. Coach was in charge of getting 7-year-old Little Mr. Coach ready and transported to the meet site. I would meet them there later.

I arrived just as the team was finishing its pre-warmup meeting. Little Mr. Coach came over to where Mr. Coach had set up our lawn chairs, and proceeded to strip down for his warmup swim. And when I say “strip down,” I do mean “strip down.” Down went the sweat pants and then up went the sweat pants, and in between those two actions, approximately half the team found out that Little Mr. Coach is definitely a male.

I finished my sip of Gatorade, turned and looked at my husband.

“Where’s his suit?” I asked, screwing the cap back on the bottle.

“You said you had your suit on,” Mr. Coach said to our son.

“I think I forgot to put it on,” Little Mr. Coach whispered.

“He said he had it on,” my husband said to me. “I asked him if he had it on before we left.”

And there, for those of you who aren’t mothers and who aren’t nodding knowingly at this point, is the Visual Contact Rule in, if you will, a nutshell.

“Did you actually see the suit?” I said, more rhetorically than anything else because I knew what the answer was. No, my husband – the non-mother – had not made Visual Contact with the suit.

We scrambled at that point to find Little Mr. Coach a suit because his non-mother had also not made sure he had duplicates of everything (suits, goggles, caps, towels) in his swim bag (although he did have all his Yu-Gi-Oh cards, one fin, two bendy straws, half a candy cane, and a complete Mousetrap board game set).

The 12-year-old brother of a teammate lent us a pair of board shorts. You know how you see those pictures where track sprinters work out with a parachute attached to them, just to increase drag? Yeah, that image pretty much describes Little Mr. Coach’s meet that night.

But at least they couldn’t disqualify him for nudity.

(Instead they got him for swimming breaststroke on the butterfly leg of the medley relay. But it was an otherwise legal breaststroke.)

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.

Meet Chow

Let’s face it: Bon Appetit magazine is never going to devote an issue to the food found at swim meets. But that doesn’t stop anyone from eating at swim meets, least of all me. However I have noticed that the further down the totem pole you go in meet size, the better the food gets. It’s almost like an incentive to never get a legal breaststroke.

Your national and international-level meets are probably the worst when it comes to what’s available at the concession stands. You’ve got your bloated, boiled hot dogs, your overly salty nacho chips with melted processed cheese food products, and maybe some bland, palm-sized, microwaved pizza. Big whoops. The coaches on the deck getting Dixie cups filled with fruit, veggies and ranch dip are doing way better than the folks up in the stands. And there’s only so many stale bagels that a person can eat in one weekend.

Of course, there were the Australian Olympic Swim Trials when we were living Down Under in 2004. On the walkway overlooking the competition pool in Sydney, a lineup of tents had been erected and two of them were serving beer and wine.

Beer and wine at a swim meet. You could stop right there and declare the Aussies the winners in the Meet Refreshments competition, but you’d still have to factor in their hot dogs.

I will probably understate this, but the Aussies’ hot dogs were the saddest, most indigestible excuse for food that I have ever tried to consume in my life. I’m not even sure there were any meat products in there, and if there were, I don’t want to know what part of what animal they were. No, the Aussie hot dogs completely negated any good will achieved by the chardonnay and Victoria Bitter. Not that I didn’t give the chardonnay a fighting chance, but all the vineyards and breweries in Australia put together couldn’t erase the sense memory of those corpulent tubes of tastebud death.

But there is one place where the swim meet food is going to be good, sometimes even inspired. And that’s on a July weeknight at a dual meet in a 25-yard pool where at least half the 8 & Under age group is going to be disqualified for inventing a new stroke. And the reason you will find the best food in the swim world at these meets can be summed up in one word: crockpots.

Whether it’s Pete O’Halloran’s Pulled Pork, Lori Hepplewhite’s Tostados or Jenn Zuweski’s grandmother’s Baked Beans, when you’ve got crockpots bubbling away at a swim meet, life is worth living. It doesn’t matter if little Hortense finished the butterfly with her face and now needs extensive amounts of reconstructive orthodontia. Or if Elgar invented a new stroke – the flutterfly – which got the relay disqualified and lost the meet for the team. Chow down on a couple of Marcy Schittzlebaum’s Sloppy Joes and all is right with the world.

Unless of course you have a fascistic local-government regime – like the one in our hometown – where the health department has banned home-cooked food at events on city-owned property because they claim the risk of "food-borne illness" is too great.

To which I say: "Dear Food Police, No self-respecting home cook is ever going to serve up a crockpot full of E. coli at a summer-league swim meet, because if they did, it doesn’t matter how fast their kid swims, they would have to move to another state, change their names and enroll their kid in ballroom dancing, that’s how humiliated they would be. So, nope, not gonna happen. Give us back our crockpots. Sincerely, Mrs. Coach"