Being part of a competitive swim team offers many benefits to a child. A swim team program provides a great sense of community. Most programs encourage children to develop and grow up in the sport; with ages often ranging from age 5-18 years old. In addition to getting a great workout, swimmers learn to be part of a team while also developing individual goals for themselves. The time demand of the sport also encourages friendships due to the amount of training involved. Relationships develop not just over a season but all childhood as many stay with the sport and the same team as they continue to peruse swimming.
A swim team offers a great framework to teach discipline and focus. It’s a sport that is built on personal performance and improving your own race times. Setting goals and working long hours to improve help teach discipline and commitment. The team-shared culture and values help teach teamwork and can build self-esteem starting at a young age. Common team values include accountability, hard work, selflessness, respect, trust, and family atmosphere.
Competitive swimming offers great physical benefits to children including hitting three elements of fitness: endurance, strength, and flexibility. These elements are all incorporated into the rigorous workout. The endurance of a competitive swimmer is built by having a strong cardiovascular base that is developed through hours of aerobic swimming. Competitive swimming is a sport that requires more time and commitment as the swimmer develops. Starting out perhaps just a few days a week for younger swimmers to more advanced high school athletes swimming 6-7 days a week, and sometimes 6-10 workouts a week. As the swimmer commits to the sport it is common that strength training is incorporated into their workouts through “dryland workouts”. These “dryland workouts” often include weightlifting, range of motion and movement agility work, core stability, flexibility, as well as speed/quickness work.
Because competitive swimming is often a big team commitment with a long 11-month season, it lends itself to children developing strong and often lifelong friendships with their teammates. Many teams help foster these relationships by having regular team events or social events, such as team fundraisers, pizza parties, movie nights, as well as holidays and seasonal activities. Swim meets often provide a lot of down time for swimmers to interact with each other and be social. Friendships are also strengthened through this time together. On many teams they offer travel meets which allow swimmers to compete in great venues and in a competitive competition environment. They allow swimmers to create great memories with friends. Some memories may include things like spending nights with teammates and family at hotels, travel meets that included a stop at the beach, or visiting new places out of state.
Competitive swimming also provides an outlet for lifelong health and fitness. Learning to swim at a young age is a life skill that could save a child’s life. Being on a swim team sets the person up with the tools to work out throughout their life. Swimming for fitness is known for its low impact on the joints. It is often a fitness activity that runners turn to when they experience pain in their ankles and knees from years of running. Swimmers have developed the skills needed to continue this fitness activity for a lifetime if they choose to.
The first step to getting on a swim team is having your child in swim lessons. Swimming lessons can start at a young age. As early as a few months old for most parent-child group classes. From there, swimmers can progress through the lessons program over the course of several years. Learning not only skills that could save their life like floating and treading water, but also swimming skills used on a swim team. Swim lessons will teach children how to do freestyle (front crawl), backstroke, butterfly, and breaststroke. These four strokes are the four competitive strokes they will do on a swim team.
Interested in having your child join a swim team? Click here to learn more about Merritt Swimming. There are team try outs all summer. Another good way to find a team is to check your local year-round programs by visiting USA swimming website at usaswimming.org. From there you can follow the “find a team” link on the top of the page and search local teams in your area by zip code.
