On Not Starting Swim Team This Summer
My most prominent feelings about children’s extracurricular activities conflict. When it comes to summertime and swim team, there’s a part of me that wants to dive right in (sorry) to my identity as “Sports Mom,” a role I was pretty much created for.
You’re telling me that you want me to show up to a crowded, noisy place, make small talk with strangers, and feed my family nothing but snacks and sandwiches for approximately five hours on a Saturday morning?
Sandwiches are my favorite food. Small talk is my game. The noise of a crowd feels like my best high school memories. I’ll get my lawn chair. Let’s get excited, people. BRING IT ON.
At the same exact time, I want to keep my lazy Saturday morning biscuits and gravy breakfast. Anything that gets in the way of that is going to be a hard sell.
I have no doubt that our kids (who are all currently under the age of nine) will run the gamut in terms of sports over the next two decades, and I will enjoy watching them do it. I’ll try not to yell too loudly, so they can enjoy the fact that I’m there, too. But no promises on that account. I can get very emotional while watching children play sports. That sounds weird, and there’s no amount of justification that’s going to make it not weird, but here we go anyway. I’m not even talking about watching my own children, who haven’t competed yet, in anything. What gets me is the moment—a moment that spans the diversity of sporting events—when the kid must get up and try again, just after he’s lost or made a mistake. He’s called back to the mat for another match, even though he lost 10 minutes ago. And then he gets out there and does it. That moment is what matters. That’s going to be life, in a way, for all of them, they’re all going to be in that moment again, and it will look so much different. And I’m just in the corner with a baby carrier strapped to my chest. These aren’t tears! That’s not even my kid.
Swimming seems like a good sport for a large family. It’s a survival skill, you can do it for your whole life, and swim meets usually include a large age range. We wouldn’t be running around to a bunch of sperate events and practices.
Jonny had several criteria for a summer swim team—it needed to be close to our house, to meet early in the morning, and to practice outside. And… I found one that checks all three boxes. I haven’t even mentioned that they run on a flexible schedule, meeting Monday-Thursday, with the swimmers only attending the practices that work for their family’s schedule. And it’s relatively affordable. And, and, AND!1
(Hallelujah Chorus plays in the background)
It was too good to be true.
Turns out, it was too good to be true. After trading a couple of text messages with one of the coaches, I looked at the website and found the list of prerequisite skills for swim team. My seven-year-old daughter is not ready, at all. My eight-year-old son is a lot closer to ready, but he’d still need a few weeks of lessons before he had the tools he needed to compete with the team.
We could push it, I thought. Maybe we could buy lessons and go a couple times a week before team starts at the beginning of June… during May, the busiest month of the year. I kept racking my brain. Maybe this… maybe that… maybe…
And then, I thought… Maybe this is great.
Maybe not starting swim team yet is awesome. We can go to the pool and the park on our own terms. We can have Lego parties in the basement. We can lie in our hammocks in the backyard or walk up to the “sky way” and look out at our city. We can make forts and listen to too many audiobooks and the kids can zip their bikes around that one curve that makes me nervous. And we can still eat lots of sandwiches.
If I look at the whole scope of things, I’m going to have decades to be “Sports Mom.” Really. So I let the idea of swim team go. We can do it next year, or the year after that, when everyone is more ready, and maybe take some lessons over the winter months when there are fewer obligations on the calendar. I did sign my oldest two kids up for one “camp” (three day) at the high school, wrestling for him and volleyball for her, and let that be the sum of our sports plans for the summer.
Of course, right after I made that choice, the high-school wrestling coach (who was Jonny’s coach) texted Jonny when he saw we signed up for camp. Next thing I know… “Coach invited us to 2nd-4th grade wrestling practice on Tuesday nights, every Tuesday until the end of the school year. Could we make it work?”
So, on Tuesdays, we eat a picnic dinner at a park up by the school all together, and then Jonny and our oldest go to a wrestling practice that is so cheap it’s almost free. They both get to play. I don’t know how I feel about extracurriculars, really. And I don’t have to know yet. But here’s my starting place—if activities don’t fit quite *that* neatly into the life we’re already living, I’m not sure we’re going to be able to participate. And maybe… maybe that’s a good thing.
On the Calendar – Fourth Week of Easter
🌎🎊HABEMUS PAPEM! 🎊🌍
🦅Sunday’s Gospel is John 10:27-30, and it’s so short, I am just going to pull the whole thing here (NRSV, just, because):
My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, in regard to what he has given me, is greater than all, and no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”
Isn’t that beautiful?
His audience picked up stones to kill Him after He said this.
Which, I don’t know, maybe says something about the weight of authority, the inevitability of criticism, the sacrifice that He was asking (still asks!) His disciples to make. It’s worth noting that St. Matthias (May 14) and the other apostles (excepting St. John) were martyred. The shepherd language makes me think of the crook that Bishops still carry in the processionals of their masses. Speaking of which, definitely the most important thing happening in the Catholic world (and liturgically on point, I must say) is the celebration of Pope Leo XIV, the recently instated Bishop of Rome.
We have to TALK about the results of last week’s poll, though:
Look at that pattern! Okay, 17 respondents might not be something to base my whole understanding of how we respond the liturgical year, but I thought this was interesting — Christmas and Easter (the celebratory seasons, as opposed to the ones focused on penance, Lent and Advent) are NOT sharing the top of the podium — we went with Advent and Easter. Maybe part of this is because the Christmas season is difficult to celebrate on its own, do you know what I mean? There is something very lovely about the quiet waiting of Advent (which also gets bombarded with things like Christmas cookies), the time following Christmas feels less… distinct. I don’t know. Maybe that’s on me. I’m sure it is.
Okay. Looking forward.
My books: Eucharistic Saints, A Saint A Day
Not affiliate links or Amazon links. By all means, buy the books on Amazon, I just figure you know how to get there on your own. Sometimes TAN and Thomas Nelson run deals, though!
+ Saint Sessions for YDisciple (co-written with Tanner Kalina)
We partnered with January Jane for the inspiration for the content!
If you are local and need to know more about this magical swim team, just text or email me I’ll fill you in
Two of my boys are playing baseball this spring, and I love it for them, but it also coincides with all of the OTHER May craziness. I am not sports mom, so it is...an adjustment, lol.
Sports-mom : sandwiches and small-talk. Gonna be an excellent summer.