The Red Cross program was a city recreation dept. summer only program in an outdoor pool. We live in Michigan, so that’s a pretty short season in and of itself. We had to take this thing indoors.

We tried a program at the University in town. The shallow end of the pool was way over both of the children’s heads, so they had to tread water or hold onto the side all the time. The program was ok; they seemed to improve–until they next got into a pool.

After we started homeschooling, I looked for a program that ran during the day. We tried the new hospital fitness center. The kids knew more than the instructors there–which wasn’t saying much.

Then we looked for the homeschool swimming program at the Y. We couldn’t find that one. Maybe it didn’t exist yet? Anyway, we signed up for the typical Y swim program, named after various little swimming animals, the eel, the pike, etc. There were only three kids in the class, and I thought my folks were doing ok. I mean, they weren’t scared of the deep water, and they moved through it more or less autonomously. What more could I ask?

When my husband saw the kids swimming, he said, “I’m not spending any more money on Y lessons.” And he meant everything like the Y. Everything they had been enrolled in up to that point. He told me that the way to learn to swim was to join a swim team.

I filed that bit of information away in my brain. I didn’t bit know more about a swim team for kids! Then one late summer day in 2001, we dropped in on some neighbors/church members’ house unannounced. They had the slip ‘n’ slide out and invited the kids to join them. Their oldest daughter was wearing her swim team suit. She was 9. I asked her mother about the swim team, and then called myself.

I enrolled my daughter immediately, and my son by the winter season. This was an age-group swim club, which basically existed to create future swimmers for the High School where it met.

My husband was right. The kids went from ‘they can swim–kind of’ to learning about negative splits and shaving their times, etc.

to be continued