July 28, 2012

• I am a Champ

  Or a chump, depending on how you look at it. 

  Today, I attended my last swim meet as a “mite parent.” That sounds like some sort of parental illness, doesn’t it? In case you don’t speak Swim Team, that means that I will no longer have a swimmer in the 8-and-under “mite” division. For the last four years, I have been a mite parent and therefore have participated in lining up kids for mite relays.

  Unless you have been through it yourself, there are no words to convey to you the extreme chaos and confusion that this activity entails. On Facebook today, I tried to sum it up as “herding swimming cats.” But really, that doesn’t quite capture it. Now that I am seated on my couch with my aching feet up, I think that it is more appropriate to say it is like herding fish. Because even though they are out of the pool during the herding, they are slippery like fish. Every time you think you have the four swimmers you need to shuttle to their lane in the right event and right heat, one of them is missing. Do you know how hard it is to find a missing fish child that is dressed like every other missing fish child, down to the identity neutralizing swim cap and darkened goggles? No, I don’t think you do.

  Today’s meet was an indoor meet between qualifying swimmers from about 15 different swim teams — referred to as a “Champs Meet.” You know who wasn’t a champ today? Whoever was in charge of organizing relays. 

  Swim meets have their own language. The person whose job it is to shout out the names of swimmers, thus assigning them a heat and lane for their event, is called the “Clerk of Course.” Inevitably, when you are a new swim team parent, you think everyone is saying, “You need to go the clerk, of course,” and you wonder why everyone is being so damn ornery and pretentious and presumptive. But really they are saying, “You need to go to the Clerk of Course,” which is just where you need to go to check in your swimmer.

  The Clerk of Course, or “Clerk” for short, is always chaotic. Anytime you have a lot of anxious kids crowding around a hallway waiting their turn…..you have trouble. But when each lane involves a group of 4 children who are all under the age of 8?!? I tell you, there are no words.

  Our son swam in two of these relays today. For the first one, we stood in the hallway with about a zillion and one other parents and swimmers, all pushing forward towards the Clerk’s table. A single person was shouting swimmer names? team names? random facts? and none of us could hear a thing. Every few minutes a dad would put his fingers in his mouth and do one of those horrible “listen up” whistles, which caused exactly NO ONE to listen up and shattered countless young ear drums in the process. When I finally was able to read the lips of the clerk to know that our son’s heat was being called, I realized that only 2 of the 4 swimmers were there to check in. In a feat of physical and mental heroism, I somehow managed to single handedly flag down a coach and send her to find one missing child while I physically dragged the other missing child over, and managed to lie to stall the Clerk long enough to prevent the relay team from being “scratched.” (The cat-like term is appropriate for all the ineffective cat herding, but it just means they can’t swim.)

  This first relay was a medley, meaning that each swimmer swims a different stroke. So, in addition to keeping the kids together, you need to repeat OVER AND OVER, “You are back, you are breast, you are fly, and you are free.” The response is usually a confident nod, followed by, “Wait, what am I swimming?”

  Once the swimmers are assigned a heat/lane, the mite parents usually have to escort the swimmers into the pool and begin the next near impossible task — getting the right two children to the other side of the pool. The goal is for all 4 swimmers to be in the same lane, which would ideally be the lane they are assigned. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen at Champs, so you can leave your kid at Clerk and go whine to the other parents about how much you can’t stand this whole process.

  I figured by the second relay (hours later) that things would go more smoothly. I guess the Clerk actually did do things a little better that time, but really she had nowhere to go but up. The kids, on the other hand, had clearly not hit rock bottom (in terms of behavior) until Event 33 of 35. Some of the things I said while lining up my team of 3 boys and 1 girl:

  • “Don’t put your fingers in his mouth!”
  • “You’re going to fall through that glass!”
  • “Stop sitting on your goggles.”
  • “Don’t put your swim cap over your nose.”
  • “Don’t blow up your swim cap like a balloon.”
  • “Swim caps aren’t supposed to taste good.”
  • “Don’t wear his goggles on top of your goggles.”
  • “No more wedgies!”
  • “Where did she go?”

  • “Where did he go?”
  • “Who are you?” (random swimmer trying to join our team)
  • “I’m sorry that he squeezed your butt cheeks, but you need to stay here.”
  • “Hey! Hands off his privates!”
  • “OUCH!” (I got whipped in the face with a wet towel, by accident)

  That is one small moment in a four year career as a mite parent. Do you see why I’m a champ?

  And now I’m done. My last mite will be aging up before winter swim season. It’s all sweet, and no bitter. 

  • 9:51 pm
  • 4 Comments