12 Signs You’re a True Swim Team Kid: Being Part of a Special Sporting Community
Swimming is an all-consuming sport, and once you start participating, you are most likely never to stop. If you begin as an age-grouper on a swim team, you will find that your life revolves around the sport, making it more of a lifestyle than a sport itself. Through my time as a swimmer, I found that there are specific signs that are key to being an age-grouper and I have devised a key list that many will likely connect with.
You Have a Permanent Goggles Tan
The signature look that comes with the sport is the goggles tan that surrounds your eyes. No matter what you can try to do to rectify it, it is a key part of swimming life and something that is unavoidable. Now even if you don’t swim outside, you will also have a sort of goggles mark. This again is unavoidable due to the constant time spent with them on your head.
You Can’t Remember Life Without Chlorine
Much like the goggles tan, you will be unable to remember a time where your perfume wasn’t the smell of chlorine. The smell of chlorine lingers on you and is noticed by your peers who don’t swim. This also stays whether you have had one shower or 10 showers.
Your Friends Outside the Pool Don’t Get It
How many times have you had to explain what a ‘taper’ or ‘negative split’ is, and they still look at you with a tilted head. This is where your friends don’t understand why you must spend morning and night swimming, doing different sets, and then spend the weekends waiting around for days just for a one-minute race which you may or may not post a personal best. I can’t count the number of times my friends have told me to just take a session off, yet I couldn’t.
You Know Your PBs by Heart
Who knew that numbers could play such a big part of your mind. Knowing your PBs for 18+ races, long and short course, occupied more space in my brain than some of my schoolwork. It is also not just your own times. It is your teammates’ and your biggest rivals. These are the ones that you know probably better than your own.
You Have Mastered the Art of the Post-Practice Nap
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Swimming morning and night can be exhausting, and this requires mastering the art of the nap. Swimmers have the ability to fall asleep anywhere because they desperately need the rest. You learn how to sleep on a bus, a car and even at poolside. This last one I grasped at one of the many meets where I would wait to swim the 400 IM after my 200 breaststroke.
You Have a Lucky Cap (Or Two)
Like most athletes, you have a superstitious item and for swimmers, this is often the lucky cap. It has a specific shape and feel and even ones of the same brand don’t feel the same as this one specific cap. I remember the day mine broke. The next race was one of the worst I had ever done. I’m sure it wasn’t all down to the cap, but that played a big part of it.
“Eat, Sleep, Swim, Repeat” is Basically Your Life
Swimming is a sport that requires copious amounts of dedication. You will live your life by the motto: “Eat, Sleep, Swim, Repeat.” You wake up and eat before morning practice. Have a nap post practice. You go to school in between and then you repeat this routine in the evening. It also repeats on the weekend with competitions eating up any time you could have spare.
You Can’t Remember a Weekend Without a Swim Meet
Frequently, you’llbe asked to hang out on the weekend with friends, only to reply that you have a meet to attend. Although this sometimes may get in the way of your outside-of-swimming social life, you wouldn’t change the trips away to another city to see another pool and swim in the events that you love.
You’re a Pro at Waking Up Early
I started a weekend job at a supermarket and my shifts started at 4 a.m. Everyone was shocked at how early it was. However, any swimmer knows that we handle early starts with a shrug. Swimmers are miraculously able to get themselves out of bed, no matter how dark it is outside.
You Speak Swimmer
Swimmers have our own dialogue that I would almost consider its own language. Words like “split,” “IM” or “cool down” are engrained into us from such a young age that it’s normal. With the number of words that are in swimmer speak we should dedicate a whole dictionary towards them.
You’re Always on the Hunt for Snacks
Swimming is a sport like no other, as it uses all muscles. The intense training schedule makes you constantly hungry. You become somewhat of an expert at finding snacks and making them work in between both your races and training sessions. You may also find some of these snacks many meets later, the treasures at the bottom of the swim bag.
Water is Always Going Up Your Nose
Something that is so unavoidable that it’s not even annoying anymore: Getting water up your nose. You could have done the best turn of your life, yet the water still ends up going into your nose.
As an age grouper once myself, I smile at my experiences in the sport of swimming. These points are a right of passage for all competitive swimmers on this journey we share.
It’s been 60 years since I was a swim kid but I had my fair share of ear infections and bloodshot eyes ( no googles then)