What do USA National Team parents do at big international swimming competitions?
This is the burning questions that’s been assigned to SwimSwam, and we’ve dug deep to find the answer.
At the 2013 FINA World Championships, or any major international competition, it appears swim parents of elites spend a lot of time managing nerves and excitement. Many of them are pros in their own right, meaning their children have been representing Team USA for four to five years. They know the drill. Trying to walk a mile in their shoes, managing nerves and excitement entails sightseeing, eating good food in faraway lands, and watching world class swimming competitions. On the surface, this may sound like a cakewalk, a vacation even, but when your pride and joy is putting everything they’ve got in the pool, it’s not so easy…. Or is it?
I’ve been on countless National Team trips as a swimmer and as a swimming ambassador, and from what I’ve seen, swim parents have a great time!
They bond quickly. Swim parents speak a language unto themselves. Carpool, Christmas training and weekend swim meets are as ingrained and unconscious as breathing. It’s what they do. Swim parents carry this with them. It’s in their skin. Swim parents immediately recognize this in each other and bond like new-born puppies to a chew toy.
Elite swim parents don’t sweat the small stuff. There are no armchair coaches among them. Their children have risen through the ranks lap by lap, practice by practice, taper by taper. The work is done. They recognize this fact, and that their kids merely need to see them in the stands and know they are present to feel supported.
Swim parents do experience stress. They act like they’re easy-going at big meets, but it’s clear they’re hoping for the best. However, they don’t show it. It’s in the small moments that you recognize this…when they think no one’s looking and their faces harden with concern (parental love) as their children step onto the blocks. This is understandable, but it appears they manage to keep the nerves at bay until it time to wring their hands and take deep breaths.
Outside of the pool they laugh a lot. As mentioned above, they bond and stick together (very much like their own version of a National Team). Often you see them going to or coming from sessions laughing, confirming social plans, etc. Talk about the meet is minimal. They seem to do everything in their power to enjoy the present moment. For Leslie Berens, Ricky Berens mom (a swim coach in her own right), this means swimming laps when she can. At the 2013 FINA Worlds, she couldn’t swim without removing her stitches. (She suffered a gardening accident apparently.) Fortunately Missy Franklin’s mother is a doctor, and that’s where the feature photo comes in….
I must admit that my parents always enjoyed the social aspect of the years I spent club swimming. We didn’t travel outside of the country at any point (Hey, I just wasn’t that good), but we did probably travel a good 300-400 miles in any givwn month to swim meets up and down CA.
As far as elite swimmers go, I do tire of the relentless focus put on some parents over others…to the point of over exposure (I won’t mention names, say of one now retired legend).
Well, in the 1970’s I never traveled more than Ventura or down to San Diego in Community College. There was some big meet for very good age groupers like North… Read more »
Nice video from last year with Missy, her family and her coach.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxBHdw5LSRc
I know parents go to meets in the states and college meets but getting to travel around the world to see your kid swim is really something special and very expensive.How many parents and families actually made the trip?
…Don, in my day, parents paid their own expenses, but USAs provided package deals that were more affordable than the sticker price. I believe USAs strives to make this available to parents now, but I’m not a 100% sure about it. (I’ll ask a few friends.) I do know that it’s a challenge for USAs to manage Nat Team travel, a big undertaking & expense. Depending on the host city, the country, the governing body, the situation varies…
Haha!
One of the great parts of swimming is that competitors get to know each other, coaches to coaches and same for parents. My mother’s trick was to use my nickname used only in the family and at the end of race would be asked who she was cheering for and that struck it up.
Her all time favorite was meeting Andy Devine character actor in “Stagecoach”1939 with John Wayne and many movies later a sidekick in Westerns. His son Tad was in the final 200 for relay and in the next one his son Dennis was in the final 200 fly both USC. She was psyched that he called out to her after 4 years as he remembered her.
Swim parents sure do know how to have fun…during my college swimming years, I’m pretty sure the amount of drinking the parents did over conference weekend rivaled our best efforts post-meet
Not a chance!
Not the parents, you must be thinking of the chaperones.
I must admit that my parents always enjoyed the social aspect of the years I spent club swimming. We didn’t travel outside of the country at any point (Hey, I just wasn’t that good), but we did probably travel a good 300-400 miles in any givwn month to swim meets up and down CA.
As far as elite swimmers go, I do tire of the relentless focus put on some parents over others…to the point of over exposure (I won’t mention names, say of one now retired legend).
Well, that one retired legend got a hell of a lot more focus than the other swimmers, too. Kinda goes hand in hand.