Last year Ethan and Libby heard about Borah Swim Team. They desperately wanted to join but the season had already started. I was a little surprised. I had never even considered that there was a city pool swim team and if I had, I would not have entertained the notion that my kids would want to be a part of it. My kids had different ideas than mine, which is not unusual.
They really wanted to join swim team. They begged, they pleaded, they offered to pay for the team. I told them that if they earned half of the money, we would enroll them this summer. They pulled weeds, mowed lawns, cleaned houses, and sold lemonade. When registration opened my kids gave me every penny that they had promised.
We enrolled and became Borah Barracudas. The kids had second thoughts. I told them to give it a chance. They went on the first day (Ethan in the pool by 8:30am and Libby by 9:15am) and they both informed me they were never going back. It was cold, they didn't know what they were doing, and all the other kids were so, so much better. I promised them it was going to be hard, but it would get better. They didn't believe me. The next day was better. The third day was worse. It was like a roller coaster that we paid a lot of money for. That happened every weekday for the first two months of the summer. What had we gotten ourselves in for?
My kids started the summer barely able to swim 25 yards. By the end of the summer they could swim freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke, and butterfly. They were swimming 500 yards or more each morning in practice and competing in swim meets. By the end of the year they were still among the slowest for their age groups, but they had improved immensely. In Ethan's first race it took him over a minute and a half to swim fifty yards freestyle and he got disqualified because he took a couple breaks in the middle. His last race of the season he swam 50 yards in 49 seconds and looked like a machine doing it. Both Ethan and Libby can now swim better than either of their parents.
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