Can’t break my NaBloPoMo streak!! Day 12 today.
It’s 9 pm and we just recently got home from Asher’s high school swim team parent/athlete meeting. It was from 7-8:30. There’s a brand new head coach, who we met tonight and seems very nice (pretty young/ casual in his hoodie…ha. Probably will be very popular with the high schoolers! ;))
The season starts up next Monday. They swim 6 days a week (from 4:15-6:15 after school, plus Saturdays), and then Mondays and Wednesdays they lift weights from 6:30- 7:30 too. There will be something like 10-12 meets total over the next few months.
It’s a GREAT group of boys, with a big bunch of upper classmen that Asher already knows from club swim. Really great role models, awesome students, hard workers, fast swimmers, etc. He’s very much looking forward to this season! He has several closer friends from school on the team as well.
I managed to get roped into a volunteer position. Which I expected, because there are only 20 swimmers on the team. And swimming is a VERY volunteer heavy sport.
Fortunately, the bigger roles like Board Members, Volunteer Coordinator, Concessions Coordinator, etc are already full. I was asked to be the Senior Scholarship Coordinator. Apparently there is a swimming-based college scholarship that all the senior swimmers will apply and interview for. So, my job will be to organize their applications, gather their reference letters, arrange their interviews with this “scholarship committee”, and I think attend the interviews, too, among some other things. Not sure exactly. Another mom spoke up that she did this role last year and could give me some pointers.
Anyway, it seemed more in my wheelhouse than anything food related. I hate organizing meal-related volunteer tasks. Do not ask me to organize the team meals, or host the team spaghetti dinner*, or figure out how many little bags of trail mix we should buy for the concession stand. I am terrible at that and get very anxious that I will misestimate the amounts, or people won’t like what I picked, etc. Just not my thing!! Gah.
*All families have to help co-host 2 team pasta dinners, but there will be a Lead (NOT me) + 4 families working together on this. I signed up for 2 Wednesday evening dates in January, notably after the holidays, and am hoping I can just be designated to pick up a take out order of a million breadsticks or something.
We also have to volunteer at the home meets. And fundraise.
Also, they said that I guess after every meet, the boys all go out to Culver’s for dinner together, and all the parents go somewhere else (like a local bar/restaurant) for dinner together. (Many meets are on Friday nights.) So, I guess I’m going to be doing a lot swim-watching and, apparently, socializing! (This sounds… fun, but also, I’m not that social. LOL. I’m sure we will go, though.)
Phew, sounds like a busy season coming up. (Or shall I say, another busy season. I’ve written about this before, but basically, every season is a busy season currently…).
Asher literally CANNOT WAIT for this to start though. He’s done club swim since he was 6, but this will be really distinct with the whole super tight-knit team aspect. He’s going to have so much fun!!!!
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for our upstairs fireplace getting fixed today!! The gas valve broke and it took weeks to get the part in. I’ve been really, really missing it as the weather has cooled off. Never mind that it cost $1,200 to fix it…. ughhhhhh……..but it works again!! 🥳
Also, in the absence of any photos in this post, here’s a dog comic that made me laugh:
GRATEFUL KAE 
Sounds like you’ll be crazy busy.
LikeLike
I think it will be busy, but in some ways, it won’t be THAT bad for me because he will just stay after school for the practices. So really we just need to pick him up at 6:15 or 7:30, depending on the day, and I’ll probably delegate that to Ivan as much as possible! ha. Going to the meets will be 1-2x per week but I’ll have to see- maybe we won’t go to all the away meets. For volleyball/soccer we kind of played it by ear depending on the day and what was going on. It may sound worse on paper in some ways than it will really be! (I hope, lol!)
LikeLiked by 1 person
That has been my tactic with volunteering at the kids’ schools — find something that I know how to do (less stressful plus I can add more value in theory). And it’s great when the prior year person can give you some insight and hopefully documentation to help get you started. The swim season sounds very intensive, and I hope it is fun too.
LikeLike
I think we should introduce Sofia to Asher, they’ll have a lot to talk about. Sounds like an exciting season. I don’t get tired of watching swim meet ups.
LikeLike
Yeah, he’s SO excited! It’s funny, because he’s done swim team for years and years now, but this whole high school swim team experience is going to be really different, and it seems way more exciting.
LikeLike
Oof, that feels like such a good experience for the kids, but very intense. What if people have lots of kids, work shifts, etc?
T hasn’t expressed any interest in team sports, he does Scouts, goes to swim lessons, plays a lot of basketball in the driveway. He’s really active, but he seems happiest wandering around in the woods.
We did a taster session for Team GB cycling – and he LOVED it. I’m too nervous to actually watch these shenanigans, but luckily it’s by an Aldi so we can go do the shopping. Their final challenge for the session was to cycle at full speed down a grassy hill, with the assumption that tons of them would come off their bikes. T stayed on his bike the whole way, and has taken this as evidence he’s olympic material. We can only really make it every other week as it’s in town though.
LikeLike
Ha, yes, that thought did cross my mind…. what if I had 6 kids in all different sports?! No idea how people would make that work! One perk for us too is that Ethan actually needs volunteer hours for school, so we can always pawn some hours off on him! 😉
I LOL’ed at the thought of T barreling down a grassy hill at full speed!! omg! Hahaha. That would not be for me! I am kinda of scared of biking, honestly. I mean, I’m totally fine on a flat path or something, but city biking scares me (on real roads) as does “mountain biking” or adventure biking!
LikeLike
That is great that Asher is so excited about this. When he was in club swim he seemed to have a lot of early morning practices so I guess one upside is more sleep for him? I hope you click with other parents on the team. I am wondering how all those parents get a table(s) at a restaurant on a Friday night though. I bet if you didnt feel like going to all of them you could just occasionally show up. I hope the volunteer gig you signed up for isn’t too bad! Kind of cool to be involved in their path towards getting a scholarship, though! I’d much rather have that role than something related to food, too!
LikeLike
I think they usually make reservations for the dinners it sounded like- and there are a couple of local places that are really BIG. Like this one pizza/craft beer place has a really big side room they sometimes use for events, etc so I’m thinking they get that section set aside…
He will be very glad to not have any early morning practices! I think they were considering having the lifting sessions before school, but the boys voted they’d rather have it AFTER swim practice a couple days a week instead.
LikeLike
Wow, this seems like a HUGE time commitment! Any time I’m tempted to start complaining about driving to band events, someone tells me about their kid’s sports schedule, and it makes my head spin. But, this is one of the big reasons Asher chose this school instead of going to Ethan’s, right? I’m glad he’s so excited about it. I’m not sure if I would LOVE all the parental involvement, but I get that it’s an important part of it.
LikeLike
Yes, he’s been waiting for high school swim for years now!! This was one big reason he wanted to go to this school, to swim with these guys.
LikeLike
Wow, that seems like a lot of meets/meetups/practices. So that is 14 hours per week, not including driving! How long does it take you to get to the practices and back (are they in that complex that you took me past?) It is funny because it seems like a lot, but then I remember ski team dry run practices were every day before school for at least an hour, and they were about a 40 min drive each way from my parent’s house, then we had meets every weekend, and the ski hill was about 2 hours away each way, so I guess we had a lot of time spent dedicated to sports (or my parents did!) I loved being on the team, just like Asher, and I know this will be a great memory for him to look back on. Plus if you are doing the scholarships, you will have an insight into what it takes to get one, right?
LikeLike
That’s the thing- in many ways, this is actually EASIER for us than club swim, because the HS practices are right away after school. So whereas for club we need to drive him to and from (which is like 10 minutes each way, or 20 round trip, x2…), in this case he takes the bus to school in the morning, packs his swim stuff, and then just stays after school for practice. We’ll just have to pick him up at 6:15 when he’s done. It’s more all the meets/ some volunteering that will be a big addition, but I guess we were already doing some of that with volleyball and soccer this fall for sure too! Maybe it will be sort of a wash considering that Ethan doesn’t have a winter sport? So even though swim is a little more intense, NOT having a sport for Ethan too may help balance it out I think.
LikeLike
yay! Jack is moving into swim and dive season, too. I am already annoyed at the head swim mom who is an over-emailer. The dive moms have way less to do, so I will of course keep my annoyance to myself 🙂
LikeLike
Haha! Not a dreaded over-emailer!! 😉 SP doesn’t have dive teams, as you probably already know, so I really know nothing about how that side of “swim and dive” works!
LikeLike
I think the scholarship role sounds way more up your alley and kind of fun/productive in a way! You will be great at that.
I think their practice schedule sounds great. My fifth grade daughter is doing club swim for the first time this year (she did a low key summer swim team for the three summers before that) and is enjoying it so far, although she knows that our local high school swim team practices at 5:30am so she keeps reminding me that she’s only doing swim until high school and then she’s quitting! Knowing my daughter, I’m kind of in agreement because she is a night owl and getting up that early would probably make her nonfunctional throughout the day…but it just cracks me up that she’s informing me about her plans to quit something almost four years from now…
LikeLike
Haha, that’s so funny!! I kind of like how she is so matter of fact about what she likes and doesn’t! Although, she may change her mind… 😉 I believe our girls teams only had weight lifting before school this year, no practices. And the boys lucked out somehow that they have NO before school practices! I think there was a vote if they wanted to do lifting before school or after practice, and the vote was for after practice. Which is a very good thing for Asher because he really doesn’t like the early mornings at all.
LikeLike
Oh wow so much volunteering. It sounds ecxhausting even though it is probably fun most times and Asher is excited. Still…
I wish I had a fireplace. I used to have one during on the tv for ours but I ruined the tv as now we have an imprint. The husband ordered a new tv but I am pretty sure fire is forbidden. Sigh.
LikeLike
Aww, yes, I LOVE LOVE LOVE our fireplace. I was so annoyed this fall that it wasn’t working!! It’s become a non-negotiable for me!
LikeLike
This is so exciting for Asher! It sounds like a big time commitment for you, but I’m sure seeing him thriving and enjoying something he loves makes it all a bit easier.
LikeLike
I am excited for Asher and he’s very lucky to have a mom that is so involved and will volunteer… because it sure does sound like a lot of work and commitment. Good for you.
P.S. I can’t wait to use the (gas) fireplace at our new home. No more “TV fireplace” LOL
LikeLike