The Swim Meet

Preparing for Your First Swim Meet; Stock Photo from Jack Spitser/Spitser Photography

You can hear it before you see it.

A cacophony of young voices, shouting, laughing, squealing; punctuated by PA announcements, shrill whistles, and cheers. Oh, and splashing water of course.

Welcome to the Great American Swim Meet.

Warning: this is not a place to go if you are claustrophobic, allergic to chlorine or averse to slimy bathroom floors piled with wet towels and abandoned flip flops.

It is probably one of the reasons that Martians have only done fly-bys over the years.

As you walk through the pool gates, you notice that the small kids have their names penned on their bare backs and a long list of event numbers listed on their legs. Frightening to the uninitiated.

Officious looking women with painted toes and cute little skirts circle the pool carrying clip boards and occasionally shout names in a frantic tone of urgency. “Ronald Smith, Ronald Smith, please report to lane three. Ronald Smith.”

As grandparents, there is a certain amount of inconvenience baked into the cake.

First, let’s take parking.

Neighborhood swim club meets are in (wait for it) neighborhoods. The large pool is adjacent to a small parking lot, barely adequate for 50 cars. The concept is designed to encourage club members to walk from their homes to use the pool.

So, when 150 swimmers accompanied by an army of coaches, parents, volunteers, siblings, and grandparents descend on the pool, parking expands into the neighborhood like a giant spider web filling every street within a quarter-mile radius. If every family only brought one car or kids carpooled (perish the thought), this goat rodeo would be manageable. But in 2026, mom comes early with one swimmer, dad arrives with the carryout dinner and the other kids, and the grandparents race in at the last minute. One swimmer therefore involves on average 3 vehicles. 150 swimmers = 450 cars. Remember that quarter-mile radius? It is now a half mile or more.

The neighbors have long since given up trying to keep vehicles off their yards at the edge of the road. Hopeless. Even with one sign that I saw. “Warning: Land Mines”

Next challenge: reunite with your people

After the hike from your car to the pool, you search for the family, place your folding chairs in a space no larger than your spot on the deck of a ship headed to Ellis Island, and settle in for dinner on your lap. “Who got the Original Chicken Sandwich?”

Next: the bad news.

While “dining”, you ask that fearful question. “So, when do the kids swim?”

“They are in events 45, 62, and 84” comes the answer.”

I knew I should have gotten my tags renewed yesterday.

Then you remember that other little fact from last year. Each event has more than one heat. You’re going to miss your Medicare Annual Physical on Wednesday.

But alas, there is early drama to spice up the evening.

In the “Too Young to Be in a Swim Meet” category, one little girl gets a message flashing in her brain halfway down the pool lane. “This is as far as I can go...I am going to drown!!!!!”.

With that, she latches onto a lane line and shrieks “Mamma, Mamma, Mamma.” Her face is crimson and distorted into a frightening scrunch.

We all instinctively stand up. All, except for the lifeguard who has seen this movie before. She glances up and keeps scrolling on her phone. By the time she’d have gotten her hair wet, the parents would have it sorted.

A woman walks (walks!) to the side of the pool closest to our flailing butterfly. She kneels and encourages our little maiden to swim laterally across the two lanes to her waiting arms. After two more shrieks do nothing to change the situation, she miraculously complies, and her calm mother lifts her out of the pool to safety.

It took barely a minute.

But, thirty years from now an AI-generated psychiatrist will be asking the question, “When was the first time you felt abandoned by your family?”

The night wears on. Long shadows turn to dusk, twilight, and darkness. Our swimmers splash down the pool with their mates gulping down Italian Ice and shouting their names. The people take on the cast of shadows on Plato’s cave walls. I can’t make any more sense of the evening than Plato would have.

We rise and burst with joy as our family swimmers compete, succeed, and almost succeed. A first-in-heat ribbon is awarded to the youngest of our tribe, and the evening falls into some sense of clearer understanding.

That moment of joy will also be told 30 years from now, and I can only hope she’ll remember Popsie and GiGi were there.