I wrote this post in 2015 when my daughter was swimming in college. Watching the Olympics and having a connection to a few of the swimmers made me miss my swim mom days.
My daughter diving in for the 1000 free during a dual meet. Utes vs. USC. She’s the one with pointed toes.
We went to my daughter’s first college dual meet of the season this weekend. I loved every minute of the meet, but even more, spending time with her. She invited several swim teammates out to dinner. It felt like the sprinkle of rain after a long drought—listening to them laugh and talk about their meet and practices.
I didn’t realize how much I miss the little daily things about being an age-group swim mom.
I miss the kids hanging out. So many personalities, so many different families, all bound together by one common goal. Swimming.
My son and swim team friends. He’s in front.
I have a fierce loyalty to our team and the couple times when factions of parents split off to form their own teams, I was shocked and hurt. It felt like losing members of my immediate family. I’d always wonder why? I never thought we had a bad experience—maybe at times less than perfect—but I guess that’s part of the reason I didn’t understand.
Good times were sitting together in the stands cheering for all our kids. Getting the new team t-shirts, sipping Starbucks on a chilly winter morning under the pop-up tents. Chatting and laughing with parents while we waited to see what the day’s meet would bring. I loved working with our parents and officials under the admin tent, in awards, or in the snack bar at our home meets.
The team cheer at an away meet.
I loved having kids over to the house to hang out between morning and afternoon practices during long hot summer days. I loved cooking eggs, bacon and sausage in bulk for a pack of hungry swimmers. I was amazed at how much they could eat as a group. I loved having the team over for painting t-shirts for a big meet.
Swim team girls painting t-shirts for a meet in our back yard with their coach.
I loved listening to the kids laughing about silly things that happened in practice and the goofy songs they played and sang to like “Funkytown” and the “Numa Numa Song.”
Most of all, l I loved seeing my kids smiling, laughing and enjoying their friendships. Throughout the years, my kids were surrounded by amazing kids, families and coaches. Just being in the background was a joy.
I miss those days.
Group photo on t-shirt painting day.
My daughter receiving ribbons from her first coach.
What do you miss about earlier years in your life?
This is a post I wrote in 2021 during the Tokyo Olympics. Caeleb Dressel had seven Olympic Gold Medals at the time and was known as “Captain America.” Fast forward to 2024 and he began the Olympics earning a gold medal in the 4 X 100 free relay. I was so happy for him making a comeback. He took time off to get through mental health issues and found joy again in swimming. He also got married and the Dressels have a baby boy.
This past week, he had a heartbreaking day where he didn’t win a medal in the 50 free or even qualify for the 100 fly finals. NBC zoomed in on his face as he cried. I thought that was totally out of line.
Saturday, Dressel earned his ninth gold for the mixed relay where men and women swim. My daughter’s opinion was this: On Dressel’s bad day, he shouldn’t have swam the 100 fly on the mixed relay. He had two 100 fly’s and a 50 free to swim that day. As a sprinter, that’s a heavy load.On Sunday, Dressel swam the 4 X 100 medley relay and had the fastest 100 fly time. That was his last event and the relay earned silver. Without Dressel’s 100 fly fast swim, the US might not have medaled.
My son and swim team friend winning the high school Physics cardboard boat race in the city pool. She competed in Beijing and London Olympics in distance freestyle races.
From my 2021 post:
I wrote a an article called Why Isn’t Caeleb Dressel a Household Name? for SwimSwam in 2018. Dressel had competed in NCAA championships and had broken barriers like the 40-second mark in the 100-yard freestyle. But at the time, only swim nerds knew his name.
After the Tokyo Olympics, I’m sure he will be better known, but after the Olympics fades away will his name fade, too?
Swimming like gymnastics are collegiate sports and there’s not much attention to them until Olympic years. It all comes down to money in my opinion. Football and basketball are money makers for schools. Swimming loses revenue. No fans are buying tickets, the meets are free and sparsely attended. The pool costs money to maintain.
During my years as a swim parent, I wondered how to get swimming to be more popular. In 2019 the International Swimming League began holding competitions.There are teams in the US and abroad filled with the world’s swimming stars. The teams compete against each other and it gives swimmers a chance to earn money, race and hopefully get more fans to appreciate swimming. But it isn’t televised, at least I haven’t seen it. I think it’s live streamed.
Here’s a post from X that I loved on Sunday, August 4, 2024. It’s from my editor at SwimSwam:
Here’s the article I wrote that mentions Caeleb Dressel and wonders how to get more people into swimming:
We witnessed amazing things this past weekend watching the 2018 Men’s D1 NCAA meet. Who can believe that a human being broke 40 seconds in the 100 free, or 18 seconds in the 50 free—not to mention 43 seconds in the 100 fly? Caeleb Dressel should be a household name this week after breaking through these barriers at his final meet as a senior swimming for the University of Florida.
We watched from home on the computer, something that wasn’t possible years ago. The live stream was clear, the narration entertaining and professional. I remember trying to watch one of our friend’s kids at Trials in 2008 and the production quality wasn’t great and the livestream paused repeatedly. Swim coverage has improved significantly through the years, but I wonder if the audience has increased?
Of course, Olympic sports don’t get the attention at the collegiate level as the big money sports, like football and basketball. In addition, we hear heartbreaking news of universities canceling swim programs regardless of high GPAs or how many times the teams win conference meets, like the recent news of Eastern Michigan University. We have to wait every four years for the Olympics to come around to show the nation how great our swimmers are. Is there anything we can do as swim enthusiasts to change this? In all reality, probably not much. I personally don’t have the power to change TV schedules or viewing habits, but I can work on several little things.
Here are a few ideas about how we can help the popularity of swimming:
ONE
Scorekeeping. We’ve had friends come to meets and they don’t know what’s going on because there’s never a score posted. In other sports, you know which team is winning. Is it possible to post scores often and prominently at meets where they are keeping team scores?
TWO
Bring a friend to the pool. Whether your team has a “bring a friend day” or you ask one of your child’s friends to visit practice, we can reach out to more kids and introduce them to swimming.
THREE
Keep swimming fun. One reason why kids quit swimming is it’s “not fun anymore.” By allowing our kids time to goof off with their friends around the pool deck, either before or after practice, and keeping our attitudes light, we may keep our kids in the pool for more years.
FOUR
Invite friends and family to a meet. We can share our excitement and enthusiasm with our friends and family. Maybe not ask them to sit on the deck with us for two or three days, but have them stop by for an hour or two. Explain what’s going on so they can follow along and maybe they’ll catch the swimming bug.
FIVE
Be an ambassador. Talk about swimming with your non-swimming friends and share how much the sport has helped your kids. Encourage friends at any age to get into the pool and enjoy the great feeling of floating in the water. It’s never too late to join a Masters team.
My daughter has her foot on the blocks as they dive in for the 200 free. The swimmer in the lead is Olympic medalist Abbey Weitzeil. This was the summer of 2013, while they were still in high school.
Are you watching the Olympics? What are your favorite sports to watch? Do you keep track of those sports on off Olympic years? Also, what do you think of this year’s Olympics with all the ups, downs, and drama?
A pool overlooking the Gulf of California in Puerto Penasco.
What was I thinking when I named my blog “Bleuwater” back in 2014? Today, I’m wondering why did I come up with such a difficult, hard to spell name?
I blame it on Mom, may she rest in peace.
Her favorite color was blue. She was intense about her likes and usually dressed in navy blue. Everyone who knew her also knew blue was her color. Her favorite restaurant, where my mom and dad went for special occasions, was called the Bleu Dolphin, with the French spelling of blue.
She took me there a couple times for a cup of chowder and Dungeness crab cocktail. I was wildly impressed as a child by the restaurant, the food and the name. My mom thought the name was “highbrow.” Her world was defined by things and people she’d call highbrow or lowbrow.
When I started by blog, I was living in a world of water. Summers at the beach and six days a week at the pool as a swim mom. I was so involved with my kids’ swim team that I earned a polo shirt embroidered with the team logo and “Extreme Swim Parent.” I loved to wear that shirt to parent teacher meetings at my kids’ school. The look on the teacher’s face was well worth it!
There’s the story of the name of my blog. Nine years later, perhaps I’d like to change it, but I’ll hang onto “Bleuwater” in memory of Mom and my love of the ocean, lakes and pools.
If you’re a blogger what’s the story behind your blog’s name?
Two mornings in a row it’s been too hot to walk. I convinced my husband to kick with me in the pool. He set his timer for 30 minutes and off we went. I didn’t want to swim freestyle because I had just washed my hair. I know that sounds prissy, but I can’t stand washing my hair every day. So I put my hair up and kicked until my lower back hurt and my legs got sore.
A really cool coincidence is friends from Palm Springs moved one mile from us in Arizona three months after we moved. This was without knowledge of each other moving. The friend and I were school moms at the Catholic school our kids attended. They lived only a few blocks from us in Palm Springs and I golfed weekly with this friend.
We lost touch with each other when we both got hyper involved with our kids’ sports. My kids were swimmers — their kids were hockey players.
Hockey led them out of town to Anaheim where there was a competitive team. We lacked hockey in Palm Springs.
This past weekend they invited us over for a birthday party. We spent a couple hours sitting and standing in the pool while wasps swarmed around us. My friend’s husband stood in the pool with a can of Raid trying to keep the wasps at bay. It was a fun afternoon, but today I have sunburned hands.
My husband said everyone but me kept their hands in the water. I apparently talk with my hands. We were laughing and talking and I was gesturing all over the place. I’ve never had sunburned hands before.
The weekend before we had them over and I cooked sea bass, grilled corn on the cob, asparagus and a brown and wild rice dish. It was another fun night of friendship and laughter.
I feel a connection to this couple unlike the new friends I’ve made in our neighborhood through book club, the newsletter and coffee. It’s because we go back for decades, raised our kids together and have shared memories. It’s also amazing that we ended up in homes so close together because we are out in the sticks a good 30-minute drive north of Scottsdale.
What friends do you feel the most connection with and why?
My daughter diving during at a swim meet where the swimmers were selected from So Cal teams.
As a swim parent, I saw my share of obnoxious swim parents. And I had my own moments of not being able to contain myself — although not to the point of punching a ref out — or yelling at a coach.
I saw so many parents taking over their kids’ sports, coaching from the stands, and yelling at their children when they had a less than awesome swim, that I wrote weekly articles with sports parenting tips. You can read them on SwimSwam Parent Tips on my blog or on SwimSwam HERE.
We hear about “those” parents in the news. Their videos of violence on the field or gym go viral.
I saw an article today that had the perfect solution. Duct tape.
Last July, a woman on a flight from Dallas to Charlotte bit a flight attendant, then tried to open a door to the plane while screaming. Crisis was averted when she was duct-taped to her seat.
An excellent start! Now let’s get out the duct tape for sports parents, who need to sit down, shut up and remember that Pee Wee football is not the Super Bowl. In Mississippi this month, an umpire presiding over a ballgame played by 12-year-olds was punched in the face and given a black eye by a woman wearing a Mother of the Year shirt who had been thrown out of the stands for cursing. “It gets harder and harder to staff these tournaments because no one wants to listen to the verbal abuse and run the risk of what happened to me happening to them,” the umpire, Kristie More, told WLBT.
Like other forms of bad behavior (deaths in car crashes are way up), hyper-reactive-sports-parenting seems to have spiked during the pandemic, when tempers have been running as hot as Bidenflation. Even before that, anyone who was thinking about helping out the kids by signing up to be an umpire or a referee would have been smart to buy a Kevlar jacket and make sure his insurance was paid up. “There has been a huge drop off in the number of available referees and officials in youth sports due to the obnoxious behavior of parents,” Rick Wolff host of WFAN radio’s “The Sports Edge” told The Washington Post in 2020.
My daughter with her relay celebrating in the pool.
When I started my blog in 2014, my focus was financial news for women. I had a short stint as a financial adviser working with my husband. At that time, I thought I had lots of knowledge to share. I had passed all the exams and went through training by two big firms.
One fact that stood out to me was that women own the majority of the wealth in our nation, yet they have less knowledge about investing than men. I thought I found a perfect niche to blog about. Funny thing, nobody wanted to read those posts. Maybe it was because I was new and didn’t have an audience — but when I wrote about other topics, I got way more views and comments.
My next niche was parenting — particularly sports parenting. I submitted one of my blog posts to the most read swim website, SwimSwam, and got feedback from the owner/founder Gold Medal Mel, Mel Stewart. He asked me to start writing parenting advice. He wanted me to write once a month for three months. After that trial period, I wrote every week. You can check out those articles HERE. I continued with that for six years, mostly basing my articles on my past mistakes. I didn’t want newer sports parents to go through the drama and issues that I had. I was thrilled when parents would email me and ask for advice. I started an “Ask Swim Mom” column from those emails.
My other favorite topics to blog about were about college admissions and being the parent of college kids. I learned a lot during those years. But as my kids grew, I felt I had less to offer in the parenting arena. In fact, I think my swim parenting articles put pressure on my daughter or made her feel exposed. I realized I’m far from an expert. Who am I to give advice?
Now, my blogging is me slogging through this phase of life trying to figure it out. What I enjoy most about blogging now is the community of bloggers I read every day. It’s more satisfying and supportive than before.
I’m curious how you see your blog evolving or changing through time. Do you feel you have a niche and what is it? What are your favorite topics to blog about?
I ran across an interesting email that talked about motivating a student-athlete. It reminded me that motivation is internal and no matter how much a parent or coach may want to light a fire under someone — it doesn’t work that way. This is an excerpt from the email from sports parenting coach David Benzel of Growing Champions for Life:
The following situation came from a coach, but it could have easily been a parent. I was asked if there’s anything that could be done about a 14-year-old athlete who is loaded with natural talent but has lost his motivation.
“The desire to work and improve seems to be missing.” said this coach.
While this is frustrating for a coach or a parent who takes a personal interest in an athlete, the short answer is “love him where he’s at.”
Despite the urge to become a protector of this athlete’s career, you cannot give someone a “want to” if they don’t have one of their own. You can create opportunities, provide an inspiring environment, and tell uplifting stories, but a “want to” comes from the inside, not the outside.
There’s usually a story behind the story when dealing with an athlete who has lost his motivation. It may stem from a relationship issue at home, strife with a coach, or other pressing priorities.
As parents, we need to let out kids live their lives and be cheerleaders on the side. We cannot make them do anything like a sport or piano lessons because we want it. We can manipulate and bribe, but that’s not an ideal way to build a healthy relationship. I like the advice to “love him where’s he’s at.”
I wanted my daughter to love ballet because I did. She hated it and big tears would run down her cheeks when I made her go. That was true of piano lessons, too. I really wanted her to stick it out. My son loved piano. I was already driving him, so she could have her lessons, too. She loved swimming instead. My son like swimming, too, but with severe asthma it was a battle staying well during the winter months. He’d make progress only to get sick and miss weeks and weeks of practice. His interest moved to music in high school and he formed a band and performed with his non-swim friends.
I love my kids for who they are — not for what they did. I hope they know that now.
My son and swim team friends.
In what ways have you tried to motivate your kids?
