There are more than 65,000 Masters swimmers in the United States representing nearly 1,500 swimming teams across the country, and as with so many other organizations, meets have been postponed multiple times and even canceled altogether.<\/p>\n
Swimmers around the country have been missing out on competing at the local and national level. Perhaps even more important to them, they are missing out on what happens out of the water at these local and national meets: camaraderie.<\/p>\n
Camaraderie is something very unique to Masters. Swimmers are there to compete and keep up with one of their passions. But they are doing this with people in their own age groups. Get to talking, and the similarities start to grow.<\/p>\n
THE SOCIAL ASPECT<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of us just do it for the social aspect. That is the one time we see each other\u2014at meets,\u201d said Nadine Day<\/strong>, former president of U.S. Masters Swimming and a current Masters swimmer at Indy Aquatics. \u201cThat is our commonality, the swimming part. We meet people and their families. My daughter was basically born on the pool deck. She went to her first meet with me when she was a month old!<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a lot of social aspect in Masters swimming. I am somewhat competitive in my age group, but that is not my focus. It is the social aspect and growing the sport. That is one of the main reasons why I swim. We have missed that.\u201d<\/p>\n For months during the pandemic, pools were closed around the country\u2014and the world\u2014as COVID-19 spread around the globe in waves.It has kept practices on hold and also traveling to meets, which, of course, means no competition and no connection with fellow swimmers around the country.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has been tough. I am used to traveling every month. Zoom helps. It has helped us stay in touch with each other,\u201d Day said. \u201cWhen I travel internationally, I see my friends that I only see at Worlds every year or every other year, and that has been tough, too.\u201d<\/p>\n PROMOTING THE SPORT<\/p>\n With nearly an entire year of Masters swimming lost, it is now a year of promoting the sport lost. That is one of the biggest challenges of Masters swimming, especially because of its name, which can make joining seem intimidating.<\/p>\n \u201cThe name is the biggest issue. It is actually adult swimming. It is not \u2018Masters\u2019 because you are great swimmers. We have had Olympians, but the majority of our people are fitness swimmers,\u201d Day said. \u201cWe also have the crossbreed of the triathlon athletes, which has become big. A lot of the people I have coached have been runners who are swimming to get fit. They were surprised they got more conditioning out of swimming. It was a challenge for them, and people like challenges such as that.\u201d<\/p>\n Day said after she was a college swimmer at Northwestern, she didn\u2019t even know Masters swimming existed. She actually joined to help one of the high school swimmers she was coaching.<\/p>\n \u201cI was coaching high school, and one of my swimmers was injured. I was a PT at the time as well. She fractured her pelvis and her ribs in a car accident. Her goal was to get back and swim her senior year. She wanted me to swim with her and get back into it, too. I was injured in college as a freshman and was able to come back and swim a bit my senior year. So I swam Masters and had my first meet in Evanston,\u201d Day said. \u201cI just started getting involved more and volunteering more.\u201d<\/p>\n A LIFE-CHANGING ACTIVITY<\/p>\n Laurie Hug got into Masters swimming after college, and it has been life-changing.\u201cI graduated from University of Maryland in 1987 and failed to get the Olympic Trials cut that summer, so I retired (from the sport), started working, and I put on weight. I got back into lap swimming at the local YMCA about a year later, but I had no idea that there were competitions for adults. I started training with a small group of former college swimmers there and found out about USMS.<\/p>\n \u201cI went to my first meet in 1989 and have never looked back,\u201d Hug said. \u201cHad I known, I would have started as soon as my college swim career had ended. My last meet was December 2019 (because of the pandemic), so this is the longest I have gone without competing in a meet since the break after college.\u201dS<\/p>\n he is part of the GAAC (Germantown Academy Aquatic Club) Masters in Pennsylvania, which is a training group for the Colonials 1776 team.\u201cWe had to be shut down after our March 6 (2020) practice because a student from Germantown Academy had a family member who had the first COVID case in the Philly suburbs,\u201d Hug said. \u201cAll the other pools started shutting down over the next week, so our program was put on hold. We held weekly Zoom \u2018happy hours,\u2019 and I sent links for different dryland options out to the team, including a few scavenger hunts, where we looked for various items while running\/hiking\/walking. The weekly meetings were the highlight of the week for a lot of us.\u201d<\/p>\n The club is now back on a limited basis because of COVID-19 protocols in an outdoor pool. Just being together has been huge and worth braving the weather, Hug said.\u201cSome of our regular swimmers travel from over 45 minutes away to swim with us,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have also welcomed members from other clubs who have had issues getting pool time. We\u2019ve been holding practices regardless of the weather as long as the roads are passable. I\u2019ve coached in snowstorms, icy rain and high winds! When the weather has looked bad, I asked the swimmers if they wanted to just cancel (the practice), but they did not. It has been incredible to see how adaptable everyone has been.<\/p>\n \u201cSome could swim at local Ys, but they love the camaraderie of our group. One of the highlights is at the end of our Sunday morning workouts, several swimmers do race-25s or 50s. We miss racing, so this is a lot of fun. The blocks are icy now, so we are doing it from a push, but we did do a race off the blocks in our first snowstorm.\u201cIt has become a bonding experience for us. We have such a great swimming family that I think has become strengthened by this.\u201d<\/p>\n