Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2015-06-06 04:20 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2015-06-06 04:20 pm
[ SECRET POST #3076 ]
⌈ Secret Post #3076 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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17. [WARNING for rape/sexual abuse]
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 103 secrets from Secret Submission Post #440.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Re: Another Ask Questions thread!
In Canada, at least, school swim teams won't get you much of anywhere. They're fairly casual and don't train all year round. People with a serious interest in the sport join private (usually region-based, but not always) teams. These teams have subgroups (mine were called A through D group) that practice anywhere from 3 to 11 times a week, 45 minutes to 2 hours. They are to some extent divided by age, but they were largely based on skill level and level of dedication to the sport (for example, at age 14 I was in "B" group where we practiced 9 times/week for an hour and a half, but there were kids as young as 12 and as old as 17 in that group). It was the "major" private team in my city, and produced all of the national and international level swimmers we had there. We'd go to meets where we'd compete against other major regional private teams in either local competition, or provincial-level competition. These were tiered as follows: AAA, AA, A-level. The "AAAs" were essentially the provincial championships. Above this, the best swimmers on each team with the best times could also go to the Junior National level, and compete in a national tournament, until they reached 18.
However, the problem with this - as you can likely tell - is the insane number of training hours. Swimming is one of those sports where the number of hours you put into practice more or less directly correlates to how good you get (limited by body type, but you'll quickly find yourself "encouraged" out of the top groups of the major teams, or into the minor teams - which I'll get into in a second - if you don't have a swimmer's build and aren't tall, because you're not going to make it). It's also in the water so fairly minimal extreme stress is put on your body, unlike say track or football, where if you practice too much you'll get injured for sure. I also did track, and they practice 3-5 times a week for an hour even at the top levels. It's much more manageable.
So what do you do if you want to swim, but not hardcore 4LYFE? Well you go to one of the minor teams. There are two tiers of minor teams: summer teams, and school-based. Summer teams have casual practices during the rest of the year, maybe 2-3 times a week for an hour to an hour and a half, then gear up for rigorous training when school's out. It's what you do if you still want to have a social life and good grades and still swim. The problem with this, though, is that you can't really compete with the major teams at this level of practice - except in sprints (again I'll get to this later). So the summer teams have their own meets and even their own provincial championships. (In some categories, like sprints and relays, the times are actually comparable to the other major teams, but in every other category they're not even close.)
The other minor teams are school-based. They practice very casually, usually only 1-3 times a week, only during the "swim" season of the school year (fall, where I lived) and don't have professional coaches. Because sometimes, in a fit of school spirit, major-level competitive swimmers will decide to join their school's teams, and there's absolutely no hope in the world of a normal person competing with the thousands of hours of practice they've had, the school competitions have three tiers: A (presently-competing person on a major team), B (person who used to compete on a major team but hasn't for at least six months, or competes on a summer team), C (never had any competitive experience, or has been to no practices for over six months). Thus the school championships turn into A-tier retreads of the AAAs, B-tier retreads of the summer provincial championships, and C-tier free-for-alls, only with far fewer participants.
What I personally ended up doing was joining a major team for most of my "career" as it were, where I got to the Junior National level and had to make a choice: I was offered a position in A Group to start trying for international-level competitions, but the level of competition was already destroying my grades. My grades were going to determine my scholarship and college-entry prospects, so this was not good. The most anyone in A Group ever wrangled out was a B-average. Choosing that option would mean deciding to make that my future career, essentially. This was when I was 15, and had been swimming competitively since 7.
I decided not to do it; instead I switched to a summer team in high school. I also switched my specialty from middle distance to sprinting, freestyle. This meant I could still keep doing the sport I loved at a relatively high level, but also got my grades back up to scholarship level. I actually (used to, I imagine, at this point) hold a couple of summer competition records. I also did the school competition thing, at B-tier, and got to see a lot of my old major team friends again, which was pretty fun. Got to lol at some guy in C-level who thought he could outswim me just because he was 6'4" and jacked (and a dude). No, son, you don't even know how much I've swum. His 50m freestyle best time was 34 seconds. I hadn't swum it that slow since I was 12 years old, lol. I could've gotten back into it as a sprint-specialist in college, but I chose not to. So that was it for me, from ages 7-17. Now I mostly run.
During/after high school, re: career options? I'll take the example of one of my friends, who chose to take a spot in the A Group and start competing for international competitions. Each country has a limited number of spots for people to send to these, usually, so now you're competing against the other A Groups in other major teams nation-wide. Only a few people on my team, as in any team, ever actually did this. She swam right through high school and college and only made it to the Commonwealth Games, once, in one race. (There were others who made it to the PanAm, Worlds, etc.) Now you're practicing so much your grades are crap, so if you're good (and this point you'd better have quit if you're not), you'll get a sports scholarship to college and join a faculty (like physical education) where you only need a B-average. This will teach you how to become a coach, because that's going to be your only post-swimming option related to swimming. But it does actually pay reasonable well, so that's no so bad.
If you're good enough to be Worlds and Olympic caliber, your country will often sponsor your training, meaning you can keep swimming after college without getting a job; if you're good enough to rank highly in these competitions, you can get corporate sponsorships (usually with swim apparel companies like TYR). Most people quit after they "peak" (which is to say the point at which their times don't get appreciably better, in spite of the same or increased training, or even start to get worse) which usually happens to just about everyone somewhere between their late teens and late 20s, depending on the person. A few (almost exclusively girls) will peak in their mid-teens instead, and a few (almost exclusively guys) will peak in their early 30s. But with rare exceptions, people who do this are usually too underdeveloped/old to compete with the people who peaked in the late teens to early 20s ideal zone at major competitions. (Personally, I never peaked, so I was probably set to in that zone; my friend, who is now a coach, peaked in her early 20s just after college with one last hurrah.)
At that point you either: do coaching, go back to school to get your BEd so you can be PE teacher, or choose another career entirely. Usually people who've gone as far as the international stage will keep doing Masters competitions later in life. These are age-tiered meets for people who've already peaked, from late 20s all the way to 80s & 90s. I might do that at some point, but for now, I'm happy running.
Re: Another Ask Questions thread!
(Anonymous) 2015-06-07 10:09 am (UTC)(link)My question was inspired by a fic I'm considering writing (it's still in the research/planning/may-not-see-light-of-day stage though), and you've provided heaps of fodder for thought, plus some intriguing possibilities I'll have to research further. And well, just on its own, it's just fascinating for me to read about, especially since I've never done any competitive sport. Thank you so much! *beams*
Re: Another Ask Questions thread!
Feel free to PM me or poke this thread if you have any more/more specific questions at some point. My email notifications are on.