Our team practices at two facilities on different sides of town. Mostly for space/time reasons, we pretty much have the 13 & overs at one pool and the 12 & unders at another. Over the past few years, we have taken a few steps to help the team stay connected in terms of the young kids knowing the older kids and vice versa. One thing we started doing last year is that when we get to our highest championship meet with the older kids, we send postcards back home to all of the 12 & unders on our team. We have the postcards pre-addressed and stamped, and we distribute them to the senior swimmers to fill in a motivational message or words of encouragement. We usually get a few nice thank yous from parents and the kids seem to appreciate the gesture.
This past weekend we held our annual team awards banquet. The next day I got this email from a parent, and she asked me to read it to our top group:
Dear LY National Swimmers,
As a mother, I pay close attention to the examples that are being set for my children, and I want to let you know that yours has been noted. You, as a group, are polite, kind, hard-working, determined, and extremely talented young people. I love that my boys have people like you setting the tone for them, but also for giving them a model of what they can do and be when they are the “big kids.”
Right now, I have two young swimmers in LY - the oldest just aged up to the 9-10 group. The younger one, however, is the one that I want to tell you about. This little guy got very frustrated half way through the year and wanted to quit, saying it was “too hard.” I struck a deal with him to make it to the 8u championships, then we would let him back off, and even stop swimming if he wanted to. All of his insecurities this past year were intensified by the fact that his older brother is a rather good swimmer, so he had a pretty unrealistic picture in his head of what he should be able to do at 7 years old. If he didn’t enjoy it, this would have been completely fine, but I think it had to do more with the frustration of not hitting the same milestones as his brother. Needless to say, he finished at the end of February with absolutely NO intention of coming back in the fall.
And then he got a post card in the mail from one of you. (I couldn’t read the name, so I’m not sure which of you wrote it!) After the banquet last night, he told me that he wants to keep going, that the simple little one sentence of encouragement from one of YOU made him re-think his stubborn decision to quit.
I don’t know if you realize that these little ones are paying attention, but they are, so thank you. Thank you for taking the time to send these to all of our little ones and for encouraging them! Thank you for being great role models. :)
Good luck in long course!
- A Grateful Mother
