My story, part 9

It was the summer time when the kids’ swim coach gathered together the most promising swimmers and encouraged them to sign up with the more elite swim team, the one he’d come from.

Then he dropped the bomb that he was moving to Korea. “I don’t know if you knew, but my Mom’s from Korea,” he informed us. I was like, duh. “And I’m moving there to be with her family,” he finished.

We didn’t move to the other team. Our team met close to our home, and I have attitude about change. And it just so happened that we were so busy that fall that we only had like 1 day available for swimming. So we started at our club, which hired a few young women, graduates of the swim club, to coach. We’d been to maybe two practices when the school closed the pool for repairs.

The break was kind of welcome for a minute. I mean, we were busy. But then the repairs dragged on. And I started hearing rumors that many of those promising swimmers had joined the other club. Ultimately, it was the kids’ friends that made the decision easier. We switched to the elite club so the kids could swim with their friends.

The new team, was no joke. Both kids were put in a remedial lane until they could build up their stamina. They were swimming 300 yards for warm-up. And it turned out that they didn’t swim in the age group competitions we were used to; they were a USA team, going for state and national meets.

The kids felt like they were thrown out of the frying pan into the fire. . .
(to be continued. . .)