The swim meet

To understand summer’s true meaning to the residents of Annandale, you must understand swim teams and the pools that host them. Their fund raisers, rallies, practices, and meets are the events around which suburban families arrange their summer schedule.

This is the first of at least two photo-essays to educate the uninitiated to the rituals of the suburban summer at poolside. Focus here is on my neighborhood pool, Broyhill Crest Recreation Club (BCRC), which sprawls spaciously under towering oaks at the dead-end of a quiet street in my Annandale neighborhood.

Since we’re already well in to the swim season, I’ll plunge right in and describe a meet held last weekend between BCRC and longtime rival, Bren Mar-Edison Park.
Hosting a swim meet takes hours of planning and hard work, performed selflessly by hard-working parent-volunteers and pool staff. This work goes largely unnoticed and under-appreciated by the throngs of pool-goers. And so it shall remain to this essayist, as their efforts are largely boring and unphotogenic, as the photograph below illustrates. But keep up the good work!

As important to a successful swim meet as the neat, white Ban-Lons of the timers, and a well-stocked snack bar, is Pep. So important is Pep that a special event is staged prior to every swim meet for Pep’s creation, distribution, and celebration. The BCRC Pep Rally was held Friday evening as the adults readied the pool grounds for the meet. Assistant coach Matt O’Neil, assisted by two lifeguards (whose names, in a journalistic faux pas, I failed to write down) shepherded the team to the parking lot. There I learned that a key ingredient to the development of Pep, at least for home meets, is chalk; the big, fat, multi-colored variety, perfect for drawing on parking lots.

Here Matt directs the chalking. I assumed the kids would create fearsome, terrifying images to unnerve the Bren Mar-Edison Park Wahoos as they trod warily towards their immanent defeat at the hands of the Barracudas. So badly shaken would they be that they’d forget their strokes and dq [disqualify]. Well, not quite. The Barracudas are a much more civilized and sophisticated bunch than that.

Although the toothy fish might instill some fear in some, I thought he looked a bit jolly. Notice to the right of the “BROYHILL!” someone appended “Crest” in much smaller letters (and in parentheses). We don’t want the Wahoos to think they are at some other Broyhill place. A positive sentiment for our opponents who are also our guests.

Now here is something unnerving, and the artist knows he’s on to a good thing. His parents are obviously attorneys as closer inspection of his artwork reveals. When I inquired as to the subject of this picture, the young artist looked at me like I was the biggest idiot in the whole world. “It’s a castle,” he replied and kept right on working. It does appear to be over water; maybe it’s a float.
The Pep Rally continued with the consumption of frozen sugar-water and a scavenger hunt; a hunt for ‘parts of the pool’. I was worried that the pool might not survive the hunt, but it did.

The next morning was sunny and warm, perfect for a swim meet. After each team took a turn warming up in the pool, the teams engaged in good-natured taunts in the form of chants and rhymes.

Some chants were interactive between the two teams with one taunting and the other responding. In the picture, the guy in the chair is getting an earful. Here the officials from both sides divvy up roles and responsibilities.

Unfortunately the officials in the picture quickly came to realize they were a timer short. They saw me standing nearby taking photos and drafted me as an honorary Bren Mar-Edison Park parent/timer. This was excellent opportunity for getting close to the action, but terrible for taking pictures as you are actually expected to keep time. That’s not as easy as it looks. But I can make a couple of observations about the competition.
The swimmers, each one of them, regardless of age and gender, exhibited the highest ideals of sportsmanship. They stayed respectfully in their lanes until all the swimmers completed the race. They congratulated one another on their efforts regardless of outcome. It was obvious that some swimmers were “swimming up” to a new level of competition, or were competing in a stroke for the first time. Consequently they tended to be slow, sometimes quite so. These guys and gals received the heartiest cheers.

The only inquiry that was made of our timer-team by a swimmer was “what was my time?” It was never “did I win?” It was obvious the swimmers were all about doing their best, competing more against themselves than the others.

This picture pretty well sums up how the meet was received by participants, officials, and fans. BCRC won the meet, but nobody lost.