Advice on Swimming HS Season
Hey everyone,
I'm going into my senior year of high school as a swimmer. I've been swimming for about 3 years, both club and high school.
I've had a pretty poor experience with my high school team over the past few years. Last year, our coach was fired right as we were approaching districts, leaving us with two assistant coaches who had no prior coaching experience coaching our team. We're also severely underfunded with the pool having a broken chiller and heater. On top of that, a lot of the newer team members lacked motivation and would skip entire practices in the locker room with no opposition from the coaches despite them knowing it was happening daily.
I attempted to help out last year as a captain. I ended up doing all of our district entries for our team as I knew what everyone's strongest strokes and events. However, the coaches changed the entries I helped put together, which left us with several events that had one or even zero swimmers just three days before districts. Combined with everything else, it made the whole season extremely stressful.
I swim year-round with my club team, so the issues with the practices don't really affect my training, but after putting in so much effort to help the team and seeing how unstable things were, I've been hesitant to come back.
We have a new coach this year, and several parents have encouraged me to return because we lost a significant number of swimmers after last season. I’m also taking all of my classes on a college campus this year, separate from my high school. I looked into whether that would allow me to swim for a different high school team, but unfortunately my state doesn’t allow it in my situation.
My question is if I should attempt to stick it out for my last year or just skip the HS season altogether to avoid the unnecessary stress in my final year. The only thing making me consider swimming HS season is the fact that HS season is often what's more important for college applications/recruiting from what I've seen and what my club coaches have told me.
Thanks!