John Hunt: Another Summer Swim League Is Over

Hundreds Of Kids In Chattanooga Area Benefit From Summer League

  • Saturday, July 13, 2024
  • John Hunt

It’s hard to believe we’re to the end of another season with the Chattanooga Area Swim League. I guess the old saying about how time flies when you’re having fun really does apply.

It seems like just yesterday that I went to Stuart Heights on the first Monday in June and battled a really crowded pool deck to watch the Ooltewah Tidal Waves begin their quest for another championship season. As has been the case for the past five summers, Ooltewah haven’t lost a dual meet and they just clinched their fifth straight city meet title at Fort Oglethorpe Saturday night.

I’ve had a most enjoyable ride for the past 45 years covering prep sports first for the Chattanooga News-Free Press and now for the Chattanoogan.com for the past 17 years.

I was first introduced to the teams in the summer league way back when as I got the wonderful assignment of typing all the individual results when the city meet was held at Warner Park. It was a labor of love to be sure as we printed individual names and their teams with times for the top 16 finishers in every event. Want to talk about a pile of results!

I later got that beat for the Free Press when nobody else wanted it.

And now times have changed and I’m blessed to be working with John Wilson at the Chattanoogan.com. I stay plenty busy during the school year with prep sports and some UTC stuff and I started covering summer swimming simply because there was nothing else going on and it gave me something to do for about six weeks.

We don’t do a lot of in depth reporting with these youngsters as I basically get quotes from both coaches, throw in a few names for the high-point scorers and that’s it.

In case you haven’t noticed, there are currently 14 teams in this league and they’re divided into three divisions. They usually swim on Monday and Thursday nights with the City Meet normally wrapping things up about mid-July.

I try to offer equal coverage across the board, not focusing on just the top teams and ignoring the rest. I’m proud to say that for the first time during my swim coverage, I covered every team in the league at least once this summer.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the most knowledgeable swimming writer, but I was told early on in my career that if you get the score right and make sure to spell everyone’s name correctly, you’re more than halfway there.

I keep telling myself that I’m getting too old for stuff like this and that I’m gonna cut back, but as you can see, that hasn’t happened yet.

Summer swimming can be quite entertaining at times. And has been the case at other sports venues around the area, I’ve developed some really nice friendships and some significant relationships where I have friends at every pool in Chattanooga, including coaches, parents and other pool representatives.

I’ve covered a lot of sports in my day, but swimming may require more work than all the rest as far as the participants go. I know these kids have practices daily and often more than once a day, but the results show as these kids make a difficult sport look really easy at times.

Swimmers come in all shapes and sizes. Some are totally dedicated to the sport and do all that’s necessary to be the best they can possibly be. They have the washboard abs and you can bet that their eating habits are where they need to be as well. There are other kids who looked like they just rolled off the couch after eating a box of Little Debbie cakes, but the important thing is that they are all out there putting forth effort and they’re to be congratulated for that fact alone.

I get the biggest kick out of watching the youngest ones as they are introduced to competitive sports at a very early age. You’ve seen young puppies as they get up the nerve to jump in the lake, not sure exactly how to do it gracefully. That’s the same way with these youngsters. It takes a lot of courage to leap off a starting block as they try to go from one end of the pool to the other without dying along the way.

Heck, for some of these youngsters, 25 yards might as well be 25 miles. But to see the joy and exhuberation on their faces when they reach the other end is just priceless. There are a number of swimmers who simply don’t have the ability to go from one end to the other unassisted when the season begins, but they look like young minnows a few weeks later as they are much more confident in their abilities.

We’ve all heard the term constructive repetition, meaning you do something over and over and eventually get the hang and it becomes second nature. These kids probably swim more laps in a summer than they care to admit, but we’ve all watched and admired Michael Phelps and knowing that his success didn’t come without a whole lot of work.

When was the last time you ventured into a pool and tried to swim from one end to the other. We didn’t think twice about it when we were teenagers like these kids are now, but there’s nothing easy about it.

One of the greatest things about summer swimming is the introduction of youngsters to a sport they can enjoy for the rest of their lives. What a great way to get exercise and to stay in shape in the process. And there is no age limit.

It’s really beautiful watching these kids as they race from one end of the pool to the other, making their work look so easy and graceful when we know that’s absolutely not the case.

A lot of these kids swim year round and just participate in the summer league to have a little fun and to share what they’ve learned with the younger generation.

I used to be a real active person and have done my share of swimming along the way, but I was more into running and didn’t think twice about going for a 10 or 20-mile run. Running was always much easier for me than swimming.

And now that I’ve become really lazy in my old age and feel good when I walk a couple of miles, I’m trying to convince myself to take a dip in the pool at the Y, knowing that at some point those laps will get easier and that I’ll benefit physically in the long run.

And now that another summer season has ended, I’m hoping to use the motivation from watching these kids swim to do a little for myself.

Thanks for reading and supporting me along the way. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

(Email John Hunt at nomarathonmoose@gmail.com)

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