A high school swim meet is a spirited affair. A flash of light, a starter gun sounds and a line of swimmers sail off the blocks. The spectators cheer, the music blares, the water boils. When you get a really fast event (the 50) filled with top swimmers who appear to clear the pool in five strokes, riding atop a wave of water and spray, it’s a pretty exhilarating sight.

All my kids’ careers in such (minus their riding a wave and all that) I have volunteered as a parent timer. First came those summer rec team meets, 100 kids and 100 events and so many heats you thought the night would never end. Then came Sophie’s high school swim years, all four of high school and one in 8th grade, a delightful way to spend a weeknight in the overheated pool up at Randolph Macon (see Swimming the 500, December 2019). Now it’s boy’s turn. One of the many, many things we didn’t see coming. Mr. ThinkI’mgunna join the swim team. Junior year, and the house fresh out of swim suits and googles.

Each meet, they need two or three of us parents per lane, so we show up in our team T-shirts and doomed jeans to stand beside the blocks, clipboards in hand, stopwatches at the ready, and we lean out over the water to mark the time any part of their body touches the wall of the pool. Often it’s a blur of screaming and splashing, with clumps of half-clad teenagers bumping and cheering at their teammates all around you. Screaming in my ear. Often, surrounded by this sea of noise, soaked to the knee and half deaf at 10:30 at night I think, I was made for this.

Will’s two-season career in high school swimming is drawing to a close. Tonight is “senior night.” Because he won’t qualify for the regional or state championships, tonight he’ll swim for the last time. It’s also, for Bill and I, the first glimpse of the fast approaching end. Like, with a capital E. Great. Just what we “seniors” needed: an event focused intently on speed, where there are three settings and all of them fast. On beating and besting your “time.” That’s what the rest of this season will feel like. The end of the senior year, the end of children in our home. What on the earth is wrong with that woman on Lane 3, did she lose something in the pool or get chlorine in her eye? Geeze, keep it together lady.

Will and five others will be feted before the meet and likely roasted afterward—a procession to the blocks, flowers and balloons, their biographies and achievements announced over the loud speaker above the pressurized background noise of this out door “bubble” (literally, our summer pool with a huge plastic tent over it. Like swimming in an airplane hangar.) It was a hoot filling out his “bio.” Years on the team? Two. Years swimming? Fifteen. Since he could toddle, really, throwing himself off docks and pool decks and causing me always to have a suit on under my clothes whenever we were near water. Learned to swim? Age four in his grandmother’s lake. A lifetime ago. All that is with us tonight—the weight of what we bring, and what we are about to leave behind. Here they are, five strapping senior swimmers, standing on the blocks smiling awkwardly for photos and applause. Their senior banners hang behind them—larger than life—each in a warm up or swim suit. You’d think they were world-class athletes. In this little hometown high school feel-good team, they are.

Will is well on this team. He is one of the captains. He calls himself “the slow guy,” which he is, because prior to joining the team on a whim (and yes, a prayer) last year, he hadn’t swum for 10 years. The last time was in those “my mother made me days” gone by, when he went out for our summer league and actually got himself to the state finals on the 50. So he wasn’t always the slow guy. But he probably is now. There are some absolute rockets among the ranks these days, guys coming in 10, 20, 30 seconds ahead. No matter. Boy is not hung up on any of that. He gets in the pool and he does his thing and we, the proud parents, could not be happier he found this team of people who are even lovelier out of the water.

This is why you want your kid in school sports, says the mom who has attended not one, but zero Cavaliers football or basketball games in Sophie’s time there. ZEE-RO. Sports not our thing, to say the least. Ol’ Billy and I we don’t even have the right clothes. My idea of a “tail gate” is something you put down so you can haul more stuff to (or from) the dump or fit a piece of plywood in the back of your truck. But in those seasons when I got a kid on the trails or in the water, I become Varsity mom. Wouldn’t miss a minute. What am I cheering for? What am I screaming their name for above all the others? What? Are they are becoming a killer swimmer, or a runner or a bike racer or star soccer player? Not so much. They are becoming a person before my very eyes.

Team has always taken any who sign up. Seriously. So you get the whole range—state record setters all the way down to the regular DQs. Disqualifiers. Kids who may swim their heart out but get disqualified on a technicality—a stroke not up to par or a turn that is executed wrong. They may not even be cut out for swimming. But here they are—placed by the coach, in the water, and doing their best. Teammates clumped at the finish near me audibly chanting it: “please don’t DQ, please don’t DQ, please….” Hey wait, you mean you can alter the course of things just by standing at the blocks and begging? Push over kid. This is one of the many things I love about swim team. In Sophie’s day there was a classmate who hadn’t swum a lap. Ever. What do you do with that? Teach him to swim and sign him up. To me, this is feat way more amazing than shaving a few seconds off your near-record-time.

So it goes without saying, at all the many meets and competitions I’ve timed for, there is an enormous range. All kinds of talent. All kinds of investment. And all kinds of abilities. There will be exhibition swimmers who get in the water and give it their all—with the agreement that their times do not count. There will be eight graders, coming up through the ranks unable to contribute points. And on many teams there will usually be the “disabled” students—those for whom a timed sports event is going to present a challenge. But you know what. “Butterfly” may rhyme with “disqualify” so far as I can tell, but “swim team” rhymes with “humanity,” and so these are the kids who garner the loudest cheers. Often the crowd comes unseated and out of control as these physically challenged swimmers come down the lane. All effort celebrated. All swims cheered. Score one for the sport of champions.

As a captain Will shines. He cheers, he pep-talks the swimmers just before they mount the block; he towels and sloppy, slap-hugs them as they come out of the pool. He looks out for his team. He doesn’t even have to swim. For the state championship, just last night, he showed up in street clothes, skipping school (with parents’ permission) to rally and cheer on the 16 who made the cut. These are your college-bound swimmers, your seriously talented and trained who will carry our team and make their mamas proud. For the occasion our team has sprung for white warm-ups. On the podium for a photo they look like Olympic athletes. For real. Will tells me a couple guys broke state records this meet and one qualified for nationals.

He also tells me, via late-breaking text from the pool at Swim RVA while Bill and I are just sitting down to a quiet Friday night dinner back home, that he is about to swim. At states?? My response is incredulous. Yep. They put him in a relay, found him a suit, and he’s about to swim the 400 free with three other guys. Gotta go, mom. My present-for-every-swim record shattered, I sit down to dinner warmed by the thought of him fitting in so well with the team, if not the swim suit they found him to wear. A teammate produced a loaner suit, but not any old loaner, a black skimpy-tight Speedo bikini covered in rainbow colored hearts (yes, there are photos)—the guys razzing him all the way to the blocks. According to Will the relay team came in 17 seconds slower that night. One because the slow guy was up first, and two because they were all laughing so hard.

For senior night, it will be the last regular meet of the season, the end of the line for Will, our two-year champion. There will be a gauntlet of teammates to run, and a party afterward and balloons and flowers and public recognition of this, my one who is treated like every other senior, as if he too has been swimming for years and is one among these champions. For me, it’s the fitting in that does it. It’s the vision of your most precious people well in the world. Times like these someone handing me the giant binoculars of life and all I can see down the road is hope and a future. That’s a good feeling. I’ll give you slow guy. His is a story of never-too-late poured into a jammer and a rubber cap. And tonight we are grateful beyond measure.

Tonight he will swim the free. That’s an expected placement – it’s his fastest stroke. Went to states in 2nd grade with a qualifying time. I remember. I have a photo of him and his dad standing next to a framed piece of pool wall signed by the 2008 Olympic trials team. They have it behind plexiglass down at Swim RVA. That’s right, Michael Phelps once swam in this pool when it was in Omaha, Nebraska. In 2008, when boy was no more than a buoy in his grandmother’s lake, the Olympic trials were held here. Nine world records and 21 American records were broken in this pool. Greatness precedes us. 

I’m on the blocks again. My favorite spot—timer, lane 3. It’s where they put the fastest swimmers, so the activity is pretty constant. Me and another mom, making convo in between calling times and cheering, our own swimmer’s heats and lanes marked on our wrists like we once did for our littles on summer swim when they might lose track of what they were doing or where they were supposed to be, as those five and six-hour neighborhood meets yawned long into the summer nights. Meets, a little like life…don’t want to miss ’em. Will’s second event of the evening, his last swim unless coach puts him in a relay, will be the 100 back, an unusual pick for him. His fast stroke is aptly named the free style. I’ll give you free style. But no, tonight he’s swimming the 100 back. Lane 7, the slow lane. Well, OK, so the backstroke isn’t his thing. He’s also swimming X. Exhibition—no points. Do you think this matters one instant to boy? Not a bit. He is old enough to know. Pour yourself into something that “doesn’t matter” on the surface and often you find you’ve made a sea change in life.

When the gun sounds I’ve got my own guy in the lane so it’s all eyes on what I’m doing, trying to focus on my own swimmer through the shouting and cheering. There’s a little heat in these middle lanes and four laps later my guy finishes second, neck and neck with Lane 4. That was fun. He’s shaved five seconds off his seed time. I’m wrapping up my heat sheet, flipping to the next event on my clipboard. Then I realize, there are still swimmers in the pool. Two of them, lanes 7 and 8. Sure enough, two swimmers still burning up the lanes. Only they aren’t. Burning up the lanes. And the din of the crowd has died down. It’s growing more focused and hushed, so that soon all you can hear is the music. Now there are recognizable voices around me, and recognizable shapes in the water. It’s Will, lane 7 and another out in Lane 8. I’ll call him Sam. Sam often DQs on even the simple strokes, and he hasn’t swum many 100s. Two weeks ago they put him in the 100 free for the first time. Noticeably distressed, he with a lot of encouragement jumped in (he doesn’t dive) and did his best. The crowd went wild as he labored and gasped and minnowed his way toward the finish, stopping at to look around with a look of confusion and exhaustion. But he made it. This kid digs deep.

So tonight, these two are the only ones left in the pool. Only, the water has stopped roiling and boiling, and the cheering and yelling has been distilled to one unified victory cheer. The spectators are now out of their chairs, now that they realize what is going on. The rest of the team has lined up along the edge of the pool, watching. There’s Will, swimming backstroke with his teammate. Swimming alongside his teammate. Like, with his teammate. Matching Sam’s swim. Stroke for stroke. Breath for breath. Bringing him home. The pace is as slow and steady as if they’re out lake swimming on a Sunday afternoon, chins up, heads thrown back, one graceful long arm rolling back into the water after another. I hear gasps around me. Is that Will? What’s he doing. Then it grows clear, as the noise dies down to near silence. What is he doing? And then I see. What he is doing. All eyes on lanes seven and eight. The winners, the other swimmers, they are all bobbing at the blocks watching. And the champions swim on. 

Senior night. Slowest recorded stats on Event 17, the 100 backstroke. And best time ever.

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