Swimming.

I guess this is just a blog to rant. Heeeere goes nothing.

I joined my school’s swim team at the beginning of the year, thinking it was going to be fun and help me meet people in the whole middle-to-high-school transition. Well, at least my latter belief was true. As for the former… not exactly.

I got through conditioning, and that was alright. I was a little sore for the first few days because I hadn’t done much in the way of exercising all summer, lol. I didn’t really mind it, though, and I was meeting people. I liked that, because I was really afraid of the whole, getting rejected in a new school thing. That obviously wasn’t going to happen, but I worried about it anyway, being my stupid self.

Conditioning ended, and practice started. At first, I had no problem with the really annoying stuff we had to do – I’d been on a swim team before(one I was sure had much more experienced coaches than this one), but I didn’t really mention it. I was set on having fun on the team, and I guess I was, besides the practices being not at all what I was used to for swim team practice. I tried pretty hard to disregard it.

After a few more weeks, we got into our first meet. The practices started to get harder. People were getting injured now, to the point where they had to get doctor’s notes to make the coaches let them stop swimming. I got injured and was out of practice and meets for three weeks. That’s when I started to realize that my coaches have no idea what they’re doing, nor should they be coaching a high school swim team, nor do they want to.

Now that I’ve been with it for a while, I don’t want to swim anymore. It hurts me physically and dealing with the coaches is ridiculous as well. Haha, I guess I might as well go into a rant about the coaches specifically, too. Why not, right? (:

Coach numero uno: Mrs. West. The sophomore and junior science teacher. She has this funny way of hiding all of her emotions. When she’s pissed, she’ll force a smile and say, “Okay. That’s fine.” I know this because when I gave her the doctor’s note to get me out of practice for three weeks, she did that. When I didn’t swim this week because I had killer cramps and didn’t want to move, nonetheless practice, she did that. West is just one of those people who don’t understand that showing emotions is actually good, and it usually helps out a lot when people know what the fuck you’re feeling. Riiight?

Coach numero dos: Kathy. The school nurse. She teaches swimming to five year olds at the rec center, so it’s not surprising that she treats our varsity team like five year olds, also. Her voice sounds like an airhorn going off and it’s not exactly the best thing to hear while you’re trying to concentrate on a sprint, or your kick set, or your main set, or anything else. She’s not quite as emotionless as West is – in fact, she’s kind of the opposite. It almost seems like she enjoys yelling at the team for the slightest things. For example, one day Tabitha(senior) was talking to Jake(boyfriend) on the phone on the way back from a meet. Kathy flips out and tells her to get off immediately, and that bus rides at 11 freaking o’clock are supposed to be team bonding time. Nobody wants to bond that late! Seriously. All anyone wanted to do was lay down and sleep, and everyone was texting or talking on the phone with someone. So Kathy made everyone turn off their phones – of course I turned mine back on almost immediately – and sit there in silence for the rest of the bus ride. Oh yeah, that’s some serious team bonding right there.

And I guess that’s about it. Swimming sucks because the coaches don’t know what they’re doing. Coaches suck because they have some serious issues with their people skills.

I thought I’d really enjoy swimming, but honestly, if the same coaches are coaching next year, I won’t do it. I’d rather swim at the rec center, and that’s saying something, because the rec center’s pool is probably the most disgusting one I’ve ever seen… except, of course, the pool we practice in.

Our school doesn’t have a pool, so we use the middle school’s. There are hairballs at the bottom almost every day, and the pool is never cleaned properly. It’s really, really gross. Bleh.

Okay, now I’m done. I just needed to let some of that out, and now I’m good.

794 words of lovely teen angst? Yay. (:

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~ by seriouslycereal on November 6, 2008.