September 30, 2018

We Took the Long Way

It is difficult to know how to start after such a long hiatus. Writing has always been a way for me to sort things out, and shaking the rust off will take some time. After all, writing, like most other things, is better with practice. It’s a skill that comes back slowly until the wheels are greased once again. There may not be anyone left out there who ever thought I would return. But that’s ok too. Writing has always been for me; the audience I’ve gathered over the years has been an added and unexpected benefit. Thanks to Facebook, which I still maintain did much to kill blogging in general, I’ve been able to keep in touch with many of my readers during the absence. I’m grateful for your friendship around the world and if you’re back reading this? Thank you even more for having faith I’d be back some day.

After picking up and moving five hours away from family, friends, and all we knew and loved, maintaining a blog while trying to settle into our new life, proved impossible. But it’s been over four years now. I had to move away from a lot of things I loved and cared about; but writing here doesn’t have to be one of them anymore.

Albright Aquatic Club was one of the things we loved and had to leave. A year-round USA Swimming team, AAC was small and felt like family. When we first joined the team, only a handful of swimmers were even competing in meets, less than 10%. Most kids were there to stay in shape for other sports. Some kids were there to jump-start their high school swim season, and when high school swimming started, we never saw them again. We were asked to take over as Co-Presidents in 2011, when the current President decided to take his daughter elsewhere to swim. We knew little about swimming, other than the summer league experience I had gained as President of that organization. But USA Swimming was a different world, with much more to do in order to lead a successful organization.

We quickly learned how to run the club, and then set out to improve our club’s ranking in USA Swimming and to recruit more swimmers to our team. It didn’t take long. After making a much needed coaching change, our numbers soared. We had a limited number of kids we could safely and successfully accommodate; most of our groups filled in less than 24 hours. Parents would drive to our home to hand in their registration papers first. With a kind, knowledgable and well-respected coach at our helm, our rankings improved and our swimmers steadily improved too. The record board needed to be updated on a regular basis. Our kids were qualifying for Junior Olympics and Senior Champs in record numbers. Our coaching staff was doing amazing things. We were so happy about the status of our team that felt more like a family. Personally, our girls were improving at a rapid rate and everyone was having fun.

And then, in the spring of 2014, Mr. BBM got a job offer for a position several states away. He couldn’t really say “no.”

I broke the news to our Head Coach, and we shared a sad moment in the equipment room. We had worked so hard and come so far. We had little time to transition to someone new, but we eased the concerns and promised to be there to assist the team in any way possible. It only made sense to transition to our best friends; one was already playing the role of treasurer. I started creating a transition plan and began to delegate all of the duties of the club. We had no team administrator so registration, meet entries, website maintenance and everything else was my responsibility, with billing the responsibility of the treasurer. I was an unpaid volunteer and poured my heart and soul into the team, and into making sure it would be ok.

After working so hard and so long to get the right people in place to be able to host a first invitational, I was devastated as I realized we would already be gone when we were to host that first meet, in December of 2014. In our LSC, meet directors had to jump through some serious hoops in order for their team to be able to host a meet. Our successors wouldn’t be quite ready yet. It was a no-brainer decision to travel back to Pennsylvania to help our club host that meet, so we did. It had been the same decision to travel back to Pennsylvania for “Counties” with our summer league team, less than a month after we had moved five hours away also. We have always been team players.

County Championships -August 2014

Me, working at Middle Atlantic Junior Olympics so I would have enough sessions logged to be able to help my team run their own invitational.

Although it got off to a rocky start with some equipment malfunctions at the pool we rented, by the next morning, we were rolling and things were running smoothly. It was a packed meet for a first meet. My girls wore their new team caps and represented their club from several states away; but it was like they had never left this team, our second family.

The meet was packed; and we were so excited to be hosting our first ever invitational meet. -December 2014

Returning to our team for the meet, it was like we never left. No one minded the blue caps. -December 2014

By the end of the meet, I knew my team was now ready to roll without me. And they did, quite successfully for another two years. The team had built up a financial reserve. They were being led by a wonderful coach and his team of amazing assistants. Whenever we traveled home, the girls practiced with the team and met up with our coach. We’ve continued to stay in touch with almost all the coaches who were a part of our girls’ early years.

Swimming with our beloved team during one of our visits to Pennsylvania. -November 2015

When there wasn’t a pool to visit anymore, we still met up with our coach. To this day, we still do. -Summer 2016

AAC had moved up hundreds of spots in virtual club rankings and their meet participation was at an all-time high. It’s amazing how much incentive some cool bag tags with “Competitive Team” on them could suddenly have kids wanting to go to meets, and realizing how much fun it was to go compete. It seemed that nothing could get in the way of this team.

Exhausted meet directors deciding we would survive. -December 2014

My daughter, catching up with one of our friends on deck. -December 2014

When we were asked to take over as Co-Presidents in 2011, we were also approached by the college where we practiced, who had started the team many years before. They no longer wanted to handle payroll for our coaches. They wanted us to become our own 501c3. We took our team through that process and successfully achieved it in only a few weeks instead of the typical few months. Our pro-bono accountant, from one of the biggest firms in the area, had been impressed with how quickly we had achieved 501c3 status. Now that we were gone a few years, and the head coach for the college was also new, the college wanted to take the club back over again. With our successors also now relocating out of the area, this seemed like the best option for the team.

As I understand it through an email I received from the founder of the club, although the head coach of the college team may have had big ambitions for taking over the team, the controller at the college didn’t want to take over the financial responsibility of the club, and that was the final nail in the coffin. The team’s lane space was rented to a high school team without a pool. Our usual practice times were switched to a 7:30 p.m. start time with a 10 p.m. end time. There was no way that was going to work. The team was unable to start the 2016-2017 season.

AAC was no more.

I was heartbroken. I reached out to anyone I could think of who might be able to help save the team. At my request, the woman who had founded the club in 1994 in her spare time when she wasn’t coaching the college team, reached out to people at the college to no avail. An alumni of the college who is a big swimming supporter who had always targeted his donations to the swim team made some calls as well. But nothing could be done to save the team that had instilled the love of swimming in my girls. Our original swim family had been destroyed.

On the day that I realized every avenue had been exhausted and that it was too late, I was inconsolable. I told friends about what had happened, how upset I was about it, and how heartbroken I was that there was nothing I could do. My mind was five hours away, with the team, coach, and family we had adored. I had been two years removed from the team, and established in our new hometown, but it did nothing to ease the hurt of knowing AAC would no longer exist.

One year later, in August of 2017 and now the President of new team, I would find myself sitting across the table from lawyers and board members of the pool our new team rented, being told with just weeks until our season would begin, that our lease was being terminated. In just two weeks time, our board pulled together, found pool space and saved our team and the jobs of those employed by it. I couldn’t imagine over 200 swimmers being displaced on my watch. I did everything I could to insure our team’s survival, and our board did just that. Our 2017-2018 season started on time. We continued to move our team forward. Perhaps it was because I knew how much it hurt to lose a team that was a family, that I fought so hard to save it.

Fast forward another year, and we transitioned to a new satellite team.

Last week, my oldest daughter, now a senior in high school, said “I love swimming again. It feels like AAC.” On a separate drive to the pool, my youngest daughter, now a 7th grader, said “I just love going to practice. It reminds me of AAC.”

Sometimes we take the long way on a journey to find out where we truly need to be. AAC in Pennsylvania may be gone; but we’ve finally found our AAC here.