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“Summer swim is really about having fun,” said Betsy Lavin, whose three children swim for the Kingswood Klams, the team based at the neighborhood pool on Spring Road off Jamestown Road.
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Swim meets are a family affair. Betsy Lavin with her children Grace, Elizabeth and Liam. All three of Lavin’s children swim year-round.
It’s a warm summer Monday evening in Williamsburg. But where is everyone?
Zoom in to the neighborhood pool. Children dressed in matching bathing suits and swim caps are cheering from the sidelines. Parents are huddled at either end, clutching stopwatches while keeping careful eyes on swimmers in the water. The smell of burgers on a grill wafts in the air. Music. Food. Laughter. It’s summer swimming in Williamsburg!
Summer swim teams are an annual rite of passage for many, and in Williamsburg, it’s a big deal. Under the umbrella of the Virginia Peninsula Swim Union, 19 teams comprised of hundreds of young swimmers compete in neighborhood pools each summer.
For some, it’s tradition—their parents did summer swim; now they do, too. For still others, it’s a way to get to know neighbors.
“It’s how my kids really got to know other kids,” said Sarah Podolin, whose two children, Sophie and Jake, began swimming with the Kingsmill Sharks when the family moved to Williamsburg four years ago.
The teams that make up Williamsburg’s summer swim scene come from neighborhoods in the city, surrounding counties and upper Newport News. Each team is associated with a neighborhood pool—to join the swim team, families need to be pool members, commit their kids to daily practices and help run the swim meets.
The season starts about when school lets out and runs until early August, with mornings full of practices, evenings full of swim meets and fun activities on some weekends.
Many kids ride bikes to practices each morning, five days a week. Swim meets take place once or twice a week in the evenings, and are very much a family affair. Simply put, a summer swim meet can’t happen without parents, who take turns timing swimmers, watching swim strokes and selling food at concession stands.
Although competition in the pool is serious stuff, with swimmers always trying to better their times and beat the rival swim teams, a swim meet is about so much more.
“Summer swim is really about having fun,” said Betsy Lavin, whose three children swim for the Kingswood Klams, the team based at the neighborhood pool on Spring Road off Jamestown Road. “I’ve never seen parents work so hard to make sure the kids have fun.”
A swim meet is typically a raucous affair. Swimmers adorn each other with Sharpies—“Eat my bubbles” scrawled across a swimmer’s back is a common sight. Temporary tattoos depicting the winsome mascot names—such as the Frogs, the Waves and the Gators—might find their ways onto cheeks or arms. Kids delight in seeing a school classmate on another team. A successful race is rewarded with snow cones or ring pops.
“When I was new to the summer swim thing, I was like, ‘What is going on?’” Podolin said. “Everyone is so pumped. It’s like a big party.”
But there’s even more than socialization and competition going on. Lavin said it’s also about younger kids getting a chance to work with older kids, learning from them.
Teamwork matters. At a meet, everyone is usually cheering on everyone else—even those from other teams. That 6-year-old swimming backstroke for the first time, zig-zagging from side-to-side in his lane? Everyone’s going to cheer him to the finish.
“It’s just a great environment for the kids to be around as a whole,” said Brian Vereb, whose five children swim during the summer for the First Colony Flyers. “It’s a great circle of the older kids helping the younger ones.”
Lavin herself is a product of summer swim—she grew up in Williamsburg’s Kingswood neighborhood and swam on the summer swim team. She later swam for the College of William & Mary before sustaining an injury, and after living in Northern Virginia for a while, she moved back to her old neighborhood in Williamsburg. The neighborhood pool was part of the reason she chose Kingswood when she moved back, she said. She wanted a neighborhood where her kids could ride their bikes to the pool.
Lavin, who last year completed a quest to swim 1 million yards and ended up raising awareness for multiple sclerosis, is also a coach for the year-round Williamsburg Aquatic Club (WAC) in “the Bubble” at Eastern State Hospital. But during the summer at the Kingswood pool, she’s just another swim parent, coaxing children into the right lanes.
The Virginia Peninsula Swimming Union was founded in 1968 by Janet Baker, and initially was made up of only a few teams, including several in Newport News. Gradually, as more neighborhoods began to pop up, the league grew. It’s now made up of mostly Williamsburg-area neighborhood pool swim teams, while most Newport News and Hampton swim teams belong to the Greater Peninsula Swimming Association.
In addition, there are regional USA Swimming affiliated teams that swim year-round—besides WAC, local teams include 757Swim and the Coast Guard Blue Dolphins. Two of Vereb’s kids—17-year-old Joelle and 9-year-old Caleb—swim year round for 757Swim, for which he’s also a coach.
Summer swim “is a great springboard into competitive swimming,” said Vereb, who grew up swimming in the summers in Erie, Pa., and later spent 14 years as a college swim coach. In the fall, daughter Joelle will be swimming for Virginia Tech.
Once, Baker’s son was just another summer swim kid. Today, Harold Baker coaches at the WAC, and he’s coached and run the Kingswood pool since 1979.
“It’s a neighborhood builder; it’s social building,” Baker said. “There are a lot of pluses to it.”
Lavin’s youngest child, 8-year-old Elizabeth Gregory, swims year-round as well for Kingswood. She’s broken a number of records for WAC and for her summer swim team, including some that were more than 25 years old. It means she’s practicing in one pool or another most days of the week, and competes in state and national meets as well as in local meets. All three of Lavin’s children swim year-round, which amounts to about 16 different practices each week. It also means a whole lot of damp towels and bathing suits strewn around the house on a daily basis.
Summer swim is the place where it often all starts. Most pools also offer swim lessons, and lessons at a neighborhood pool often naturally segue into the swim team. The youngest Vereb child, 5-year-old Corinne, started lessons last summer and was able to swim in the season’s last two meets.
You might think, “Well, isn’t swimming a thing everywhere?” Across the Peninsula, with all of its water features, two large rivers, the Chesapeake Bay and the beaches, there are more opportunities for water sports and more kids taking advantage of that. Locally, about 1,600 kids participate in VPSU summer swim. But it does appear very popular here: Virginia, in fact, is one of the most competitive swim states in the United States, Lavin said.
“Swimming is so popular in Williamsburg because we’ve got multiple neighborhoods with pools and teams rather than just one city club,” said Rebecca Reimers Cristol, a 757swim former member and parent. “This gives more opportunities for kids to participate. It’s very family focused and a great summer activity.”
Lafayette, Warhill, Bruton and Jamestown high schools all have swim teams. That means that some serious swimmers can be on up to as many as three teams in a year: one for school, one for summer and one for the rest of the time—that’s a lot of time in the water.
“We’re very much a pool family,” Vereb said. “It’s been a very cool experience to see the kids who have been involved for 10-11 years. (His oldest daughter started when she was 6.) They’ve become very close. It’s great to see what a good experience it’s been for them—not just the swimming, but the friendship part as well.”
Does summer swimming sound like fun?
It’s easy to sign up—all you need to do is be a member of a neighborhood pool. Don’t worry if your neighborhood doesn’t have a pool of its own—there are plenty in the Williamsburg area to choose from. It’s not unusual for children who don’t have a neighborhood pool to swim where their friends do, even if it’s a short drive away.
The 19 pools in the Virginia Peninsula Swim Union—which governs summer swim teams—can be found at vpsu.swim-league.us/. Membership rates vary, and there’s a swim team fee as well. The Williamsburg Community Pool, located off Richmond Road, has no residency requirement.
If you’re not a member of a neighborhood pool, there are still plenty of swimming opportunities:
• The R.F. Wilkinson Family YMCA, located on Sentara Circle, offers lessons, a six-lane indoor pool and a family indoor pool with slides.
• The James City County Recreation Center also offers swimming and lessons at its pool on Longhill Road.
• The new aquatic center at theWilliamsburg Indoor Sports Complex (WISC) opened in May and intends to have a swim team.
• Upper County Park in Toano and Chickahominy Riverfront Park have public outdoor pools where you can swim for a day or get a season pass.
After you’ve tried the local pools, check out the local beaches, including Chickahominy Riverfront Park and Jamestown and Yorktown beaches.
Here are a few favorite swimming spots of Local Scoop staffers:
“I’m not a swimmer. Floating with cocktail in hand is more my speed. But my pup Chili is a supreme swimmer. He loves Chickahominy Riverfront Park’s annual Drool in the Pool!” —Carol Willis, Advertising Sales Representative
“My favorite place to swim is the Williamsburg Community Pool, on a weekday afternoon. It’s not too busy and I can get a relaxing pool float all to myself!” —Natalie Miller-Moore, Editor
“I love Yorktown Beach. You can sunbathe, swim, gather shells and watch the boats pass by—or even catch your supper at the nearby fishing pier. The beach is a hidden secret among locals—much closer than Virginia Beach, with free parking and lots of amenities.”—Bill O’Donovan, Writer