There is no minimum age required to join Young Masters. The prerequisites are freestyle with side-breathing, backstroke, and breaststroke kick (all of which are taught in the LTS program). The major goals of our practices from week to week are improving competitive skills, such as racing starts, flips, and touch turns. Overall this group focuses on improving technique and conditioning through drills and exercises. Attend whichever practice or practices work best with your schedule. You can attend whenever you like, as often as you like.
Although not required, Young Masters compete in scheduled swim meets about every six weeks throughout the swim season (September–June). Each Young Master is registered through USA Swimming, which provides insurance while the athlete is at practice, as well as membership and access to swim meets held in our area. Membership in USA Swimming is mandatory. USA Swimming membership is annual. There is flexibility on how often you attend practices and whether or not you attend meets. Our objective is to introduce the sport. That said, those who show up regularly are more likely to improve and to do well at swim meets.
YM is ideal for swimmers and families who are new to swimming as a sport and want to get an idea of what competitive swimming entails before making big time or financial commitments.
Our goal is to gently introduce young swimmers to competitive swimming. Swimmers who either don’t know if they want to swim competitively or who do want to swim competitively but feel intimidated by swimming on a swim team in the traditional sense (meets, frequent workouts, high level of commitment) will benefit from this group. Young Masters takes place in a team-simulated atmosphere with a focus on fine-tuning students’ strokes relative to competitive swimming.
These one-hour workouts are offered four times per week. Coaches are either on deck or in the water for each session to accommodate swimmers of differing levels, as well as to ensure all athletes are appropriately challenged. Swimmers interested in this group need to be cleared prior to joining. Clearance will require a swimming test to make sure that each swimmer has the basic skills and conditioning necessary for lap swimming. This is in order to maintain a minimum ability standard for the group. It’s not necessary to master all strokes, as long as a swimmer is at least familiar with them.
