@MAandMEmom There’s more than just those teams in CT. Miss Porter’s has a USA team. Hamden Hall. Plus the teams who use the college pools; Yale’s pool is a dump, but there’s OMNI. Plenty of teams use Wesleyan. Most of the swimmers on those teams are not going to those schools, but most of the team websites have pages explaining what students need to do to be on the team. It’s nothing serious, and from the people I’ve talked to simply a rountine sign-off and a payment of that fee; the coaches have an interest in keeping those teams from going under. (This USA team at private schools thing is a relatively recent development.)
@mexusa I do know that Choate has the swimming and crew. Is your swimmer swimming this fall? I thought you had mentioned crew in another thread and that your child was a day student at Choate. Assuming your swimmer wasn’t on the CCATs last year, were they able to stay with their home team for swimming this fall, or did they put swimming off till after crew?
Crew doesn’t have to be my kid’s other sport, but the kid does want to do crew, try crew at least, and our local public high school does not at all have a crew program. I am about 50% sure that after the first full practice on the water, my swimmer will be back in the coach’s office to get on the spring swimming roster. My kid likes the idea of crew, likes the look of crew and the elegance, but has no clue. My kid is also a year-round swimmer and benefits from constant training because they don’t seem to ever break down. Last season the age group times for my kid were a bunch of AAA cuts with a couple very close to AAAA. Where ever they wind up for school, they will probably only have one varsity sport, swimming, unless the crew thing really works out. (Or unless the kid really wants to focus on cycling, but that’s a club sport too.)
My apologies, GnairWhail. I must have been dreaming… I swear we know someone who was a rower, who went to Hotchkiss… I’ll have to ask my kid… Because It must have been another school. Seems tragic that with their location and facilities that there isn’t a crew team there…
Groton has a winter club team. I don’t know anything about it, but we have two pools.
@GnarWhail l’m a longtime swimmer and started doing club crew this past year (at home - Im applying this year for schools) and I have to say, crew and swimming are a really good merge. Of course your kid might not like it, but seriously, I think both have made me a better athlete for the other. I actually think crew practice is more fun. You have that same strength and stamina focus - the hard training understanding - the none ball sport mentality 
…especially if the shell capsizes. 
Yes, @GnarWhail I should have put a clause in my comment that I was referring to only the eleven schools on my “hit list.” I don’t have the ones you mention on my list.
@MAandMEmom: I can only speak as to how the CCATs is run at Choate. Choate gives the students the option (and encouragement) to do two other sports/activities when not in varsity season. The club team offers a special price for Choate students for the school year so they can hit a practice or two during the week if time allows. Usually this is on Wednesdays, (when there is a special half day schedule and the normal term sport/activity is done at an earlier time), and Saturdays/Sundays. My DD is doing crew and can only attend CCAT practices 1-2 times a week.
However, there is another option at Choate: a varsity swimmer can swim year round with the CCATs and use this as their term activity for Fall and Spring. (Varsity season is Winter.) They do need to attend 5/6 practices a week in order for it to count as a term activity. (coach signs a paper)
Choate encourages students to try something new. They love well-rounded and adventurous students!
Unfortunately, I have no idea how the other clubs at other schools are run, but I imagine there are similarities.
Good luck!
@GnarWhail : DD is doing crew for first term (and first time) and LOVES IT!! She finds it good training for her Varsity swimming, which she will do in second term. She could not stay with her normal club team as they practice really far away, in a pool with air quality issues, and still dedicate time to her studies.
AND, she has friends on the new team since there are a dozen Choatie teammates, who are also on the Varsity team.
There is an AAU team using Groton’s indoor pool for practices and students at the school are allowed to join. The pool is small (perhaps 4-6 lanes) and does not meet AAU or USA swimming short and/or long course standards; therefore, no official meets can take place in the pool. The second pool is a small outdoor variety that get’s the bulk of use outside the regular school year. In my day, there were no options to get swimming as an athletic credit at Groton, but that has changed with allowing the local AAU team to use their facilities. It appears a “win-win” proposition. Both my kids enjoyed an evening practice with the team at the indoor pool on the elder’s recent interview day. Unless swimming is part of a tradition at a small boarding school (e.g., SAS) it’s hard to justify starting a new boys and girls swim team to break into the local independent school leagues since there simply are not enough bodies to fill the team rosters in the Fall, Winter, and Spring…even with mandating kids play a new sport each season. Competitive and viable interscholastic athletic teams are hard to maintain at small boarding schools in the current environment (MH School in Greenfield, MA recently ended their football program)…particularly against the larger schools…without a strategy of recruiting, bringing in grade repeaters, and PG athletes (e.g., for hockey, basketball and football).
@cameo43 No worries. There are plenty of folks who work for this school or that school who do not seem to know what’s going on at their own schools half of the time. That said, if someone appointed me benevolent dictator of the Hotchkiss School, adding a rowing team would be one of the first things I did.
@mexus That’s great for your Choate student. I would imagine that a non-Choate-based USA team would be a nightmare for anyone, so that was in all likelihood a wise choice to not even attempt it. I’m pretty sure that the Choate head coach is only the second one in school history, so that program’s gotta have a ton of institutional continuity.
@abiriba The last I heard, the new indoor pool at Groton was 4 lanes by 25 metres, so not too short for short course but certainly 4 lanes is not enough for a meet unless you want to be there all day. (That was an awful decision and makes me wonder about the judgement of the school in other things. A wise leader would have demanded a proper eight lane pool or none at all, even if the school had no desire to field a competitive team; things change and pools are like bridges and tunnels in that you are stuck with what you have for a long, long time no matter how awful the reality. If they’d skipped the dumb little pool, maybe they’d have a proper pool today or tomorrow.) Regardless, having the team on campus brings the sport to Groton and is a start, certainly.
@stargirl3 Not a competitive swimmer, Stargirl? Since Groton has the pool, do they require some kind of swim test?
@GnarWhail Don’t think so. And I love to swim, but I’m more of a doggy paddler.
@catinthehat579 I agree completely that rowing is great cross-training, especially for swimming. It’s nice when you can get the whole thing working out on the water and not have to rely so much on whailing on the ergs day after day.
I just think there is a certain mindset of people who play none ball sports too. It’s different, it doesn’t get noticed, and it’s hard. But also so much fun!
Hi @GnarWhail !
Sorry that I am reading this a month after your original post. I just wanted to echo some of the prior posters’ comments–in the hopes of your child finding an amazing fit in prep school. If your child wants to swim then SPS is not a good fit. SPS’s pool is beautiful, the school is awesome, their financial aid is unparalleled, but it is not a good fit for a competitive swimmer (unless the swimmer is burnt out and wants to proverbially hang up their goggles).
Both Exeter and Andover offer swimming and crew. Andover even has crew in the Fall (as well as Spring).
You mention, too, that your child is unusually large. That would be a great advantage in water polo and crew. Boy’s water polo (assuming your child a male) occurs in the Fall. So, the child could potentially play polo, swim, and then crew. That would be awesome from a cross-training perspective. Kids who play polo get great workouts and it can keep up their swimming fitness without the rigor (and boredom) of regimented USA swimming sets.
Also, I have heard that exceptionally tall and strong (and bright) students do get recruited for college crew more readily than swimming. There are less programs that offer crew than swimming.
Best of luck!
No problem @CallieMom
I’m currently planning on using my insidious mind control powers to convince St. Paul’s to start a competitive swimming team. If that fails, I will use those powers to influence an enterprising faculty member to found a USA Swimming program using the St. Paul’s pool. I hope I have enough insidious mind control powers left after that for the admissions committee!
We’ll see how it works out. Thanks for the info!
If competitive swimming is a PRIORITY, then w so many schools out there why waste any time with schools w/o swim teams?
I have one S who is a swimmer. We completely nixed “schools w/o pools” (i.e. schools w/o competitive swimming). S’s eyeballs nearly fell out of his head when we visited Hotchkiss and its 10-lane pool. Now that was a pool with a school…
Hey @GnarWhail,
Good luck with employing your mind powers to convince the Athlete Director at SPS to entertain a USA swimming program. I don’t think it will ever happen. SPS loves having a closed campus. It is part of the school’s identity. It is a quiet and private campus nestled out of the way. The school is not really in a public area like Wesleyan.
If your child has his heart set on attending SPS, then maybe an alternative might be to consider how he can swim for a nearby USA swimming program. I queried and there is one at the Concord YMCA. He would need a bike to get there in good weather, and I am not sure it would be practical in the middle of winter, but maybe in the fall and spring? You can reach out to the coach for the program and see if he knows any other kids from SPS that swim for him. If one of them is local or has a parent that works for the school, maybe your son could even hitch a ride.
Best of luck and I applaud your amazing support for your son!
PS If he really is a diehard swimmer and loves swimming, please show him Exeter and Andover. Their programs are amazing.
Thanks again for the info @CallieMom I do know about the existence at least of the Sailfish, and I have heard random scuttlebutt over the years about the rare swimmers who swim in town while attending St. Paul’s. Swim parents, however, are some of the least reliable gossips on the planet! Having to choose between a successful swimming career and St. Paul’s is a long-shot in the best of circumstances. Right now, the feeling from my swimmer/student is that Andover and Exeter are too big–big on resources and opportunity, but too big. That can change, and right now I’m not pushing or pulling in any particular way if I can help it.