Swimming Etiquette

I know we've posted almost too many posts about swimming, you are all probably getting bored, but that is what our life consists of right now, so thats what we post about.

Swimming has many etiquette rules. In a lane, there are ten to twenty people, so its rather crowded. Sometimes it even gets to the point where the lane leader is back from a fifty before half the people in the lane have gotten the chance to go, so as you can imagine, it gets quite clogged up.

And then there are those people who were on vacation for the first two weeks of summer swimming, so they are still out of shape, so they sit out on a lot of fifties (I'm not gonna try to say that I don't often sit out on a lot of fifties), and so when you finish a fifty, and there is someone standing on the wall, adjusting their goggles to make it look like they aren't siting out of a fifty because they are tired, and you don't know weather to pass them, because there are a lot of people on the team who are very picky about passing. In fact, there are a few kinds of these people.

1. The people who won't pass you when you ask them too, because they want to pass you when you are swimming, to show that they are good swimmers, but since there are so many people in the lane that you are bound, at one point, to be squished up a lane line and a person. This involves being kicked quite a few times.

2. Then there are the people who you want to pass, because they are slow, or more often, goofing around, but every time you try to pass them swimming, they start speeding up and doing what they're supposed to be doing.

3. Then there are the people who are good about passing all around. They will pass you if you ask them, they will let you pass them, and they are good at passing while swimming. Thats most of the people on the team.

Then theres a lot of stuff about getting hit while swimming. Everyone gets hit, so you rarely ever stop to apologize, because it would get your lane even more clogged up than it already is. If you can believe it, you hit more people in other lanes than you do in your own, if you are a lane rider, which most people are. Usually, like in backstroke, your hand will hit their hand at the bottom of your cycle, or your hand will hit their leg, or vice versa, you usually don't stop for those. There are few different times you apologize.

1. When you are a crooked backstroke swimmer, and you hit head with someone coming the opposite direction, you both instantly go head up and say "sorry!" at the same time.

2. When someone is constantly touching your feet, they usually apologize. If it only happens once they don't. Or they don't stop, and they don't say sorry, and you begin to wonder if they are trying to tickle you or something equally creepy.

3. When you are coming out of streamline crooked and shoot into their head or stomach.

4. When you are doing butterfly kick and your feet come out of the water too far and they come down and slap onto the persons head behind you.

5. When you are doing backstroke kick, and the person in front of you has a low kick, and you go on top of their legs without even feeling the jet-like currents that usually happen if the person is a higher kicker, and before you know it, they lift their stomach and your head is practically resting on it. Thats when you both go head up, and you say sorry as many times s you can and they either laugh their head off or get all wide-eyed and stay away from you the rest of the season.

And thats all the swimming etiquette you need to know.

-michelle