Cut out TV time by joining a sports team for a season or taking lessons in baseball, soccer, horseback riding, karate, bowling, or tennis.
Fallon has built a foundation in the 4 basic strokes through 4+ years of swimming lessons and was looking for fun ways to apply those skills. This year and last year, we explored water polo/splashball. Our part of the country has a reputation for fielding very strong players. Higher education institutions also have a reputation for providing more generous scholarships for decent players of this niche sport. While her parents had no water polo experience, we figured, "When in Rome..."
Last year, Fallon participated in splashball with an organization that emphasized learning the "egg beater" kick and dribbling the ball across lengths of a deep, chilly high school pool. While this was a great way to limit screen time and accrue "PE minutes," Fallon quickly let her parents know that this wasn't a particularly fun way to spend 3 evenings a week. Besides, it significantly cut into our parallel project of having more sit-down dinners together as a family.
This season, we focused on "rediscovering the fun" and found that Blue Buoy followed an abbreviated season (4 total sessions across 1 month). They packed a ton of learning and fun into each session. The ratio of instructors to players was much higher (1:3) and the experience level of the instructors was sky-high. The coach pictured above is a water polo Olympian! The pool they met in was heated to 90 degrees and was mostly shallow. This allowed the beginners to touch the bottom rather than egg beater and focus on scrimmaging to learn where to move to be open, block, and pass and catch one-handed. The abundance of coaches kept the 3 player teams balanced and fun for differing ability levels. The time seemed to fly by. Fallon had so much fun she recruited her dad to do extra practice sessions in our home pool. We can't wait for the spring season!
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