- January 3, 2025
-
-
Loading
Loading
Fifteen-year-old Jacob Myer and a group of his fellow Blackfins swim teammates peered through a window into a room at the Lakewood Ranch YMCA, in which their parents spent two hours in a heated meeting with YMCA staff Thursday.
“It’s crap that they kicked us out,” Myer said.
The meeting was the bombshell in a major part of their lives — the Blackfins swim team, a year-round USA Swimming-affiliated team at the Y, was being dissolved.
Before the meeting began, Manatee County YMCA CEO Sean Allison had asked all the under-18 team members to leave the room that held more than 50 parents and family members.
The announcement of the team’s disbandment— released Tuesday — brought on an onslaught of heated outbursts, and Allison said he thought it was best to remove the children from the meeting during the follow-up meeting in case the discussion did not remain civil.
The team will officially be shut down by April 22, giving approximately 65 swimmers and their families about 10 days to find a new team.
Allison said the Lakewood Ranch branch did not have the resources to handle a competitive league — such as having a 25-meter pool rather than an Olympic-regulation, 50-meter pool; that the team swimmers’ use of the pool limited other Y members from utilizing the pool and that the Y could not afford to staff a full-time, professional swim coach, which is what an elite, USA Swimming-affiliated team needed.
“I can feel my blood pressure rising,” said Beth Saalmann, mother of Cade Saalmann, a 14-year-old member. “You gave us 10 days. That’s a huge adjustment to find a new team.”
The short notice posed another problem. Per the rules of a USA Swimming team, if a swimmer changes teams, he or she must wait 120 days from the date of their last team competition before competing as part of the new team. They can compete “unattached,” or as an individual swimmer, without a team affiliation, during that time period.
“The timing was unfortunate,” Allison said to the parents. He added after the meeting, ”ten days is too short…but there is no good time to do it.”
He offered to give parents more time while finding a new team. Staff had already connected with two other teams, Lakewood Ranch Lightning and Sarasota Tsunami, both of which are willing to take on new swimmers. The Lightning practices at the Lakewood Ranch Country Club; Tsunami practices in Arlington Park in Sarasota and G.T. Bray Park in west Bradenton.
“I’m a working parent, I can’t drive 45 minutes to practice,” Saalmann said, but added that she and Cade would figure something out — “he swims 12 hours a week, we’re not just quitting.”
Linda Rojack said the Y should have consult with the parents to find an alternative from dissolution. Rojack, a Central Park resident, brings her 9-year-old granddaughter, Stephanie Greene, to the Blackfins.
“He presented us with a done deal,” Rojack said.
The Lakewood Ranch Y will continue to offer a swim team. It will be a recreational team, part of the Suncoast Swim League, which will compete only local swim meets with a three-month season — the goal being to develop swim team skills in a less competitive atmosphere. The league begins May 2. The reduction of the season will also give other YMCA members more access to the pool and increase the amount of swim lessons staff can deliver to the community, Allison said. Since 2013, the Lakewood Ranch branch has gone from serving approximately 2,500 families to approximately 3,600.
“We want to focus on a broad appeal impacting lots of kids’ lives,” Allison said. “(The elites) need more access to a pool year-round. Eight lanes aren’t enough.”
Fourteen-year-old Angelina Ortiz has been swimming with the Blackfins for almost 5 years. She wore the team’s old t-shirt from 2012, when it was called the Waverunners, to the meeting. The back of the shirt asks “where will you be in 2016?”
“I thought that I would have been moving up a few levels (in 2016), not finding somewhere else to go,” she said. “I’m pretty upset. The team had great potential. We were so close to each other.”
