Keeping It Real
What We Are About
Razor Aquatics is a coach-owned, private team that takes competitive swimming seriously! This is not recreation. This is preparation for excellence. We believe in challenging all of our athletes and getting the best out of them. It is important that anyone looking to join our program share the same mindset and commitment to excellence. There are many options out there that don’t ask for any major commitments from their families. There are many options out there that are perfectly fine filling up their rosters with members that have no serious intentions. We are different however. If a swimmer makes it onto our team, we make a commitment to guiding that athlete toward excellence. We only look for serious members that are willing to give our team the time and energy necessary to thrive in this sport. We will have plenty of fun along the way. But we believe if you aren’t ready to go hard, it’s best to go elsewhere.
Expectation Management
When you watch a motivational sports movie, you usually get really pumped up seeing the 3-5 minute clip of the main character training for the big event. It’s exciting, you get motivated, and you just know the main character is about to win.
Well guess what. That’s not real life. To be a winner in any sport or major event, it takes years, not minutes, of heavy training. As opposed to the excitement you feel watching those short clips, a lot of times, training is anything but exciting. The main character in real life isn’t motivated every single training session. And there is no guarantee the main character in real life will win. After all, there are other characters training just as hard too.
But there are plenty of exciting and memorable moments along the journey. There are lots of fun times at competitions and practices. There are great experiences swimmers get to share with their teammates. There are amazing lessons to be learned and character-building opportunities that come with striving for excellence. There are also pleasant surprises along the way.
At Razor Aquatics, we believe in preparing our members for the real world. We help athletes understand the balance between sacrifice and fun. We help them understand that great results come from great belief, discipline, and work ethic. We don’t focus on appealing to theatrical fantasies. The reality is our team has a history of producing fast swimmers and we foresee improving the performances of our swimmers even more going into the future. But the fast swimmers we have produced didn’t happen magically. Those families committed to the program and put in serious time, energy, and effort. It just looks like magic or talent to outsiders.
It is also a reality that not everyone that joins this team will turn into a superstar swimmer. There are factors that we can control and there are factors outside of our control. That’s just the nature of sports. But the values and experiences our swimmers gather along the way are more important than the medals they earn.
We have a unique selection process
Our swim team focuses on quality over quantity. We don’t just accept hundreds of swimmers and hope some of them turn out good. We focus on bringing in families that will help us produce elite swimmers and help us foster a positive, harmonious environment that helps the internal development of our athletes. Our members matter to us. We believe in having strong relationships with all of our families. We don’t believe in treating our members like numbers on a stat sheet. We only accept a limited number of swimmers onto our team at any given time. This means we also have to have a more selective acceptance process than most other teams.
Children between the ages of 4 and 10 do not need prior swimming skills to join our team during the fall, spring, and summer months. But we do have team athletic standards they must meet during our team fitness assessment. Swimmers over the age of 10 will need prior swimming skills to join the team however, as there are timed 50yd swim standards for children between the ages of 11 and 15. Prospective swimmers go through a comprehensive team evaluation before they are accepted onto the team. The team evaluation involves physical fitness tests, a swim assessment, and a trial period.
The evaluation process is discussed in greater detail in the “TEAM EVALUATION” section of this website. Once again, swimmers between the ages of 4 and 10 do not need strong swimming skills to make our team. We will teach them what they need to know about the sport and train them from scratch. But there are other attributes that we look for from potential members. It is important to understand that not everyone that tries out for our team is accepted and there is no shame in that.