Remember that feeling of triumph when you touched the pool wall first during those childhood swim meets? We tap into that exuberant spirit with Brian Robbins, the founder and driving force behind Grown-Up Swimming, in an episode that will open your eyes to a new option for fun and competition for adult swimmers everywhere. You'll get the scoop on Grown-Up Swimming's new partnership with US Masters Swimming and their exciting plans for expansion!
We explore the Grownup Swimming League's mission to offer the novel idea of short format, low key swim meets, making it easy for anyone to jump in—figuratively and literally. Like short swim races, music, social time? Then grab your swim gear, because Brian Robbins is here to remind us that the race isn't always to the swift, but to those having the most fun.
Remember that feeling of triumph when you touched the pool wall first during those childhood swim meets? We tap into that exuberant spirit with Brian Robbins, the founder and driving force behind Grown-Up Swimming, in an episode that will open your eyes to a new option for fun and competition for adult swimmers everywhere. You'll get the scoop on Grown-Up Swimming's new partnership with US Masters Swimming and their exciting plans for expansion!
We explore the Grownup Swimming League's mission to offer the novel idea of short format, low key swim meets, making it easy for anyone to jump in—figuratively and literally. Like short swim races, music, social time? Then grab your swim gear, because Brian Robbins is here to remind us that the race isn't always to the swift, but to those having the most fun.
Yes, hello, friends, welcome to the Champions Mocho podcast and, as usual, I am co-hosting with Maria Parker. Hey, Maria.
Speaker 2:Hey, kelly, good to see you.
Speaker 1:Good to see you and we are really excited. Today we have a treat in store for us. We're going to be talking with Brian Robbins. Brian is a former college swimmer, which we'll give you a little bit more detail on that, but Brian is the head grownup of a business called grownup swimming. Grownup swimming has just been acquired by US Master Swimming. We're going to get the full details on that in the show and if you like sprinting and you remember summer league swimming, you really want to stick around for this show.
Speaker 2:Even if you don't like sprinting and you just want to remember the fun of summer league swimming, you're going to love this.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes. So a little bit about Brian. So this write up you know, as you meet him you're going to hear he's got a great sense of humor. So when we have guests come on the show, they have to fill out a guest intake form, the very formal term. So some of them all just come straight out of their bio.
Speaker 1:So Brian writes that, after spending many years chasing a black line up and down the pool, he landed a spot on a varsity team in the ACC that will remain anonymous to protect those involved. In his time there, he scored a whopping 12 points in dual meets over four years as part of a team that won two chili cookoffs in 2011, was squarely ranked in the top 10 of their six butterfires. In 2017, he took over as the league director of the Atlanta Adult Swim League as part of the Atlanta Swim Association, and in 2020, he formed grown up swimming with the mission to bring adults summer league swimming to every town in the USA, and then, in November of 2023, grown up swimming was acquired by US master swimming with that same goal. So, brian, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you. Thank you. It's good to be here and I know this is an audio medium to the listeners. Kelly just read that with a straight face.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, we've been laughing, and so Maria Maria, I need you to dig in a little deeper and find out where Brian went to school.
Speaker 2:It's not too hard, Brian. The bright light is going to shine in your eyes. Where did you go to school?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know that the hard hitting journalistic questions early on, right yeah. So I did go to Georgia Tech. My background was isn't swimming. I was a 200 freestyler, middle distance butterflyer and was recruited at the Georgia Tech. I was an above average high school swimmer that found out very quickly that the NCAA was full of those, Hence the tongue and cheek background there.
Speaker 2:Did you have fun with it anyway?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, for sure it was a blast. I wouldn't trade it for the world.
Speaker 2:I had chili with this chili Chili your recipe.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no. A big shout out to my teammates Max Randolph and Johnny Herms for the teaming together for the chili cornbread duo. The one in 2009 and 2010 is a real. I can't even get through it. No, it was a good time. Right, it was four years that. I think. As I get on this podcast, you guys and the listeners will probably understand that swimming opens up so many doors, so many opportunities, being able to do it at the college level. I wouldn't trade it for the world, just wish I was a little bit faster. But who cares?
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, you had a great coach, courtney Shealy, olympic gold medalist, not too shabby. She's a friend of the podcast. We love Courtney. So, seriously, we've had too much fun at the beginning here and we need to buckle down a little bit and find out, because this grown-up swimming is a really wonderful, wonderful concept. So let's just have you answer the question what is grown-up swimming?
Speaker 3:The simple one word answer is that it's summer league swimming or rec league swimming for adults. The more tongue-in-cheek way to describe it is that it's beer league kickball for the swimming world.
Speaker 2:I like that.
Speaker 3:And so if you go to any city around the United States it's super easy to get plugged in with a pickup basketball game or a rec league softball game. They're everywhere. You just look at the pickleball movement that's happened in the last five years. It's insane. Adults need and want to be active and in community together and in the swimming world, the rec league style competition or teams or swimming events just haven't been there. And so what we do at grown-up swimming is we organize leagues that have a number of regular season meets. So three or four regular season meets that are based off of the Atlanta summer league model We'll get into kind of what that is in a second and then one league championship at the end of the summer. I'm kind of throwing a lot of words out that may need definitions behind them.
Speaker 3:So when I say summer league, I grew up in Atlanta swimming for the Atlanta Swim Association and summer league for us was neighborhood versus neighborhood or HOA versus HOA. There were some country clubs in the league but we had these like neighborhood community pools that everybody would have a team at and our swim meets were on Thursday nights. We would show up, swim some 25s, swim in a relay, eat some gross nachos, maybe some fun dip and airheads, and then we would go to to get ice cream afterwards and that was that was swimming. And then we grew up and we got serious and we wanted to like, set goals and do like, oh, I got my quad a time and all that fun stuff. That's also fun, yeah, and. And then you eventually get burned out, right.
Speaker 3:But the that's kind of the model that that we have here in Atlanta. It's our sprint meets, our 25s and 50s, 100. I am 100 freestyle for the distance swimmers. The the standard meet, is based off of the 11 and over schedule where it's 50s of stroke, 100. I am and. And then the championship we, we get together and we decide the championship of the world in each city and if you, if you, your team, wins, you get this an awesome grown-up swimming champions towel and and a trophy that you can pour things in and and and and that's it We've got. Most of our teams will just practice from May to September, when their neighborhood pool is open in the summer and it's, it's just a great time, as as we. It's what a lot of our adults will just do and plan around for the summer so tell us a.
Speaker 2:Tell us, like the experience you've had with the leagues you've already set up, what it, what's the, what's the feedback you get. You know, when people figure out, oh yeah, this is just how long does it. For instance, the meet lasts an hour. How long does it last?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, depending on on the size of the league It'll, it'll be about an hour and a half to two hours of swimming and so right now we're in seven cities will be in about 20 and 2024. And yeah, we show up on a Friday night in many cities. Doesn't have to be a Friday night, it really just depends on pool space in these neighborhoods and we run about an hour and a half to two hours and People are just hooked right. I mean it's hard to kind of grasp at first we're, if you have a history of like the fun laid back summer league, you can kind of picture it. But if you haven't had that experience from whether your kids are on the team or whether the you grew up 20, 30, 40, 60 years ago doing it, it's hard to picture. And then people show up and we've got music, bumping and we don't turn.
Speaker 3:We don't turn the volume down for the start because, like I don't know people, when you see other people go, you can go. Wait, hey, now we will. We do strictly adhere to an 85% SLA on our timing accuracy, okay so, what's SLA? A service level agreement, we commit to having 85% accurate times. You know, I think, in Atlanta the the winner of the 53 on the women's side when in 19 to so congratulations on the world record there. And, as you can imagine, we're not sanctioned.
Speaker 3:No but it's, it's, it's a. We do take the scoring of points pretty seriously because people get a little wrapped around the axle if you get that wrong. But but no, it's, it's just a ton of fun. It's supposed to feel like a backyard cookout or a pool party. I love that like wandered into to do a 25 breaststroke.
Speaker 1:And and you know we're, we're, you're required by us master swimmers, us master swimming, and a lot of our listeners are us master swimmers, so they're, they're wondering, you know, do my 25 times count for this? And and are the masters age groups gonna transfer over? You know, and even though it is backyard cookout fun, there's still some competitive level in the in the summer leagues.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, but it's. It's competitive in the way that I'm competitive when I'm playing my sisters in ping-pong. You know Like I'm gonna put them in the dirt when I'm playing them in ping-pong and they know that. But you know we're we're gonna have some fun doing it. No, so, so, yeah, so quick, for for the US Masters audience, we, we are part of usms.
Speaker 3:Now we are a separate entity and we're a separate rulebook. None of our meets are sanctioned. So your 25 freestyle or your 50 freestyle time will not count. We're. None of these meets are sanctioned. That's not that. That's not the purpose of them. There will always be that market for the USMS swimmer Because, like, top 10 times matter, state, national, world records matter, but that's not what we do at grownup. Though we're owned by USMS, we are a separate entity and we'll operate off of our. You can imagine by reading my bio how serious our rules are. That, as an example, our. We do adhere to very specific stroke and turn rules and regulations as established by USA Swimming, but all DQs must be dual, confirmed and we only have one referee. So that's complicated.
Speaker 2:But I just have to stop and interrupt you here because, as most of our listeners know, kelly's a serious swimmer and I'm not as serious I do other things that I'm a goal setter, but as far as swimming goes, I haven't swum my whole life and this sounds like so much fun to me. I just I can't tell you, and probably is a great way for those of us who aren't that comfortable with all the there's a really serious swimming to actually be, have fun again, get back into it. So I like it.
Speaker 2:And that also I know Kelly wants me to tell the story and I'm dying to tell it. So I'm married to Kelly's brother, jim, and he was an excellent swimmer in high school and, I guess, as a young kid, and so he has the most solid self-esteem of any man that I have ever met and I and I attribute it to this every Saturday he would go to a swim meet and he would win five blue ribbons, and whatever his events were, he won every one, and then they would go out for ice cream. His whole childhood was five blue ribbons and ice cream every. I mean, what's not to love about that? And so I just when, when, that was summer league.
Speaker 1:That was summer league, that was summer league.
Speaker 2:And then when he got into high school, he's like ah, this is no good, I gotta get up early, I don't like it. You know how many do you have? So so when Kelly told him about this, he was like yes, see, jim believes thoroughly and participating in sports that he doesn't have to train for. So I mean, this is just, this is gonna be right up to Sally.
Speaker 3:Oh, jim, jim, we're, we're here for you. Anybody can get in and do a 25 breaststroke. Come on, I'll even print off the blue ribbons for you.
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm excited. I'm excited for this, and I think it'll be a great way for those of us who are a little bit intimidated by the master swimming to get back into just the joy and the pure fun of, as you say, recreational swimming and I see how it meshes with the master swimming ethos, which is try to bring swimming you know to everyone.
Speaker 3:Right and right. We fall under the USMS mission really really well. Where I mean, even within the USMS membership, I think it's something like only 30% of the membership will do a meet during the year, and so ton of fitness swimmers, ton of folks that are just there for the community of it, right Like you got some great USMS teams that are awesome at the Friday afternoon happy hour and doing events together, and so for that 70% that are in it for other than reasons other than competition grownups, a great light lift to come and hang out on a Friday night and even for the more serious swimmers, we do a ceremonial multi-gen relay before the meet starts. So we don't time it. We time it even less rigidly than we time the rest of the events, when we certainly don't score it. But you can line up there with your kids or your parents, depending on where you are in the age spectrum, and you can do a two by 25 relay or three by 25 relay with your kids.
Speaker 2:What about your grandkids? I love it. And your?
Speaker 3:grandkids. The origin was we had a swimmer who swam with her dad and her daughter, and so is the multi-gen relay. That's rare that that happens, but it's just a ton of fun for the novices who are getting into swimming for the first time ever or the first time in a long time, the folks that are kind of like still in that burnout phase in your 20s after high school or college, and then the super competitive top 10 national record holders as well.
Speaker 1:So you guys have had grown up swimming in seven markets Atlanta, houston, jacksonville, nashville, pittsburgh, raleigh and DC. How did that go in those markets?
Speaker 3:Really really well. So in. You know Atlanta's been around for a long time, so it's a pretty established league. We continue to grow I don't know probably 100 swimmers every year. Just more more people find out about it and get hooked. Launching in a new city on your own, not under the USMS umbrella. It can sometimes be a little challenging, but as soon as people show up it just takes off like a rocket Right. I think we had close to 200 people in DC for their first year ever and it was just in the Montgomery County footprint up in Maryland. And you know the team captains up there are totally bought in. The league director there is fantastic Lauren running that league and the rest of them. You know, the first couple of years historically we'd have 50 to 100 people in it and then we would just kind of double that and double that and double that until it got to a pretty good size. And, like I said, as soon as somebody shows up they bring two friends the next time.
Speaker 2:So how hard is it to get started. If I wanted to start my own.
Speaker 3:To start a league. It's pretty straightforward, right. So we're actually hiring for league directors across the country right now and the league director position is a paid contractor position with US or with grown up swimming and we've got all of the back end tech set up for you. So that's kind of what what I was doing there in the first few years is building out the back end so that folks don't a league director don't have to worry about insurance or under the US MS insurance. You don't have to worry about registrations or waivers or collecting meat entries or anything like that. They're just there to help folks recruit team captains and schedule some meets and then have a blast when you're on the pool deck. So pretty straightforward in terms of getting started. And then to start a team it's even simpler. It can be a master's club, it can be a neighborhood team or it could be a random group of friends that you get together and just decide to do some relays together.
Speaker 1:So you gotta have a pool. Do people have to be members of US master swimming to be part of grown up swimming?
Speaker 3:No, no. So this is totally separate from the US MS membership, and so think of it as just each league will have a registration that's due at the beginning of the season that covers the whole summer, and so you don't have to. You can be a member of US MS, but you don't have to be, and you're still. You can still be be looped in under that insurance. Yep.
Speaker 2:How much time?
Speaker 3:is it how?
Speaker 2:many league. Sorry, how much time does it take a league director to you know if they decide they want to apply Like how much? How much time commitment is that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's. It can be when you're in the summer, like or not in the season where the league. Yeah, in season it's about 10 hours to a week and that can be. That season can be a month, it can be spread out two months. It really just depends on pool space. And then you know, you got to have goofy meetings with me, for better or for worse, as you're as you run in the league.
Speaker 1:How many leagues do you have? Do you have the country divided up or like? How many leagues are you going to have?
Speaker 3:So we'll, we're we're targeting right now, going after about 25 cities that we've, that we've listed out. I won't I won't bore you with a whole outline list of that, but mostly so when y'all were reading off of the, the existing markets or the existing leagues. It's kind of East Coast right. I'm in Atlanta and this was until recently a side job for me and so I kind of kept it Eastern seaboard. We're going to be doing a big push on the West Coast. We're going to be getting into the Midwest, in the Pacific Northwest, as we, as we expand.
Speaker 1:So then, you've already established what those number of cities are going to be. What beyond that? What are your plans for 2024?
Speaker 3:So, yeah, recruiting league directors, getting these leagues started, helping them schedule meets We'll be doing a few pretty fun things here and there. We'll be coming up on our third ever All-Star meet, which is just a trip to the beach where you can represent, instead of your team, you represent your city or your league. We'll be doing that, at least one of those, this fall. And again, the goal of grown-up swimming. Going back to when I started as the lead director in Atlanta, the goal is always to be, hey, make this as accessible to as many people as possible, and so that's my goal. People need this in their lives, whether they know it or not. It's just too much fun. I can talk to you guys until I'm blue in the face about the benefits of swimming as you grow up and continue to grow up, no matter how old you are, and just the easy access to swimming is so important. My goal with 2024 for the next 20 years is to get this as accessible as possible to everybody.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:So if people want to get involved, what do they need to do?
Speaker 3:So they can email me directly at brian at grownupswimmingcom that's B-R-I-A-N at grownupswimmingcom. Or they can learn more at grownupswimmingcom that we've got a little descriptor of what it takes to start a league, what it takes to start a team all on grownupswimmingcom.
Speaker 2:Well that's great.
Speaker 3:And if I just want to do, it.
Speaker 2:can I get on grownupswimmingcom and find the nearest league team?
Speaker 3:You can. You can. We've got a list of existing leagues. We've got a list of the target leagues on that page as well, under find your league, and you can hop on any of the existing ones. Or you can say yeah, I guess we do need this in my market.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you described it as a cookout with some swimming.
Speaker 1:Is there usually food involved.
Speaker 2:I'm all in it. There's food.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, it depends on the league, it depends on where it is. In the past we've had food trucks, we've had cookouts, we've had a meetup at the local pizza joint. Afterwards We've had pools decide that they're going to cater it or open up their concession stand Anything. We really do encourage that. For a while we were doing a potluck. That's only sustainable for so long. Once you get 500 people in your league, a potluck gets to be complicated. But yes, there's pretty much always some kind of social involved during or after the meet.
Speaker 2:So, if.
Speaker 1:I'm so Brian go ahead.
Speaker 2:Sorry, Kelly Go ahead.
Speaker 1:One of the things that you're obviously creative, you're obviously a success in business, You're a champion and besides just hearing about grown-up swimming, just to get you to know you a little better, we're going to do a sprint around with you. But before we go there, is there anything that we have not asked you about grown-up swimming that you think our listeners would like to know?
Speaker 3:I think you've asked it already, but I just want to reemphasize y'all need this in your cities and reach out to me if you want to be a league director or if you want to sign up your husband to be a league director.
Speaker 1:I love it so it's been a great All right.
Speaker 2:I justto reiterate this is a new partnership with US Master Swimming and that's really enabling you to help it grow, so that's been a great thing, I suppose, for grown-up swimming. You want to talk just a little bit about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So up until very recently this was something that I was doing part-time. I was juggling a full-time career, full-time parenthood. God bless my wife, kristen, and supporting that lifestyle and the partnership with USMS allows me to put all my time and effort vocationally into grown-up swimming to give these league directors. I report to the league directors in each city effectively and if you got some of them in the past couple of years in an honest moment, they might say, yeah, brian's super busy. I wish he had more time to do whatever help me out or fly out to City XYZ to run an info session or something like that, and now I get to do that and really pour my time into supporting these leagues as they get off the ground. And USMS it's a perfect match from their standpoint as a feeder program, as a place to land noncompetitive athletes all of the reasons that this partnership can really really work together.
Speaker 1:Great, beautiful, beautiful, great question. All right, are you ready for the sprinter round so we can get to know you a little bit better? And I'll give you a few questions and then Marielle give you a few.
Speaker 3:You bet.
Speaker 1:And these are short sprinter answers. What is your favorite sandwich, Brian?
Speaker 3:Oh, got to go with a turkey club.
Speaker 1:What do you own that you should throw out?
Speaker 3:Uh, too many, too many golf balls.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, I have a man, I'm married to a man like that Scariest animal.
Speaker 3:Uh, a shark, a shark, yeah, but anything underwater? Oh, water is scary, yeah.
Speaker 1:Totally agree, totally agree. Yeah, anything you're going to run into while you're swimming, that's not a human yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:All right, Um what celebrity would you most like to meet?
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, okay, um, I'll go. Will Ferrell.
Speaker 1:Oh that's appropriate. And what do you think the hardest swimming event is in the pool?
Speaker 3:Doing a butterfly, all right. All right that one might have been too fast. I answered too fast.
Speaker 1:No, I would agree with that.
Speaker 3:I would agree with that.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:Maria, you want to start with number seven. Sure your favorite smell.
Speaker 3:Um cinnamon.
Speaker 2:Do you make your bed every morning?
Speaker 3:Well, this is recorded, isn't it? No, I do not.
Speaker 2:Okay, kickboard or no kickboard?
Speaker 3:No kickboard.
Speaker 2:Window or aisle.
Speaker 3:Window.
Speaker 2:Oh, describe your life in five words.
Speaker 3:Uh, hectic, but enjoyable Nice.
Speaker 2:And the last one is what work comes to mind when you dive into the water, not necessarily just your water, your swimming experience.
Speaker 3:Gosh, this is cold.
Speaker 1:I love it. I wasn't sure if that was the response to the question or the actual answer.
Speaker 2:Either one works.
Speaker 1:Good inflection, all right. Well, brian, this has been so great and so exciting for uh grown up swimming and I can't we can't wait for everybody to hear about it and get involved.
Speaker 2:It sounds like an amazing, amazing project. And yeah, I think it's going to change swimming for adults Wonderful.
Speaker 3:Well, Kelly Maria, I really appreciate your time today and, yeah, looking forward to this summer.
Speaker 2:All right, take it easy Bye.