Backstroke and bonding: how Orinda does summer
Swim club culture runs deep around town, to the point where summer isn’t just a season in Orinda – it’s Swim Team Season.
All-encompassing and a whole-family endeavor, swim team is the only sport that has children aged four to 18 as teammates. Activities and events are woven into the fabric of family life from the moment school is out, culminating at the much anticipated Orinda Moraga Pool Association (OMPA) Championship Meet.
It’s basically a three-day festival of swim races, cheering parents, face paint and hanging with your team under enormous tents decorated with team flair.
I love spotting the team spirit the week before, as the letters “OMPA” are displayed proudly on cars driving around town. Windows marked with liquid chalk in team colors sport swimmer names, drawings of team mascots and good natured taunts to “eat my bubbles.”
It’s easy to spot the Orinda Country Club (OCC) Sharks by the wooden fins strapped to the roof of their SUVs. Orinda Park Pool creates a new playlist every year and a caravan of nearly 100 cars follows a planned route blasting the soundtrack on the way to warm-ups.
This year I saw a Sleepy Hollow Legends family outfit their truck with 10-foot tall fabric dragon wings. The creativity and time spent add to the magic. Each team has its own traditions around skit nights, pasta feeds and team cheers.
But the heroes of the season are the coaches.
Senior staff spend countless hours planning practice, scheduling meets against neighboring teams and building a community of hard work and sportsmanship. Over a summer, these kids log miles of laps increasing stamina and fine-tuning their technique.
Swimming is a sport where races are close, coming down to fractions of a second and coaches are instructors, but they spend so much time with the kids that they become mentors and friends.
And the volunteer lift is real.
Wednesday evening meets mean sometimes parents are coming straight from work to sit behind diving blocks, with timers in hand.
And don’t even think about sleeping in on a Saturday. Parents get up early to get their kids to warm-ups and stay half the day to watch their kid swim an event once an hour for approximately 30 seconds. But we put up with the lost goggles, volunteer commitment hours and extremely chlorine-damaged hair because we know they get so much out of it.
The best part is that kids get a much needed analog summer: No screen time needed. They put their swimsuits on in the morning and don’t take them off ‘til night, and they have the impressive tan lines to prove it.
It’s hard to find a swim culture as robust and spirited as here in Orinda.
This unique blend of competition, tradition and community pride doesn’t exist in quite the same way anywhere else. Kids mix with others of different grades and gender in a way that feels rare and refreshing.
Families don’t just participate – they fully invest, year-after-year, creating something that’s as much about belonging as it is about swimming.
It may be early on a Saturday morning but parents and swimmers are already gathered at Orinda Park Pool for a day-long immersion in the local aquatic scene.