High School vs. Masters Swimming: How Do They Compare?

I loved swimming in high school. It was a little less intense than the club team I’d trained with all through middle school and junior high, but the meets were more exciting because there was a real team element to each one and school pride was always at stake. Though our lane space for workouts was limited, we had a range of abilities and experience on the team, which offered a more inclusive feel than some of the super competitive club team environments I’d grown up in.

And in some ways, Masters swimming offers a similar experience to high school swimming with a focus on the social side of swimming for those who want that while enabling more competition-focused teammates to log the hard grind workouts they loved in their youth.

Much of any swimming experience depends on the group and your place within it, but there are some specific similarities and differences between Masters and high school swimming.

Who better to explain these differences than longtime high school and Masters swimming coach Jennifer Dutton, who coached the Wellesley High School girls swim team in Wellesley, Massachusetts for over a decade and was undefeated for the last five years of her time there – a 57-meet win streak. She also led the team to two state championship titles, all while coaching a thriving 100-plus-member Masters program in Wayland, Massachusetts at the same time.

Also a highly accomplished ultramarathon open water swimmer, Dutton says “the differences between high school and Masters swimming boil down to one major thing—autonomy. High school teams (at least the ones I coached) had strict attendance requirements, and certainly Masters does not,” she notes.

For some high schoolers, participating on the team might not be strictly their choice, as their parents may be pushing them, “and that can get tricky,” Dutton notes. This is especially true in cases where kids or their parents “misjudge the difficulty of the sport and think they will ‘just’ swim. That lasts for about 20 minutes of the first practice,” she adds.  

But for Masters swimmers, swimming is a get-to not a have-to situation. “Masters are at practice of their own accord. Masters are not building their college resume,” and if you’re not feeling it on a specific day, you can turn off your alarm and go back to bed with no consequences from the outside world. Many Masters swimmers rely on internal motivation to continue moving toward their performance and fitness goals, rather than looking for external rewards and incentives to show up.  

For aging Masters swimmers who remember their glory days of club, high school or college swimming, they can sometimes “struggle with what they used to do/be/swim,” Dutton points out. “But for those who can compartmentalize or who don’t have much swim history, this can be a place of great mental and physical strength-building, daily victories, and camaraderie.”

The potential for finding wonder and growth in the water is not restricted to Masters swimmers, of course. At any age, you can get stronger than you were yesterday and gain confidence through discipline and social engagement. And this is especially true for some teens who develop more self-confidence every day as swimming helps them get stronger in and out of the water, Dutton notes. “They find unity in competing for something bigger than themselves and understand that every swimmer—not just the fast ones—contributes.

In short, if you show up and do the work, regardless of how fast you are, you’re highly likely to earn the respect of your peers in both high school and Masters swimming.

“The hierarchy of fast being greater than slow can span the ages, but it doesn’t have to and shouldn’t,” Dutton argues. “The good news is that teens and adults with good coaches can find ways to understand that all swimmers have equal ‘value,’ and indeed that a group cannot survive with only one end of the spectrum.”

Bottom line: Swimming is a lifetime sport, perfect for anyone of any age because of the broad mix of social, physical, and mental health benefits it offers. Dive in and find out!