Friction With Parents Halts Program

In the annals of youth sports, unruly parents have raged at hockey, Little League and soccer games. But swim meets?

At a YMCA in Boyle Heights, gym officials have temporarily disbanded a swim team, saying that some swimmers’ parents verbally abused or quarreled with staff members about everything from scheduling to uniform logos.

“Believe me, it was awful,” said Mike Castillo, executive director of the Weingart East Los Angeles YMCA. “I don’t pay my staff enough to get that attitude from the parents. The language was just incredible.”

Shortly after he arrived at the East Los Angeles YMCA five years ago, Castillo said, he noticed swim-team parents displaying what he described as a sense of ownership about the pool. He said both his early decision to transform a swim team hangout into a child-care area and a more recent one to push back practice times for the 15 to 17 swimmers triggered complaints from parents.

Some parents deny that anyone used foul language in disputes with him or his staff or raised their voices around the swimming pool. Others say a few parents did step over the line, cursing at coaches.

“Two or three parents got mad at the coaches for anything,” said Sylvia Garcia, the mother of four team members.

The parents say Castillo and his employees mishandled the situation by disbanding the team, known as the East Los Angeles Sharks, instead of taking action against a few boors. “They are taking the easiest option,” said Lydia Joya, the mother of a 13-year-old swimmer. “The kids are the ones who are paying.”

And parents contend that they had the right to take issue with some of the staff’s decisions. Kayla Mejia, whose 12-year-old daughter was on the team, said the staff allowed the situation to deteriorate.

Castillo said the tension between staff members and parents had reached a point where something drastic had to be done to ensure that the aquatics programs in this working-class community remained enjoyable. After meeting with parents countless times, he said, it was time to pull the plug.

“I said, ‘Time out. We need to put this to bed for a couple of months,’ ” Castillo said.

Castillo said he intends to restart the team next month, with membership by invitation. Ten new youngsters, he added, are interested in joining the revamped team.

Anxious swimmers and parents say they have been in limbo since the team was dissolved Dec. 1. With no coach to train them, the youngsters have been going to the YMCA each weekday evening and practicing on their own.

Mejia said she and other parents worry that their youngsters will miss out on qualifying competitions in the two leagues they compete in because they are without a coach. Applications for most meets are due weeks in advance, she said, and parents don’t know which swimmers will be invited to rejoin the team.

A YMCA coach from Gardena agreed to sit in as coach for the Boyle Heights swimmers, Castillo said, so that they could compete at a recent meet sponsored by the Westchester YMCA.

Aimee Cuellar, 16, a member of the team for three years, sized up the situation this way: “They have tried to work with us and we have tried to work with them. It’s just that there’s no respect for each other.”

Swim teams have “always been a big problem,” according to Castillo. His staff, he said, must balance the team’s competitive ambitions and training needs with the YMCA’s larger goal of teaching people to swim.

Castillo acknowledged that he ruffled feathers by transforming a space that the swimmers and their parents used as a hangout into a child-care area. The program allows parents to have YMCA staff and volunteers watch their youngsters for free while they work out. Castillo said some swim-team parents still complain about the change.

Another decision, to move back the swim team’s two-hour weekday practices from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., also made some parents unhappy, according to staff members. Castillo said the change allowed youngsters and seniors, who are not part of the team, to enjoy earlier lessons and recreational swims.

Assistant coach Skye Conant said some parents responded rudely to her requests that they help time swimmers at meets, and their attitudes were spilling over to their children.

“I had one kid who did not want to respect my decisions,” Conant said. “He would want to kick when he was supposed to pull. He tried to make me feel like I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Parents say that in some cases the team’s coaches took the complaints too personally, and they say the coaches and the gym’s aquatics coordinator, Elizabeth Nevarez, failed to communicate with them.

Mejia and her mother, Teresa Marquez, said they tried to be helpful by taking the lead on ordering new uniforms. The majority of the team’s families, they say, had settled on navy blue uniforms with a shark logo.

They say Nevarez and head coach Mario Mazariegos nixed their plans and instead ordered traditional kelly green uniforms with a different shark logo. Nevarez said not all the parents were happy with the color change so she left it to Mazariegos to order the uniforms.

Some parents have begun looking for other swim teams for their children, but cite higher fees, longer distances and local pride as issues.

“My granddaughter wants to represent East Los Angeles,” said Marquez. “Not Gardena, Commerce, Montebello or Pasadena.”