Name Change

I had always loved swimming from the time that I was extremely little. When I was old enough my parents enrolled me in swimming lessons at the local YMCA, the Try-City YMCA. I did all of the lessons up through all the levels and my instructor in my last level of lessons suggested to my parents that I should join the YMCA swim team. At six years old I joined the Tri- City YMCA swim team and I was the best thing I have ever participated in.
This YMCA was a pretty small Y, we often had to have 10 people swimming in a lane. This smallness though it was somewhat of a disadvantage is what made the Y so wonderful. I made my best friends on the team, and our parents were all friends. I would spend all week and weekends out of town at meets with these people it was like having a huge family. Then when I was 13 the YMCA was bought by a man named R.C. Durr he decided that they were going to take the Y in a completely new direction. Not only did he rename the Y to R.C. Durr Family Y he decided to abandon the current why and build a new one in another location. We were all heartbroken; this Y was our home we didn’t want to leave it even if the new one was going to be nice and bigger. Obviously, there was nothing that could be done. The new Y was built and everything changed. We continued to refer t ourselves as the TCY swim team but the spirit of the team was gone. The Y took on hundreds of new members and the swim team was lost. Instead of being a big part of the Y that known to all the workers and loved and appreciated we became an inconvenience. They didn’t want us taking up pool time, they did want us in the weight room because we were “too young”, and they made it very clear that we weren’t wanted. People were very upset with the changes and began leaving the team and going to other swim teams in the area. I stayed for two more years but it different it wasn’t fun anymore by family had fallen apart. My junior year I too chose to switch teams and went to swim for the Cincinnati Marlins. A lot of my friends from the Y were there and it was fun but still it was never the same. The Y swim team has also never recovered; team membership is less than half of what it was. I fully blame these things on the changes, including the name change, of the Y.
Name changes are usually linked to some kind of bigger change like management so they can really affect the place. I will always have to memories of the Tri-City YMCA and the friends I met there but too this day it still makes me sad to think about what it has become.