This week my daughter is trying out for the swim team at Memorial.

For parents not familiar with the high school sports try-out process, it can be intense depending on the sport and school.  In the fall girls have to try out to be on the tennis, volleyball or swim teams; boys try out for soccer, volleyball and football teams. Cross Country is the only fall sport available for all students without fear of being cut from the team.  At Memorial most girls who want to play tennis can, but not at West and the opposite is true for swimming. 

Some tryout periods are just about getting through. The kids who can’t make it to the end, quit, and the rest make the team. Some teams still need to cut kids even after making it through the tryout period. A friend of mine told me that cutting kids who want to play a sport at Memorial is the one most difficult thing he does all year as a coach.

So far my daughter has made it through the first two days of tryouts.  She comes home exhausted and wonders why it has to be so hard.  I have assured her that it gets a little easier after try-outs.  She has seen a couple of girls quit already; one who hopped out of the pool sobbing after the first two hours of swimming on the first day.

I was thinking about how there should be tryouts for parents -- a short period of time that people have to get through in order to be on the parenting team.  Five days is all it would take, but it might weed out the real losers. Only the people who make it through then can move on to be real parents.

For my daughter’s try-outs she has to go through a 1000 meter warm up, several swimming drills and then timed trials for different strokes and different lengths.  Every day is different, sometimes there is running involved after swimming. 

So what should parents have to do? Here are a few ideas I came up with, but I am sure other parents would come up with a bit more meaningful trials or tribulations.

Day one starts with only one hour of sleep.  You must carry a 25-pound weight around for the whole day.  After changing 100 poopy diapers, there should be testing in reading out loud and Disney movie trivia.  At the end of day one, you get to choose one Disney movie and one book for day two.

Day two starts with four hours of sleep.  You must carry a 50-pound weight around for the day and watch your one movie over and over again 10 times after which you must read your one book 25 times, (hopefully you picked a short one), all of this while doing as many loads of laundry as you possibly can and having random questions being asked throughout the day.

Day three is the “easy day”; you get six hours of sleep and must recite the movie you watched the day before with a partner, making sure to sing all the songs and speak the entire dialog. If you mess up, you can rewatch your movie and try again.

Day four starts with four hours of sleep.  You must carry a 100-pound weight and do algebra all day, while watching teen soap operas ("The Secret Life of the American Teenager" is a good one) and listening to rap music all at the same time.

Day five starts with only one hour of sleep. You must decipher 1000 text messages in order to figure out if any are soliciting drugs.  If you fail this one, you get cut.  If you pass and if you have made it this far, you are on the team.

I know it seems kind of silly. But if anyone could be a parent, why can’t every girl who wants to swim on their high school swim team be able to?  Well, there is a good reason actually.  There just isn’t enough room in the pool.