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GREENSBORO -- With more than 2,100 swimmers in the CSA City Meet at Lindley Park Pool, there's plenty of different experience levels in the water. Some of the younger swimmers are just getting an introduction to competition, while others have been training for years.

And for some, the summer meets are another part of their year-long program that encompasses high school teams, summer teams and outside training with other programs.

Fifteen-year-old Percy Gates is a rising sophomore at Grimsley High School, and he swims for the Friendly Frogs in the summer.

He attends some of his high school practices and an estimated one a week for Friendly, but he spends the majority of his practice time with STAR Aquatics, a USA Swimming club in the area.

Other USA swimming programs at the City Meet were the Greensboro Swimming Association, Swim Fanatics and Greensboro Community YMCA Swimming.

Gates does swim in the meets for his high school and summer teams, but the higher-level practices offer the chance to improve more rapidly.

"I've heard some things about that, like, 'Hey you just sort of show up.' But I try to go sometimes to high school, just to kind of be with the team and everything," he said on Friday.

"Just to not make it like I'm some guy showing up randomly."

Lauren Mock, a 15-year-old from Wesleyan Christian, also swims with STAR Aquatics. She coaches and swims for the High Point Elks in the summer, but like Gates spends most of her practice time away from her high school and summer teams.

"It kind of takes away from just like being with the team, but our coach understands that she can't give us a work out that we could get (at STAR)," she said.

Both Mock and Gates, standouts in multiple events entering the City Meet, see college swimming as a possibility, and these year-round swim programs offer the training and exposure that can lead to that goal. Outside of their high school and summer meets, they have the chance to compete in extremely competitive events with their year-round program that can get them race times that attract recruiting attention.

"It's harder because you have less exposure," STAR Aquatics head coach Jay Dodson said about getting noticed without a year-round program.

"You don't do as many meets, and what college coaches are going to look at, they're going to want to see them swim. They're going to want to see their times and see how they're doing. Well if you're not swimming and competing and doing that regularly, then you're not going to have as many opportunities because you're not going to have the times to show."

But the neat part is that despite that upper-level training, Dodson said probably all of his swimmers still compete for a summer team, too.

Gates took part in his first City Meet when he was 6, and coming back is still a big deal because he gets to see friends and have a good time.

"This is my favorite meet. It's always going to be," he said.

Friendly head coach Erin Harris said the number of swimmers on her team competing year-round is roughly around 25 to 30 percent. But the kids who do make the big commitment still stick around.

"For them, they look at this as kind of a fun time. For the most part it's low pressure and it's about friendship and socializing," she said.

"They're really competitive year-round swimmers and they're training for bigger events, but this is fun, social. And for most of them they started off in summer club, and this is kind of where they started from. &ellipses; There's a tie to that club that they started with when they were 8 or 10 or 5."

Contact Jesse Baumgartner at 373-7091 or jesse.baumgartner@news-record.com