Your best bet for finding this
Bellevue Club family is the
pool. Parents Jim and Pat are often seen cheering their four children on during Bellevue Club Swim Team meets: Lauren is 16, Jimmy is 14, Danielle is 12 and Noah is 11. And although many BCST parents were swimmers at an early age, neither Jim nor Pat grew up swimming competitively. During his childhood in Wisconsin, Jim recalls that most sports were seasonal rather than year round.
Pat grew up in Los Angeles and stayed active through school, friends and her parents’ restaurant. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Jim moved to L.A. and met Pat through the help
of his first cousins. The pair, now married 18 years, moved to Seattle
in 1991. Pat opened a Filipino restaurant in the Capitol Hill area, but after being put on bed rest
during her third pregnancy, she sold the restaurant and is now a stay-at-home mom. Jim owns Northwest Legal Group, a company in Bellevue that provides office space, paralegal staffing and other legal support services.
The Deiparines credit their
children’s start in swimming to a summer league in their old neighborhood of Sheridan Beach in Lake Forest Park. “It was a community activity for the kids. As soon as you can swim 25 yards of a stroke you were eligible for swim team,” says Jim. Lauren’s friends in the neighborhood wanted her to swim, but the skinny 7-year-old was resistant. “I wanted to swim, but I didn’t like how cold the water was. I would get so cold and shiver,” she says. Once Lauren and her younger brother, Jimmy, joined the summer swim team, it didn’t take long for Danielle to jump in. Danielle says, “I was three or four when I started swimming. I wanted to be like my older sister.” It only made sense for Noah to follow as well. he says, “I thought it was what our family did.”
When the Deiparine kids were young, they continued to swim for summer league and were involved with other sports such as soccer, basketball and skiing. They eventually transitioned from summer league to year-round club swimming. “It became very hectic,” says Pat. “The children wanted to continue to play other sports, yet our club swimming schedule was difficult. Kids were swimming at different times and at different pools. I couldn’t be in several places at one time.”
Since Jim’s office was close to the Bellevue Club, they decided to look at the Club’s swim team. “It was a beautiful facility complete with towels and suit dryers,” jokes Pat. Says Jim, “At the time, however, there were some restrictions on how many new swimmers they could accept without a membership.” In April 2004, the family decided to join the Club. Now, the kids have swim practice every day except Sunday and compete in meets throughout the year. Jim and Pat attend most meets, either together or in shifts, as meets can have both morning and evening sessions. While Noah also enjoys the butterfly events, all the Deiparine kids like the breaststroke and
IM (individual medley) events. “I think people who don’t swim don’t realize how difficult it is,” says Jim. Even their youngest, Noah, will swim 3,000 meters in one workout. The older they get, the longer distances they swim, with the older swimmers supplementing their practice with dry-land training. Even with all the hard work, Lauren, Jimmy, Danielle and Noah love the sport. “I think it’s one of those things,” says Jim. “If you love a sport such as swimming, it becomes such a routine, not only mentally but physically. I think their body clocks are programmed for their swimming workout.”
With their busy schedules, the Deiparines were finding living in Lake Forest Park challenging. Jim’s commute was getting longer and Pat sometimes found herself driving to Bellevue twice a day for morning and evening swim practices. So at the end of last summer, the family moved to Mercer Island to shorten their commute to work and to the Club. The family also liked the school district and the community. Still, moving was an adjustment, especially for Lauren. “I already had friends (in Lake Forest Park) that I knew from kindergarten,” she says. “It was difficult
to make new friends.” Swimming helped Lauren and her brothers and sister make the transition to new schools. Lauren knew some fellow Bellevue Club Swim Team members from Mercer Island and swam for Mercer Island High School last fall. Jimmy and Danielle say they already had a few friends from the BCST that attended their middle school on Mercer Island. Noah, the youngest child, also had some Mercer Island friends on the Club’s swim team. “the friendships our children have made from swimming are very close,” says Jim. Adds Pat, “A lot of swimmers share the same goals and the same interests. They do very well in school.” They’ve even befriended swimmers from other teams, most likely, says Pat, because they spend so much time together during meets. “It’s a different atmosphere of competition,” says Jim. “It’s not like some sports where the teams can get adversarial.”
That isn’t to say there is no competition. The Deiparine kids do get frustrated when they don’t swim well, but Jim and Pat tell them to talk to coaches when they need extra help. Once in a while, the
siblings will also turn to one another for help, although they can be competitive amongst themselves too. They laugh when the topic comes up, and Danielle adds she competes with her little brother—“he’s only a year younger than me, but he’s pretty fast,” she says. All four swimmers came together at last year’s Apple Capital meet in Wenatchee. Aside from their individual events, they were entered in a mixed gender relay in an open age group. “They were swimming against some big kids,” says Pat. “It didn’t matter where they finished, they just had a good time swimming the same race as Team Deiparine.” Danielle agrees: “It was pretty funny because all of us were lined up behind the starting block and we all looked the same.” As the kids grow older, they have had to make some sacrifices. Lauren has given up other sports, such as soccer, to concentrate
on swimming. Jimmy has stopped playing basketball but continues to play soccer and water polo. Danielle also enjoys water polo and will resume soccer in the fall. Noah has given up hockey, but now plays select soccer for Mercer Island Riptide. With all the practices and meets, Jim and Pat don’t get too much time to themselves. They say when they do, they enjoy going out to dinner and socializing with friends. Jim does find time to work out at the Club, and he also enjoys working in the yard and riding his motorcycle. When she isn’t at the Club for swim practice or for her own workouts, Pat says she enjoys cooking, which comes in handy when four hungry swimmers get home from practice. “Four kids is a lot of work, but they’re very, very funny. I can sit there and just listen to them talk. It really cracks me up.”
On the rare occasion when the family’s schedule opens up for vacation, Jim and Pat say they enjoy skiing trips. Although Jim and Pat can no longer keep up with their kids on the slopes, “It’s just a nice break from the daily swimming routine.” It appears there is little idle time in the household, but for the Deiparine kids, swimming is more than a workout. They’ve made close friends and learned how to set goals. They’ve gained a strong work ethic, and says Jimmy, they’ve learned how to plan ahead. “I think it teaches us time management because we have to separate time to do homework. During the week, we’re usually swimming from right after school until dinner,” he says.
Swimming seems to have ingrained itself in the weave of the family. The kids say they will
probably continue swimming, at least for their health and for leisure, into their adult lives. “They might have a hard time if they ever tried to stop,” says Jim. “When swim team goes on break my children are bouncing off the walls at home.” Echoes his eldest daughter: “When I don’t have swimming I don’t know what to do with my extra time.”
