When Kari Davis coached some of the top-level youngsters in the San Diego, Calif., swimming realm back in the 1990s, she noticed something.
“I found that some of my swimmers were getting better and better at swimming and couldn’t do anything else,” she said. “Running was just the hardest thing in the world for them.”
That’s when the wheels began to churn for Davis and her husband, Scott, both professional triathletes.
“During their off-season, we started running, biking, playing soccer, doing fun obstacle courses,” she said of her swimmers. “They ended up getting (to be) better swimmers, and they became overall athletes.
“We figured we could start Tri-Kids and that’s where it flew off.”
Now in its fifth year in Park City, the Tri-Kids 123 Triathlon camps for kids ages 5 to 12 returns to town June 27-July 1. The remaining camps in town will be July 5-8 and Aug. 8-12. Following each camp, there will be a triathlon day for kids in the camp.
The Davises spend half the year in Park City and the other half in Westlake, Calif., near the headquarters of K-Swiss, the camps’ main sponsor. Aside from the camps in Park City, Tri-Kids has camps in Thousand Oaks and Ventura, Calif.
“When we lived in San Diego, that’s like a triathlon mecca,” Kari Davis said. “People got excited to learn what a triathlon was and wanted to make sure what they were doing.
“With our camps, the ones in Park City, our repeat business is probably 80 percent. We have people who started coming to the camps at 6 and now are getting close to 10 or 11.”
Davis said her son went through the Tri-Kids program and was coached by his parents to have fun and become versatile in exercise, which Davis says is the point of the camps.
“I think at that level, everything is fun,” she said. “Sometimes, when we’re running, we’ll go through the park, we do obstacle courses on the bikes and show them how to shift gears. Some kids come in with training wheels and leave some of our best bike riders.
“We want them to learn something and be fun. If you’re a kid, you’re not coming back if it’s not fun.”
Davis said she and her husband are the primary coaches. If camps balloon a bit, they’ll bring in other triathletes to help coach. She says the goal is to keep the coach-to-child ratio about 1-to-8.
One of the most rewarding parts of the camps, according to Davis, is seeing some of the youngsters who they coached back in the early days in San Diego continue on with triathlons. She said a couple of former Tri-Kids participants are looking at becoming pros.
Watching the actual triathlon following the camps is arguably the highlight of the week, she said.
“When they cross the finish line, they get a cool medal and wear it to bed,” Davis said. “Their self-esteem, you can just see it in their faces. They’re accomplishing something that they’ve never done and now they know they can do it too.”
The Tri-Kids camps in Park City will be held at the Ecker Hill Middle School. Camps are one week long and last 2.5 hours Monday-Friday. On Saturday’s there is the kids-length triathlon. According to Davis, these triathlons are open to the community. For more information on the camps or how to sign up, go to www.trikids123.com .