A husband and wife couple from my youth days, one of whom was crazy fast, just posted that they are getting rid of the pool that came with their new home last year because they are "not pool people". This makes me so sad.
Our facility attracts members from 12 towns with youth teams. We have only 9 former swimmers and 5 of them had the same coach on three separate teams. The three dabblers on my Facebook feed? Same coach as the 5 masters members and I have friends from 4 different teams. This is not a coincidence. A coach can make or break whether kids want to swim for life.
I want to push back on two things in this post. One is that it is "so sad" that previously fast swimmers don't want to swim masters. Yes, I think it is sad if they are not doing any serious exercise. But if they've found something else to do that they enjoy more than swimming, more power to them. (As an aside: not wanting a backyard pool doesn't make you a hater of all things swimming. I have such bad memories of HS years spent scrubbing pools -- including a backyard pool -- that I can't imagine owning one.)
The other thing I challenge is the idea that the reason that former swimmers aren't participating in masters is because of their coaches. If that were true, then something like 90+% of all college coaches are crap and I don't believe that. Isn't it just possible that after many, many years of high-level competition, most varsity college swimmers are ready for something else? And for the truly elite swimmers that swim past college -- something that didn't really happen back when I was that age -- they may be even more ready to do something different.
Some of my college team-mates "dabble" in masters, most do not, but in all cases it is not because they loathed swimming when they were young. Same thing in the university where I work: I know many of the former varsity swimmers who are still in town and most do not swim very much. But they mostly found other activities that they enjoy. They don't hate their former coach and they fully understand that masters swimming is low pressure; they decide to do other things anyway.
Maybe part of the reason that former fast swimmers move on is that it can be enjoyable to do a sport in which you have little history; I got heavily into cycling for about 10 years awhile back for much this reason. When I'm swimming, there is always a part of me that laments how much slower I am now than I used to be, but there were no such comparisons to be made in cycling.
Personally I think USMS is doing the right thing in trying to forge partnership with college CLUB swimmers rather than spend a lot of time marketing to varsity college swimmers.
A husband and wife couple from my youth days, one of whom was crazy fast, just posted that they are getting rid of the pool that came with their new home last year because they are "not pool people". This makes me so sad.
Our facility attracts members from 12 towns with youth teams. We have only 9 former swimmers and 5 of them had the same coach on three separate teams. The three dabblers on my Facebook feed? Same coach as the 5 masters members and I have friends from 4 different teams. This is not a coincidence. A coach can make or break whether kids want to swim for life.
I want to push back on two things in this post. One is that it is "so sad" that previously fast swimmers don't want to swim masters. Yes, I think it is sad if they are not doing any serious exercise. But if they've found something else to do that they enjoy more than swimming, more power to them. (As an aside: not wanting a backyard pool doesn't make you a hater of all things swimming. I have such bad memories of HS years spent scrubbing pools -- including a backyard pool -- that I can't imagine owning one.)
The other thing I challenge is the idea that the reason that former swimmers aren't participating in masters is because of their coaches. If that were true, then something like 90+% of all college coaches are crap and I don't believe that. Isn't it just possible that after many, many years of high-level competition, most varsity college swimmers are ready for something else? And for the truly elite swimmers that swim past college -- something that didn't really happen back when I was that age -- they may be even more ready to do something different.
Some of my college team-mates "dabble" in masters, most do not, but in all cases it is not because they loathed swimming when they were young. Same thing in the university where I work: I know many of the former varsity swimmers who are still in town and most do not swim very much. But they mostly found other activities that they enjoy. They don't hate their former coach and they fully understand that masters swimming is low pressure; they decide to do other things anyway.
Maybe part of the reason that former fast swimmers move on is that it can be enjoyable to do a sport in which you have little history; I got heavily into cycling for about 10 years awhile back for much this reason. When I'm swimming, there is always a part of me that laments how much slower I am now than I used to be, but there were no such comparisons to be made in cycling.
Personally I think USMS is doing the right thing in trying to forge partnership with college CLUB swimmers rather than spend a lot of time marketing to varsity college swimmers.
