I have a 12-year-old son who is in his third year of competitive swimming (He's been in swimming lessons since he was 6 months old but never swam competitively until he was 10). No one in my family as ever been a competitive swimmer so I am still learning all the nuances of the swim world, even after three years into it.
Given that, I am trying to educate myself on what is the typical amount of "coaching" a swimmer gets at this age (or any age really)? What I mean is, I know by this age they pretty much have their strokes down but I'm thinking there are still things that need to be fine tuned. So how often does a coach or assistant coach say, "Your arms are crossing over during your free, trying doing this to lessen that." or "Your arms need to shoot out right away during your *** so you glide more."? Is it typical to have swimmers at this age just swim laps with no input from the coaches other than what to do next?
Any insight is helpful. I still feel like a fish out of water at times.
First of all, I would like to congratulate the original poster for reaching out to learn more about our great sport. As you can see from the responses the subject of age group coaching is a very hot topic among swimming parents. As a former ASCA age group coach of the year, I will share some of my opinions on this topic. Understand, these are only my opinions and likely if you were to ask 10 age group coaches, you will get 10 different opinions...
To begin with whether your child is being coached by a "Head Coach" or an "Assistant Coach" largely does not matter. What does matter is that the coach is providing a positive and challenging environment for your child. How many days per week is your child swimming? Are the practices challenging (the best test here is if your child is tired when (s)he get's out of practice)? Does the coach force your child to "think" during practice? Do the children in the training group seem to have a good level of camaraderie - at practice and at meets? Finally, and in my opinion most importantly, is your child swimming faster and improving (this is the easiest to figure out - are his/her times getting faster at meets?)? If the answers to these questions are generally yes, then you are likely in a good place. If not, then you likely should begin to ask for a meeting with the coach(es) to discuss and understand why not. As a retired age group coach, I always respected and enjoyed meeting with parents to discuss both our training program and the specific performance of their swimmers. Usually when performance was discussed, I would have attendance records and could largely demonstrate how performance and practice attendance are directly correlated.
The one thing that I can assure you is that after years of competing at a very high level, coaching at a very high level, and now swimming and coaching masters - Swimming is a sport with no shortcuts. Your child's improvement and development will be directly proportional to their willingness to commit to attending practice, listening and learning from their coaches, developing skills, and most importantly - training hard.
Seems to me that what the kid/swimmer wants ought to be the primary concern. Sure, the parents are paying for the kid to be part of the team/club. The parent and child should determine what they want from the team. If the kid isn't so concerned about getting faster, but just wants to join...and if the particular club/team/coach is primarily concerned with winning...then maybe the parents/kid should find another team/club. When my daughter swam in h.s. she didn't really care about becoming a faster swimmer. (She didn't swim on teams as a youth.) In h.s. she just wanted to swim and be with friends. She, like lots of other kids on the team, did it only for the social aspect...to be part of a group, to make and be with friends. That's sort of why they don't have 'tryouts' and don't cut kids from the h.s. team. (That's how it is in my area. Maybe in other areas school swim teams do have tryouts/cuts.) Other than the cost of a swimsuit, goggles, and cap...there's no charge to be on the h.s. team. Club teams might be different.
In regard to participation where kids (via their parents) pay be on the team...
When my kids were young, there were a few times I coached their youth sports teams. Not swimming, but baseball, basketball, soccer, etc. Me coaching was usually a result of not enough people stepping up to coach (people who know the particular sport much better than I)...which would result in fewer teams, with more kids per team, and thereby less playing time per kid. I was somewhat of an anomaly among the youth league coaches, with a different participation philosophy. Since the parents were paying for their kid to be on the team, I tried to ensure that every kid on my team had equal amount of minutes in games. Winning wasn't primary. Having fun was. Only if the games were close at the end...then I might put the better players in for extra minutes.
So, I say that because I feel that if the swim team in question requires payment to participate...then all swimmers/parents should get equal time from the coach.
Dan
I think it depends on the relationships triangle: kids-parents-coach. I was a swimming coach at a local private school and then they fired me because of conflicts with parents... An unpleasant thing, but this experience taught me some important aspects of coaching: parents always protect their kids and think their kids are always right (no matter what); I know what helicopter parenting actually is and I've met a couple of mama's boys; coaches/teacher should always have an adequate reaction to an inadequate situation.
