Good article about Michael Phelps swim club

Nova in Irvine isn't too hard too understand. In the 1960's Long Beach Phillips 66 had a swimming site not just in Long Beach but also Huntington Beach. Putting a major swim club with some national level swimmers in Orange County California. Also, the Fast Team in Fullerton developed some national level swimmers in the 1970's. The team in Huntington Beach split up and Mission Viejo got of hold of National level swimmers like Shirley Bashashoff and national level swimming moved to the more less developed area of South Orange County. From then on, most of the top swimmers were situated in South Orange County with exceptions like Janet Evans. Irvine has their first olympian back in 1984 and pushes for a more national level team and Mission Viejo losses some of its drive.

Well, Santa Clara about 40 years ago show the best way for a club team to have success. First, locate it in the suburbs of a large metro area where most people are either middle to upper-middle class. People who live in such neigborhoods usually can afford to pay for club dues. Also, it is an area which probably is more likely to have the pool facilities rather than a rural one. But in the future with the development of portable pools,maybe this will become less of a requirement. North Balitmore, Curl-Burke and Irvine Nova fit the criteria of what Santa Clara did 40 years ago.

I swim at the meadowbrook pool and am accustomed to seeing the NBAC youngsters during their workouts. But the program seems to be expanding, most recently they started some workouts at the other pool where I swim. I know there are other satellite locations, these are also rental situations, not ownership (Murray Stephens owns the Meadowbrook pool). Coach Stephens probably has some good lessons on the economics of aquatics that we could all learn from. The threads here about how to start a program or how to get a new pool built seem common.