For the first 5 years of our program our team was very competitive. I really think this was due to the fact that most of us were competitive swimmers in high school and college. Realizing that we needed to enhance our program by getting the more recreational/fitness swimmer involved, we have now become a team of "tile counters" that rarely if ever test themselves at our masters swim meets or postal events. I realize that every doesn't need to compete, nor do I want to force anyone to compete. I'm just looking for some creative ideas or examples of how any of you were able to get people to participate in masters competitions. I would appreciate any help...
Parents
Former Member
We are fortunate to have a few go getters who really enjoy competing and spread the joy to other non-competitive people on our team. A few things that I think work in our favor...
1) we have a bulletin board with pictures of people from various competitions and fun stuff - there are team photos at open water events, meets, etc. We jazzed up the pictures a bit to make the events look really fun.
2) we also did the Check Off challenge last year as a team and had a chalk board with names and events that people could actually check off as they did the swim. We really emphasized that if people could do the events in practice - they could do them in meets. We were able to get a lot of people involved in some meets who had never competed before.
3) we focus our workouts on the next big event, always announce the event during our announcement time and explain how this particular workout will help with the next big event. Those who do not plan on participating end up hearing about the event ad nauseum and end up doing a workout geared to the event. We are always very encouraging that each swimmer can do the event and often we get some fitness swimmers to turn over to the dark side and compete.
Good Luck.
We are fortunate to have a few go getters who really enjoy competing and spread the joy to other non-competitive people on our team. A few things that I think work in our favor...
1) we have a bulletin board with pictures of people from various competitions and fun stuff - there are team photos at open water events, meets, etc. We jazzed up the pictures a bit to make the events look really fun.
2) we also did the Check Off challenge last year as a team and had a chalk board with names and events that people could actually check off as they did the swim. We really emphasized that if people could do the events in practice - they could do them in meets. We were able to get a lot of people involved in some meets who had never competed before.
3) we focus our workouts on the next big event, always announce the event during our announcement time and explain how this particular workout will help with the next big event. Those who do not plan on participating end up hearing about the event ad nauseum and end up doing a workout geared to the event. We are always very encouraging that each swimmer can do the event and often we get some fitness swimmers to turn over to the dark side and compete.
Good Luck.
