Saw one of the more interesting articles about the past, present, and future aspects of competitive swimming on SwimInfo's website the other day from Wayne Goldsmith..
www.swiminfo.com/.../7720.asp
I think it provokes a great deal of thought in this arena and specifically within this group since many of us either participate, have friends/relatives who participate, or remember participating in competitive swim meets.
I particularly appreciate the parents perspective provided in the article. While I have little children (5 and almost 3 years old), the thought of going through what my parents did with me makes me hesitate to sign up for the first set of SwimAmerica lessons or summer club swim team to introduce them to swimming. While I swam through my school age years, I didn't really consider just what my parents had to go through right along with me.. I was always thinking about what i was going through. Wow!
Check out the article and see what you think...
Rob
Parents
Former Member
My take on Kipp's comments:
1) I don't see a problem per se with approach to training (in fact my comments are all directed at meets rather than training). One can find club with different approaches to training and/or offering different levels of participation.
2) Personally, as a swimming parent I've found that coach-owned and coach-runned clubs have been better for my kids than parent run organizations. I think it helps to have someone in charge who is very swimming knowledgeable.
3) I can't imagine that many people (coaches, swimmers or parents) think that these long meets are one of the highlights of one's swimming career. Most of remember the "team" element of swimming (relays, close duel meets, conference championships, nationals, etc) as the best part of our competition days. I think we need to introduce some of this "team element" into club swimming--that does require different meet formats.
My take on Kipp's comments:
1) I don't see a problem per se with approach to training (in fact my comments are all directed at meets rather than training). One can find club with different approaches to training and/or offering different levels of participation.
2) Personally, as a swimming parent I've found that coach-owned and coach-runned clubs have been better for my kids than parent run organizations. I think it helps to have someone in charge who is very swimming knowledgeable.
3) I can't imagine that many people (coaches, swimmers or parents) think that these long meets are one of the highlights of one's swimming career. Most of remember the "team" element of swimming (relays, close duel meets, conference championships, nationals, etc) as the best part of our competition days. I think we need to introduce some of this "team element" into club swimming--that does require different meet formats.
