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
Originally posted by Kipp
Somebody had made a statement that these kids are forced to do what the coaches want or how they set up the program..No kidding, that's why they are the head coach of an established program...what they do seems to work for everybody, not just little Johnny (what's Johnny gonna do in the real world when the Boss comes knocking?).
I believe it's the parents who have to change..not the sports, not the kids.. the parents need to get tougher!
If you consider swimming to be a product and the child and parents as customers you aren't going to increase sales (registrations) by telling the customer that the problem is not in the product it is in the customer! Granted not all products are suited to all customers and you don't want to degrade a good product to appease a non-target customer but if your goal is to halt the decrease in registrations you need to address the desires of your target customer base.
If the goal is to teach life's hard knocks lessons parents can probably find lots of ways to teach those lessons that don't require as many early mornings or hours per week. It seems to me that even if children were the same as they used to be and parent's goals for their children were the same as they used to be that the number of parents who are in a position to make the sacrifices necessary to support a kid through a traditional swimming program might be decreasing while the number of easier alternatives is growing.
Since this is a masters swimming forum it might be interesting to contrast the masters swimming format with the age group swimming format. What are the differences in the programs and to what extent do those differences reflect differences in participants and goals versus differences in historical approach? Why isn't age group swimming more like masters swimming? Would the 99% of age group swimmers who will never progress to elite levels be better off in a masters style program?
Originally posted by Kipp
Somebody had made a statement that these kids are forced to do what the coaches want or how they set up the program..No kidding, that's why they are the head coach of an established program...what they do seems to work for everybody, not just little Johnny (what's Johnny gonna do in the real world when the Boss comes knocking?).
I believe it's the parents who have to change..not the sports, not the kids.. the parents need to get tougher!
If you consider swimming to be a product and the child and parents as customers you aren't going to increase sales (registrations) by telling the customer that the problem is not in the product it is in the customer! Granted not all products are suited to all customers and you don't want to degrade a good product to appease a non-target customer but if your goal is to halt the decrease in registrations you need to address the desires of your target customer base.
If the goal is to teach life's hard knocks lessons parents can probably find lots of ways to teach those lessons that don't require as many early mornings or hours per week. It seems to me that even if children were the same as they used to be and parent's goals for their children were the same as they used to be that the number of parents who are in a position to make the sacrifices necessary to support a kid through a traditional swimming program might be decreasing while the number of easier alternatives is growing.
Since this is a masters swimming forum it might be interesting to contrast the masters swimming format with the age group swimming format. What are the differences in the programs and to what extent do those differences reflect differences in participants and goals versus differences in historical approach? Why isn't age group swimming more like masters swimming? Would the 99% of age group swimmers who will never progress to elite levels be better off in a masters style program?
