Race Club Article

There are a lot of good points here. I think we all (including Gary) are suffering a bit from Olympic Games myopia. To illustrate, let me ask a few questions. How many age groupers are going to the Olympics? Darn few. Indeed, how many are going to college on a swimming scholarship? Only marginally a few more as a percentage of a typical program. So, why are the rest of the people on the team? I would submit that if your answer to that question is something like, "we don't know who the future Olympians will be, so we need to train as many swimmers as possible, and besides we need more people to pay club dues and swim on the relays with our future Michaels and Amandas," your priorities will be different (not better or worse, just different) than the parent of a child who just wants his/her child to get a little exercise, have a little fun, and experience some competition. Here's the trap. We all know very few swimmers will ever be World Class. However, with the rare Rowdy Gains/Ed Moses exception, that one in a million kid will probably need to swim the 10K a day at age 12 to have a shot. So...do we structure our team to find and groom this one kid, or do we give the rest of the team...I'm not sure what I would call it, but a better, more relevant experience given their athletic talent and prospects? How many Pee Wee football coaches say to themselves, "I'm gonna train the next Peyton Manning, and that kid will need an arm like a rifle, so all my kids are going to hit the weight room..."? I have heard even ex-NFL players talk about how crazy that kind of thinking is for grade school kids. So, at one level, the answer of what you do for you swim team seems obvious in a politically correct way. However, there are other factors that make it less obvious. First, many of the kids and the parents are in swimming 'cause they have bought the Olympic dream as a motivation. Given our once in four years coverage, it is what we have to offer to justify why they should spend all that time, money, blood, sweat and tears. Take that away, tell a 10 year old the honest truth, that he will work his tail off for 8-12 years to become...the second runner up of East Pennsyltucky, and Pony League baseball starts to look pretty good. Second, coaches get their credibility training champions. Very few swimmers have a shot at the big Os, but the few that have a shot at having a shot are going to go to the "elite" program in the area. And, every coach wants to coach the elite program. What am I saying? A couple of things. One, swimming needs to make itself more interesting and provide more rewards to every facet below the Olympics. Meets needs to be shorter, more interesting, and the winner needs to be a lot less predictable. We in the U.S. take pride in being the best swimming nation since Johny Weismuller cracked the 1 minute barrier. People, that kind of thing is killing us. I'm sure you can all think of local dynasties where your team is not the annointed champions, say Kenyon in Div III swimming. This perpetuates itself, because swim meets are so darn predictable, because the superstars on their worst day can still kick the tails of 95% of the rest of field recording a personal best, so the program that wins a few in a row will get most of the talent in the future and rarely be challenged, and we swim hours of heats when everyone can fill in the final results with 90% accuracy. We need a professional circuit so that more than a handful of swimmers can make a living, and they don't have to wait four years for their break, and be photogenic or controversial, and have some kind of personal interest angle to even have a shot. Second, there needs to be space in competitive swimming for teams that are about introducing the sport, focusing on their athletes where they are right now, and structured for the median swimmer, not the superstar. I don't know exactly how you do that, but parents and swimmers need to look beyond the champions on a coach's resume. So, to circle back to Gary's Article, I agree with a lot of what he says. One size workout does not fit all swimmers, and kids should try different things and different sports. However, I don't think the critical issue is sprinter vs. distance; it's Olympian vs. everyone else in the sport. We are only just now starting to have a discussion about whether that is the case. Matt

There are a lot of good points here. I think we all (including Gary) are suffering a bit from Olympic Games myopia. To illustrate, let me ask a few questions. How many age groupers are going to the Olympics? Darn few. Indeed, how many are going to college on a swimming scholarship? Only marginally a few more as a percentage of a typical program. So, why are the rest of the people on the team? I would submit that if your answer to that question is something like, "we don't know who the future Olympians will be, so we need to train as many swimmers as possible, and besides we need more people to pay club dues and swim on the relays with our future Michaels and Amandas," your priorities will be different (not better or worse, just different) than the parent of a child who just wants his/her child to get a little exercise, have a little fun, and experience some competition. Here's the trap. We all know very few swimmers will ever be World Class. However, with the rare Rowdy Gains/Ed Moses exception, that one in a million kid will probably need to swim the 10K a day at age 12 to have a shot. So...do we structure our team to find and groom this one kid, or do we give the rest of the team...I'm not sure what I would call it, but a better, more relevant experience given their athletic talent and prospects? How many Pee Wee football coaches say to themselves, "I'm gonna train the next Peyton Manning, and that kid will need an arm like a rifle, so all my kids are going to hit the weight room..."? I have heard even ex-NFL players talk about how crazy that kind of thinking is for grade school kids. So, at one level, the answer of what you do for you swim team seems obvious in a politically correct way. However, there are other factors that make it less obvious. First, many of the kids and the parents are in swimming 'cause they have bought the Olympic dream as a motivation. Given our once in four years coverage, it is what we have to offer to justify why they should spend all that time, money, blood, sweat and tears. Take that away, tell a 10 year old the honest truth, that he will work his tail off for 8-12 years to become...the second runner up of East Pennsyltucky, and Pony League baseball starts to look pretty good. Second, coaches get their credibility training champions. Very few swimmers have a shot at the big Os, but the few that have a shot at having a shot are going to go to the "elite" program in the area. And, every coach wants to coach the elite program. What am I saying? A couple of things. One, swimming needs to make itself more interesting and provide more rewards to every facet below the Olympics. Meets needs to be shorter, more interesting, and the winner needs to be a lot less predictable. We in the U.S. take pride in being the best swimming nation since Johny Weismuller cracked the 1 minute barrier. People, that kind of thing is killing us. I'm sure you can all think of local dynasties where your team is not the annointed champions, say Kenyon in Div III swimming. This perpetuates itself, because swim meets are so darn predictable, because the superstars on their worst day can still kick the tails of 95% of the rest of field recording a personal best, so the program that wins a few in a row will get most of the talent in the future and rarely be challenged, and we swim hours of heats when everyone can fill in the final results with 90% accuracy. We need a professional circuit so that more than a handful of swimmers can make a living, and they don't have to wait four years for their break, and be photogenic or controversial, and have some kind of personal interest angle to even have a shot. Second, there needs to be space in competitive swimming for teams that are about introducing the sport, focusing on their athletes where they are right now, and structured for the median swimmer, not the superstar. I don't know exactly how you do that, but parents and swimmers need to look beyond the champions on a coach's resume. So, to circle back to Gary's Article, I agree with a lot of what he says. One size workout does not fit all swimmers, and kids should try different things and different sports. However, I don't think the critical issue is sprinter vs. distance; it's Olympian vs. everyone else in the sport. We are only just now starting to have a discussion about whether that is the case. Matt