Western Australia

Hey, here's bit of irony for you. I'm agreeing with Gull while disagreeing with Geek! First, please don't talk to me about Div I basketball vis-a-vis national or world class swimming. At the elite level of ANY sport, whether its ball room dancing, bass fishing or tiddly-winks, you are going to be practicing hours a day, cross-training your brains out, and hiring mental, nutritional, spiritual and whatever else consultants to find "the edge." The issue here is what is the minimum commitment for a bunch of kids who want to try the sport and have fun. In more than one location, my son has signed up for a youth basketball program that was a one hour x twice a week commitment (one practice, one game). PLUS kids can play pick up basketball in the street or the playgrounds as much or as little as they like. I'd love to hear about a pack of kids all showing up at the pool and racing a 50 *** or 200 IM just for grins and giggles, but sadly, it simply doesn't happen in my experience. Swimming, in contrast, needs much more of a sustained commitment for any meaningful participation. I coached the youth league swim team at the same Base Youth Center that sponsored my son's basketball team. In contrast to the 2 hours per week they needed, we had hour to hour and a half practices five days a week, or when the dual meet season got going, replace two of those workouts with two 3-4 hour long meets. Bear in mind, that was following my own personal philosophy of coaching youth swimming for fun, first, second and third, and not confusing their fun with my ego. Based on what I have seen from some other swim programs (where the benighted fool of a coach thinks he is going to make the next Michael Phelps, and he is going to get there by working the you-know-what off of every 8 year old he can get his clutches on until he finds one who can put up with his stuff, but I digress...), we were at the extreme end of low-key, participation oriented programs. Now perhaps someone is suggesting that swimming programs are this way because that is the paradigm in U.S. Swimming for the last few decades. Maybe if we rethought what being a "swimming program" meant, and what we asked of the kids and their families, maybe we would come up with something a lot more like youth basketball. I, for one, am listening. Matt

Hey, here's bit of irony for you. I'm agreeing with Gull while disagreeing with Geek! First, please don't talk to me about Div I basketball vis-a-vis national or world class swimming. At the elite level of ANY sport, whether its ball room dancing, bass fishing or tiddly-winks, you are going to be practicing hours a day, cross-training your brains out, and hiring mental, nutritional, spiritual and whatever else consultants to find "the edge." The issue here is what is the minimum commitment for a bunch of kids who want to try the sport and have fun. In more than one location, my son has signed up for a youth basketball program that was a one hour x twice a week commitment (one practice, one game). PLUS kids can play pick up basketball in the street or the playgrounds as much or as little as they like. I'd love to hear about a pack of kids all showing up at the pool and racing a 50 *** or 200 IM just for grins and giggles, but sadly, it simply doesn't happen in my experience. Swimming, in contrast, needs much more of a sustained commitment for any meaningful participation. I coached the youth league swim team at the same Base Youth Center that sponsored my son's basketball team. In contrast to the 2 hours per week they needed, we had hour to hour and a half practices five days a week, or when the dual meet season got going, replace two of those workouts with two 3-4 hour long meets. Bear in mind, that was following my own personal philosophy of coaching youth swimming for fun, first, second and third, and not confusing their fun with my ego. Based on what I have seen from some other swim programs (where the benighted fool of a coach thinks he is going to make the next Michael Phelps, and he is going to get there by working the you-know-what off of every 8 year old he can get his clutches on until he finds one who can put up with his stuff, but I digress...), we were at the extreme end of low-key, participation oriented programs. Now perhaps someone is suggesting that swimming programs are this way because that is the paradigm in U.S. Swimming for the last few decades. Maybe if we rethought what being a "swimming program" meant, and what we asked of the kids and their families, maybe we would come up with something a lot more like youth basketball. I, for one, am listening. Matt