Swim Rant

Hulk, move to Dallas!! We need YOU! Our summer club has 200+ kids. For starters....15 screaming 6 & under girls, 35+ 7-8 yrs, and 55+ whopping 9-10 year old girls...and lots of boys! We don't have enough coaches, either. Great pool, 6 lanes, 3 workouts a day, but with 200+ kids...there is very little dedicated stroke technique/instruction. Our coach who does an amazing job (especially with 400+ parents), a fellow master swimmer, is all about getting help on deck or in any position! HOLY COW!!! ONE coach? For 200+ swimmers? That's unreal. And soooo not fair to the kids. Can't a team that size justify additional coaches? Or lean very heavily on the 15+yo swimmers to help out? I'm assuming that there are at least assistant coaches? We're at 160+ kids (but that includes 30 that are in our pre-team program run by 2 of our older swimmers) with 1 HC and 2 ACs. Plus the 2 pre-team coaches. Where I live having that kind of turnout would be WONDERFUL. The community I live in had 5 teams when I swam. It now has 3 and one of them is in danger of not having enough swimmers. Just wondering for those with kids in summer leagues. What is your format like? Here it's 6 team divisions, 5 age groups, 8&U, 9-10, 11-12, 13-14 and 15-18. www.mcsl.org, it's one of the older summer leagues in the country and is the league I swam in from 1974 to 1985. Just wondering. Paul

Hulk, move to Dallas!! We need YOU! Our summer club has 200+ kids. For starters....15 screaming 6 & under girls, 35+ 7-8 yrs, and 55+ whopping 9-10 year old girls...and lots of boys! We don't have enough coaches, either. Great pool, 6 lanes, 3 workouts a day, but with 200+ kids...there is very little dedicated stroke technique/instruction. Our coach who does an amazing job (especially with 400+ parents), a fellow master swimmer, is all about getting help on deck or in any position! HOLY COW!!! ONE coach? For 200+ swimmers? That's unreal. And soooo not fair to the kids. Can't a team that size justify additional coaches? Or lean very heavily on the 15+yo swimmers to help out? I'm assuming that there are at least assistant coaches? We're at 160+ kids (but that includes 30 that are in our pre-team program run by 2 of our older swimmers) with 1 HC and 2 ACs. Plus the 2 pre-team coaches. Where I live having that kind of turnout would be WONDERFUL. The community I live in had 5 teams when I swam. It now has 3 and one of them is in danger of not having enough swimmers. Just wondering for those with kids in summer leagues. What is your format like? Here it's 6 team divisions, 5 age groups, 8&U, 9-10, 11-12, 13-14 and 15-18. www.mcsl.org, it's one of the older summer leagues in the country and is the league I swam in from 1974 to 1985. Just wondering. Paul