here you go, the thread you've been waiting for
SWIM RANT
RANT to your hearts content about aspects of
SWIMMING and SWIMMERS that bug YOU
I encourage you to be good natured and hilarious
you may find it cathartic
Ande
Maybe I should clarify or risk losing my status as an uncaring blowhard (could be too late to reverse that perception). This relates to Summer League only, not year round.
First, I'm never gonna DQ a 6 and under and will make no apologies for that. If any of you judges does that, well, you can stuff yourself. No shrimp is gonna learn a life lesson from that. Oh, and if you DQ my 4 year old, I'm coming after you with a friend who is big and can fight. I'll watch from behind him/her.
Next, I carefully watch the first couple of heats, as that is when the fast swimmers go in our league. Most of these are year rounders anyway. I give pretty wide leniency on the 7/8s and much much less as the age groups get older. However, if I see some kid in the last heat doing his/her level best and doing a pretty fair semblance of the stroke as it was intended, I'm damn sure gonna let it slide.
Blatant turn issues, early leaving, wrong stroke, wrong kick and I'll DQ them.
My philosophy is to remember the general nature of Summer League. Most of these kids swim 2 months a year, do it for both the exercise and fun of being with their friends. I'm not gonna be some ogre and read them the letter of the law and toss them.
We have a kid in our division who is disabled. He swims the 50 free and 50 back. The kids adore him. He's always last and he always does a version of the stroke. When you see 300 kids standing and cheering for him every single meet, you really kind of keep it all in perspective about the whole DQ thing.
Now, USS meets are a different story, chuck 'em all.
BTW - tennis is a rotten example. If ever a sport had more controversy about calls I can't name it. There was even a big article last week on the error rate of cyclops at Wimbledon. John McEnroe might have a different take on that.
I told her she was not allowed to talk to the judges. That made her even angrier. I should have DQ'd her for the outfit she was wearing, heavy on the gray elasticized sweat suit.
:lmao::lmao:
Aquageek what a huge teaching device you have missed by turning the other way. It is not necessary to disqualify, but it would be wise to suggest changes.
What IS it with young swim coaches? Our summer team has been craming 10+ swimmers per lane (2 lanes) for evening practices for the last 2 weeks. It has just been ugly with collisions, swim overs, etc and none of the swimmers have been getting anything resembling a good practice.
I mentioned to the HC that they do get 3 lanes for practice in the afternoons. The response was 'I didn't know that'. Why would a coach not ask first thing how many lanes they can use? I know that I would especially with conditions as crowded as the have been.
BUT even after that, and offering to string another lane line for them, the response was 'we should be fine with 2' so halfway thru practice they move over to the reserved rec lane for a couple of minutes until the pool mgr tells them they can't and they go right back to the 2 lanes. Sigh.
I have two rants.
Had a woman the other in the pool point directly at a fellow swimmer and say "stop splashing." Guess what, she was a noodler.
I was working with some novice adult swimmers the other day, 21 to be exact. We got three lanes at the Y, leaving 4 open. Some older dude went absolutely ballistic about taking "his lane" and pitched a full blown man-child fit for 45 minutes.
It is the looney wacked-out noodling seniors at the Y that drove me away to a real swimming facility.
A nice dose of inexperience. Sorry you have to deal with it. Sounds like a long summer. . .
Yeah, combine that with my type A personality and I've been dying. Actually the HC has 6 years of experience just the first year with us. I emailed our team rep my concerns so at least I'v got that off my chest. I just wish that I could try my hand at coaching swimming, I think I could do a decent job with some experience. I've coached youth soccer and basketball so it's not like I'm a caoching rookie. But please, don't take that to mean that I view myself as the second coming of Bob Bowman.
Paul
I don't have my current WSI so I'm not even a glorified one of those. I judge in a way appropriate for our league, you for yours. These aren't USA Swimming meets. I can tell from your angry post that you enjoy the power, good for you. I enjoy the meets. Please, relax, it's summer league for goodness sakes.
Angry post? Are you kidding me? :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
Once again, you have proven that you have no idea about anything about me but yet you seem to be able to assume that I get a kick out of DQing some swimmer and that somehow that makes my life just that much better.
Being a swim official is not about power, it is about creating a safe and fair environment for the swimmers.
I guess your summer league is run quite a bit different than mine and that's OK. If your league guidelines encourage that type of judging, then it is what it is. All I know is that OUR league's handbook states exactly the conduct expected of our officials and in ours it says 'Call violations as seen'. That seems pretty self explanatory, at least for our league.
Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! The more untidy your strokes is the better!
This was the first time in a Y pool in 7 months. I plan to take another 7 month hiatus.
I think the Ys, as a general rule, need to amend their pool policies. It would be a lot easier to have the pool closed during noodling or swim practice or open swim. Trying to combine it all just causes more and more problems.
