I just became the coach of my first swim team, and I, being a male, am having a hard time with the whole period thing. My girls are middle school level, and a little shy about the subject, as am I. Now, I know that you can swim on your period by using a tampon, but they cringed at the idea. However, on a 20 girl team, I've got as many as 6-7 girls sitting out daily because of it. I know that's far FAR too high. I'm about this close to going out and buying a box of tampons to shove in their face if they don't dress.
So my questions are:
How necessary is it that you wear a tampon? Is it an every day thing? are there times when it's worse than others?
And, how can I easily make the lives of the swimmers who don't swim (and keep in mind it has to be for a group of 6-7 people) a living hell. I need a dry land work out that can be done on the pool deck that takes little effort to watch (so I can coach the other girls) and something they can't really slack off - I keep giving them push ups and they barely go down.
I really can't think of anything outside of making the actual swim session fun, so if you guys have ideas on how to do that too it might work, too. It need to work on something important though.
Parents
Former Member
One more thought and then I'll try to shut up. It occurs to me, ML, that you might need to sit back and evaluate your coaching. Your two posts concern me in that they sound awfully judgmental for a middle school swim coach (both about the girls and their parents).
You might ask yourself if there is a reason these girls don't want to swim. Are you making sure you are including the (very important--IMO) element of fun in practices? At this age level (and non-USAS) that's a pretty big deal. Maybe you're good about all that, but it's worth looking at for a moment. Too much intensity at this level is sort of silly. And, maybe if there were some kind of incentive to be in practice more, more girls would find ways to get in the water despite their bodies. Maybe you have some kind of fun reward for swimming so many practices a month? You'll catch way more bees* with honey than with vinegar, or so they say...Let's see. We had an hour of free time today in practice. I sorta planned that to be on Friday, but the whole 4 swimmers thing... I've taught them things like dolphin dives, they tell me they really like the start, turn, finish 50s. I got them a mascot that they seemed to really like. I gave them time to create their own cheers, and time to practice them - they did a really nice job with taht in the meet too (but I forgot a thank you/goodbye cheer). I try my best to compliment the things I see good. I plan to buy a poster board tomorrow, for which I've already bought stickers - each time they get a personal best they earn a sticker to go on the board. I've gotten a lot of compliments from parents, too.
I'm only particularly critical of these 4, and to be perfectly honest, I only WANT to keep 2 of the four. The two I don't want to keep are lazy and have horrible attitudes. And I still feel that one of them could stand to learn a lot if she stayed - she's started to try, but she's very irresponsible - she's the type that fails classes because she doesn't like them, she's already told me she's going to do that for one of them. It's really sad, but if I keep riding her, she'll either quit, or she'll become more responsible and hopefully mature a little bit. In a way I'm teaching more than just swimming. However, the other one is flat out lying to me. I can't exactly check. So how can I call her out on it?
One more thought and then I'll try to shut up. It occurs to me, ML, that you might need to sit back and evaluate your coaching. Your two posts concern me in that they sound awfully judgmental for a middle school swim coach (both about the girls and their parents).
You might ask yourself if there is a reason these girls don't want to swim. Are you making sure you are including the (very important--IMO) element of fun in practices? At this age level (and non-USAS) that's a pretty big deal. Maybe you're good about all that, but it's worth looking at for a moment. Too much intensity at this level is sort of silly. And, maybe if there were some kind of incentive to be in practice more, more girls would find ways to get in the water despite their bodies. Maybe you have some kind of fun reward for swimming so many practices a month? You'll catch way more bees* with honey than with vinegar, or so they say...Let's see. We had an hour of free time today in practice. I sorta planned that to be on Friday, but the whole 4 swimmers thing... I've taught them things like dolphin dives, they tell me they really like the start, turn, finish 50s. I got them a mascot that they seemed to really like. I gave them time to create their own cheers, and time to practice them - they did a really nice job with taht in the meet too (but I forgot a thank you/goodbye cheer). I try my best to compliment the things I see good. I plan to buy a poster board tomorrow, for which I've already bought stickers - each time they get a personal best they earn a sticker to go on the board. I've gotten a lot of compliments from parents, too.
I'm only particularly critical of these 4, and to be perfectly honest, I only WANT to keep 2 of the four. The two I don't want to keep are lazy and have horrible attitudes. And I still feel that one of them could stand to learn a lot if she stayed - she's started to try, but she's very irresponsible - she's the type that fails classes because she doesn't like them, she's already told me she's going to do that for one of them. It's really sad, but if I keep riding her, she'll either quit, or she'll become more responsible and hopefully mature a little bit. In a way I'm teaching more than just swimming. However, the other one is flat out lying to me. I can't exactly check. So how can I call her out on it?
