Loved the home page feature on the USMS website today...
www.usms.org/features.php
Since the NCAA Championships are all around us these two weeks, who hasn't thought about our outstanding collegiate swimmers?
But have any of us considered inviting them to join us at masters in their near future?
Masters Swim Clubs in college areas could do all kinds of great things to inspire a retiring collegiate swimmer to join them.
Invite them to talk to the team at a social event would be an easy no-brainer.
But even beyond.
How about asking them to hold a clinic for your club?
And pay them since now they can accept the cash - and probably need it?
What else can we do to entice them to join our clubs (rack up points at the championship meets) and begin the rest of their healthy fit lives?
Parents
Former Member
As a 20-something the biggest "issue" (if you could call it that) I have with Masters is that it doesn't really cater to us. I think out of all the people on my team maybe 6 are under 30, and we have a pretty big team. And as nice as everyone is on the team (they're GREAT wonderful people) it's awkward to go to team social events where everyone brings their kids and talks about work. Other than swimming it's hard to find common interests. I think that is the biggest challenge when you're talking about recruiting new grads to swim. You need to overcome the stigma that Masters is for old people before you can try to recruit younger people.
When I was in the sports information field, this same issue came up a lot at CoSIDA events (the national association for sports information). But, an interior, informal group was created called Young CoSIDA. Maybe something similar could be done within Masters? It's really difficult to try to get everyone from 20 to 100 on the same page. Might not hurt to have some informal groups catering to the various larger age groupings within the sport.
Not sure how you would go about putting something like that together, but it could at least be a discussion to be had.
As a 20-something the biggest "issue" (if you could call it that) I have with Masters is that it doesn't really cater to us. I think out of all the people on my team maybe 6 are under 30, and we have a pretty big team. And as nice as everyone is on the team (they're GREAT wonderful people) it's awkward to go to team social events where everyone brings their kids and talks about work. Other than swimming it's hard to find common interests. I think that is the biggest challenge when you're talking about recruiting new grads to swim. You need to overcome the stigma that Masters is for old people before you can try to recruit younger people.
When I was in the sports information field, this same issue came up a lot at CoSIDA events (the national association for sports information). But, an interior, informal group was created called Young CoSIDA. Maybe something similar could be done within Masters? It's really difficult to try to get everyone from 20 to 100 on the same page. Might not hurt to have some informal groups catering to the various larger age groupings within the sport.
Not sure how you would go about putting something like that together, but it could at least be a discussion to be had.
