9 Year Old Marvel What? But How?

Now, if you'll pardon me, I have to go count my daughters' ribbons and yell at their teachers before I head to Target for my shift. Target is "The Show" for fat n lazy 45 year olds...Geek you're only Walmart material...:)

That's hilarious. The team my daughter just left was nothing but self centered kids who only talked with other kids their own age. My daughter was ignored and treated like crap on that team and she didn't even do anything to any of these kids. Yeah, fond memories alright. Fact is the older kids were just jealous being beat by a 9 year old kid that's all. You can say all you want about kids being on swim teams to have fun and socialize but at the end of the day many of them want to be #1 period. Funny, at 41 Im still friends with the kids I swam with at 9 and I still have contact with most of my coaches. If you are in a bad program then switch, its that simple.

I am going to sy it again , SHE IS NINE YEARS OLD! I would think that you would be happy just to see her smile after practice or a race. Maybe I don't expect enough from my children but thier smiles after competing (gymnastics and swimming) is good enough for me. BTW, I don't know if I have ever met a "out of shape" swimmer. Swimming is a wonderful sport that obviously you can do throughout you life. I do hope that your daughter will continue to participate in no matter what skill level she has or good she gets. HEAR HEAR :applaud::applaud::applaud:

A little off topic, but this thread made me think of a book that Ande recommended in another thread... here were some suggestions for books about swimming: Jon Urbanchek recommended the Talent Code but it's not about swimming I just finished reading it and it was pretty eye opening with regard to how people learn. It deals with kids, coaching, motivation and practice. I highly recommend it - especially to parents of "child prodigies."

Ande, I have read Outliers too. It is great. 10,000 hours of practice, man, that is a lot! But I will dispute the findings as applied to swimming or really athletics in general. Ande, I would be surprised if you swam significantly more than I did during our youth. I think we are merely seperated by our talent. I swam year round with great coaches from age 8 to age 22. Several of my peers from age group went D1, scored at Nats, finaled at trials, whatever. I did the same workouts, worked with the same coaches but they were just more talented too. Oh well. This topic comes up once per year, and usually ends with me saying Michael Jordan’s image as a hard worker was manufactured by Nike, and Geek telling me I am full of it. Before Geek chimes in, you're not full of it (IMHO). Talent in athletics absolutely plays a role as do our physical gifts or limitations relative to the sport. I trained with guys in HS who out-trained me, but I was faster than them in competition and I out-trained guys in college who smoked me in meets. I'm pretty sure that if I had devoted my 10K hours in my youth focused on basketball instead of swimming, I'd still be a pretty crummy basketball player (e.g., vertical leap rivaling a Chihuahua, hand-eye coordination on par with a someone wearing a blindfold, court speed just above that of a Galapagos turtle on land, etc.). Though I tried many sports as a child, I was a "good" swimmer almost from the start (minus that 5 year old year when I quit because the water was too cold).

Outliers is an interesting concept,but unfortunately it is not a prospective study.To say the "Greats" spent 10000 hours practicing to be great doesn't prove that spending 10000 hours on something makes you great,It may be that "no pain no gain" is true,but it's reverse"all pain leads to gain" isn't(except maybe in some Karmic way.)

Yeah, I definitely think there's a Peter Principle in athletics. Everyone has an upper limit to what they can achieve. The question, though, is how many actually reach that limit and my guess is it's a fairly small percentage.

Outliers is an interesting concept,but unfortunately it is not a prospective study.To say the "Greats" spent 10000 hours practicing to be great doesn't prove that spending 10000 hours on something makes you great,It may be that "no pain no gain" is true,but it's reverse"all pain leads to gain" isn't(except maybe in some Karmic way.) Perfectly put. In my math training, we always talked about "necessary and sufficient conditions." 10K hours might be necessary for success, but not sufficient because there are many other factors at play.

i can't believe this is my first post but crazy parents are soo much fun!!! we have one huge one in our lsc who hops from club to club..his kid is a phemon also but you can see its changing for him now.... I agree read all the Parent articles on the USA Swimming site and then re-evalute your swim parent status!!! My boy is a good swimmer but I always tell him I'm more proud if he cheers louder for his friends(across the LSC, not just our club) than how fast he swims!!! its really funny because he comes to our Sat am practice and stands over my lane and critques my swimming!!!!

USA Swimming has received enough feedback from their membership that they have put in a lot of effort to educate parents. Bad situations absolutely can burn out hardworking, talented coaches and cause swimmers to exit the sport prematurely. I just see so many parallels between this dad and some misdirected parents I've run across in over a decade of doing team administration. I usually get these stories from all angles - coach, swimmer, parent, teammates. The sad thing is that everyone has great intentions and it all starts out so positive but can end so badly. One case I recall: a very fast and talented girl is on the same team as an even faster girl -- and excels many of the same events. Mom made huge sacrifices to "help" the daughter in every way she can and is always "being there for her." The girl feels like she must be the fastest in order have worth and to earn her mother's approval and make the mom happy. She is a straight-A student and the hardest-working swimmer on the team. Both mom and daughter get frustrated when the talented teammate skips practice or loafs and still blows her doors off at meets. Still - she is fast enough to swim at Sr Nationals as a 14-year-old. Down the road, the girl is forced to drop out of the sport (but is relieved) and is institutionalized with heart problems and anorexia trying to be thin and fast like her teammate. Between the anorexia and overtraining, she continued to get slower and slower. Relationships between the mom and daughter are horrible but at least the girl is still alive last I heard. * * * I don't appreciate being under a microscope every day, all the time; and I am sure most swimmers and coaches feel the same way. Whatever you do, you feel like you're being judged and that your self-worth is on the line. Whether intended or not, that's pressure to perform and absolutely stifling for anything requiring any creativity or risk-taking.