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I would like to take this opportunity to address concerns that
have been discussed regarding the swimmer’s events that I
have chosen for our meet next weekend. In order to do this, I
would like to reiterate a couple of basic principles that are at
the core of my coaching philosophy; I will never embarrass a
swimmer by entering them in an event that they are not capable of
performing, nor will I ever use events in a meet as a punishment
for behavior at practice. The other side of that coaching
coin is that I will constantly look for ways to challenge our
swimmers to exceed the limits of what they believe they are capable
of achieving.
Unfortunately, the limits most swimmers have internalized are
often put in place or reinforced by well meaning parents who openly
discuss their lack of confidence in the coaching their swimmer
receives. I can’t imagine that a parent would undercut
a teacher’s decision to accelerate a class or give more
challenging coursework to their child when that child is meeting
every expectation of the classes that they are currently in.
In point of fact, this what takes place when a parent tells a
swimmer that they aren’t “good” at a particular
event or when a parent interjects themselves into the decision
making process that should take place between the swimmer and their
coach regarding event selection.
There are a few basic ways to measure improvement in swimming;
the most objective of those is to cut time in an existing event or
to add an event that the swimmer has not done before. The
fact that a swimmer is competing in a new event is exciting and
should be celebrated. It means that they are progressing as
an athlete, either in the motor skills required to swim a new
stroke legally, or in strength and aerobic capacity as they begin
to swim races of longer duration. It also means that they
have met the challenge of performing outside their comfort zone and
have trusted my assessment of what they are actually capable of
achieving. This trust is fundamental to the successful
athlete/coach relationship, it is something that I work for
everyday with my swimmers, and it is the reason that we have as
many older swimmers staying in our program in the recent past.
When I started coaching this team, we had a total of four high
school swimmers. We currently have fourteen. This has
been the result of a conscious effort on my part to challenge the
kids, communicate with them, and to try to keep a sport with a
brutal training regimen as fresh as possible. My hope is that
parents will join me in those efforts by referring their
swimmer’s questions or concerns directly to me, and give me
the opportunity to resolve those questions with their swimmer.
Most important, I hope that parents will trust me to use my
experience and discretion to push their swimmers to explore their
respective potentials, with the knowledge that I won’t do
anything to endanger my long-term goal of keeping all of our
swimmers engaged in a sport that is not only great for their
physical health but also of tremendous benefit to their confidence
and self-discipline.
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