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Hi everybody,
Here is the Parents’
newsletter #2. Have fun with it.
Coach Mavi
News For
SWIM
PARENTS
Published by
The American Swimming Coaches Association
5101 NW 21
Ave., Suite 200
Fort
Lauderdale FL 33309
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The Purpose
of Travel Meets for Swim Teams
Many parents
do not understand why coaches want athletes to travel to
“away” meets, sometimes including overnight meets.
There are several reasons, but one very large performance reason.
Let me explain.
The key is to
watch what your child does when they attend a local swim meet. The
first thing they do, is go and get a… heat sheet…
right? And then they scour the heat sheet for their own names and
their position relative to their
competitors. Because… they know who
their competitors are… they see them meet after meet, after
meet. And what goes on in our swimmer’s head (let’s
call her Betsy) when she does the heat sheet
scour…???
“Well,
lets see. Suzie’s here, Mary is here, oh my gosh, Sarah is
here, I can’t stand that girl… and she always beats
me… and here’s Kelly, seeded below me, why would she
put in that slow time? She usually beats me, so let’s see,
I’ll be… fifth.”
Now, an hour
or two later, and our heroine dives in the pool in the 100 free.
With brilliant coaching and an even more impressive gene selection
from Mom and Dad, she executes a perfect racing dive and streaks to
the 25 turn wall, where she turns first, then sneaks a quick
peek… “wow! I’m ahead.” Then pushes on
towards the fifty wall… amazingly, our Betsy is still on the
lead. Now, off the 50 wall, she is so amazed by her own performance
she takes a slightly longer look at her no-longer-so-commanding
lead, so she can reassure herself that she is still “out
there.” By the 75 wall, her lead has shrunk to inches, as the
other swimmers realize that the established pecking order is being
disrupted and swim harder. Betsy, now wondering exactly what she
will say to all these acquaintances of hers once she has beaten
them, and “will they still like me anyway?,” begins to
lose focus and slide back into her accustomed place in the pack. By
the end of the race, she has creatively found a way to slide all
the way back to 5th. She gets out happy to have led
for awhile; she has that to talk about, but is happier that the
natural order of finish in the kingdom of pre-adolescent girls has
not been disrupted. In other words, she is comfortable once
again.
Mom and Dad
say, “dang, if only she was getting a little better coaching,
she’d be beating all those girls.” Coach says,
“doggone, with all those sprint genes from mom and dad,
it’s hard to get her to finish a race
big.”
And Betsy
says “that wasn’t so bad, sort of fun, really. Now,
where is Suzie, I really ought to go congratulate
her.”
Now, after
some of this, the smart coach will say to the parent group,
“parent group, it is time to go to an out-of-town
meet.”
“A
what?”
“A meet
out-of-town. You know, we get a bus, the kids all travel together,
and we go as a team to another area and swim in a
meet.”
“Isn’t
that expensive?”
“Well,
it will be about $20 a child for the bus, another $25 a child for
Saturday night in a hotel, and maybe $50 for food, so all in all,
just about a hundred dollars.”
“A
hundred dollars! Heck, Betsy can’t beat the other girls here
in our local area, what does she need to go to a meet like that
for?”
Now the coach
needs to know the answer… and here it
is…
When Betsy
swims against people she knows, she has pre-ordained expectations.
And she finds ways to make those expectations come true. What she
needs, is a chance for a breakthrough performance, to let her
believe some new things about herself. So how does a travel meet do
that?
Betsy reads
the heat sheet… “yup, here I am, Betsy Worangle, 100
free, at 57.89, just a little slower than my best time… yep,
I’m in here.” And then what?
She
doesn’t know another name in the program. She has no idea
where she fits in. So she does what? She just goes out and swims as
fast as she can… no pre-conceived notions to live up
to… just swim fast. Lo and behold, 56.44,
2nd place.
56.44 would
have won at home. But Betsy could not get that out of herself when
she had social and athletic expectations to live down to in the
meet at home. On the road, she can just “go for it.”
And she does. The tremendous advantages of swimming where you
don’t know anyone.
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