News
For
SWIM
PARENTS
Published by The American
Swimming Coaches Association
5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200
Fort Lauderdale FL 33309
___________________________________________________________________
Why Should A Club Support Its Elite Athletes
Financially?
By John Leonard
Recently a club board member called me, and
asked a simple but important question. “I’ve heard that a lot of clubs spend
money to send their better athletes to nationals and some, even to Sectionals,
is that correct? And if they do, WHY do they? What does the Club get out of it?“
Good questions, simply and directly asked.
Hereafter, my equally simple and direct answer.
Yes, a large number of clubs that attend
higher level meets, whether they be Sectionals, Junior Nationals or Senior
Nationals, (or in some cases, even the Grand Prix series of meets) financially
support their club athletes to those meets, to some extent.
What extent? It runs the gamut from a few
hundred dollars of assistance to paying their way to the event. What does
that cost? Use $350 as the average round trip airfare to an event, use
$120 per night for 4 nights in a hotel, and $50 a day for food, and you rapidly
have a bill of $1030.00 and you haven’t rented a vehicle yet for local
transportation. Yes, high level meets are expensive.
Now, you can use some “family travel mileage”
to reduce the airfare, you can share a hotel room with 1-3 others to reduce
that, and you may be able to eat reasonably healthy for less than $50 a day, but
any way you cut it, it’s not cheap.
So why do clubs do it?
Basically to “DE-LIMIT” the aspiration level of
ALL of their team athletes.
Once an athlete has been in any sport for awhile,
most of them dream of competing at the highest level. As they get a little
older, we realize that the travel necessary to do so, can be a substantial drain
on a middle class family. No one I know likes to have their dreams limited
by the financial costs of those dreams or the financial costs of working for
that dream.
A fine writer by the name of Rudyard Kipling,
once wrote, “The strength of the pack is the wolf. And the strength of the
wolf, is the pack”. When the “wolf”
on your team (the highest level athlete) qualifies for a higher level meet and
they don’t attend because of money; the dream dies, not just in that athlete,
but in ALL the athletes of the team. ”The team didn’t support Tim to
the Sectionals, so he couldn’t afford to go.”
It’s a killer, and every child on the team,
right down to the 8 and under’s will hear something about it whether they
understand it all or not.
And it kills the aspirations of others.
When the pack does not support the wolf, the
wolf will look to go where another pack will support them. And should.
Conversely, when the pack DOES support the wolf, that wolf has a strong
obligation to come home, explain the marvels and wonderfulness of going to
Sectionals, Jr/Sr. Nationals, the Olympic Trials or the Olympic Games and help
fire and fuel the dream for every other generation in that pack/team. The
wolf has to be willing and able to “give back” to the pack. “The strength of
the pack is the wolf”.
I can also hear the parent who says, “Wait
a second, my child isn’t going to nationals, all they want to do is swim and
have fun” That’s correct and
understandable. But my question is, do you want your child to be in a
program that limits how far they can dream of going? Or do you want your
child (like I want mine) to be UNLIMITED in their ability to dream of
achievements?
The team contributing financially to the
aspirational meet expenses of its top swimmers, is in reality, unlimiting ALL
its swimmers. And we can all take pride in making that contribution to our
team, our friends and our community