News
For
SWIM
PARENTS
Published by The American
Swimming Coaches Association
5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200
Fort Lauderdale FL 33309
___________________________________________________________________
Which Events Should Your
Child Swim?
Issue:
My 12 year old will be aging up before the end of the season and she needs every
opportunity to make AAA times in her best events before then. The coach,
however, seems to have different ideas about the meets we attend and the events
she swims. I do not like the way the coach selects my child's meet and
event schedule.
Response:
Rule number one for any concern regarding decisions made by the coach is to
communicate directly with the coach at your earliest opportunity. The
coach may mention one or more of the following considerations:
1.
Age group swimmers should have an opportunity to experience all the official
events for their age group. In fact, many coaches would make a case for
having intermediate to advanced age group swimmers also swim 200's of back,
breast, and fly, as well as the 400 IM and distance freestyles. BUT, there
needs to be a balance found between the time and expense of driving to too many
meets versus the larger objectives of a good age group program. See
numbers 2, 3, and 4 below.
2.
Achievement should be viewed as career long and not dependent on a mid-season
peak in coordination with a last meet effort before aging up. A major push
at end of an age group often leads to a letdown than can occur when the child
ages up. This discourages the steady and consistent progress that most
coaches encourage in age group swimming. Coaches plan careers around
seasonal planning, not around birthdays. The primary focus should be on
preparing swimmers for the senior team and a secondary focus would be on end of
season meets.
3. A
combined and unified team effort for end of the season meets is more important
than allowing individual swimmers to "peak" for mid-season meets in order to
achieve time standards or rankings.
4.
The coach is the technical expert of the team and the one with the best
perspective for event selection. Event selection often times deliberately
includes the swimmer’s weakest events as a challenge, as an evaluation tool, as
a change of focus, and/or as preparation for future events. Frankly,
parents and age group swimmers will not often choose events that offer difficult
challenges, change the points of focus, or prepare the swimmer in a tactical way
for future events. This is a technical matter and best left to the
technical expert – the coach.
Here are a
few examples: Distance oriented swimmers may be asked to swim sprint
events in order to work on their speed. (If the swimmer’s best time in the 100
meter free is 1:13 and they are trying to break 5 minutes in the 400 meter swim
then they need the ability to go in 1:13 to 1:14 in the 400 and swimming the 100
gives them a chance to work on their “going out speed.”)
A swimmer
who has been a good butterflyer for the last couple of years and has begun to be
identified as a “flyer” by herself and friends and possibly parents, but then
finds herself having difficulty improving in the fly events – perhaps due to
changes in her body as she matures -- can find new motivation in the other
events if given a chance to focus on something different.
One of the
great core values of swimming is learning to meet difficult challenges with
determination for success. A good coach may deliberately schedule every 11
and 12 year old for the 200 meter butterfly in an upcoming meet and then prepare
them for it physically and mentally in practice so that they may face the
challenge with some courage. It’s a great confidence builder.
…And
building confidence comes not only from doing what one is good at, but from
doing the uncomfortable and difficult.