Written by There exists in any swim club a small fraction of swim mums and dads who will have coaches running for the nearest rock under which to hide. None more so that those with swimmers aged 10yrs who cannot understand that the same principle of dropping of swimmer X at their violin lesson also applies to dropping swimmer X at swim practice. In short how many parents will ask of the violin teacher: ‘could my swimmer X do more scales work today and work on Bach and not Brahms, because you know he has his theory exam in 2 weeks and he is struggling with Bach.’ I am guessing next to none. However swim events truly brings out the worst in some parents. I could roll out a library here, but let us go with some recent ones.
The context: most swimmers in the UK have been out of the pool for the best part of a year. The Club where I work has been back for just over 10 weeks with limited pool time, but we managed to run a time trial (TT) recently.
The emails that rolled in c/o swimmers aged 10yrs:
- ‘My swimmer X has not competed in over a year so could you do more dive starts in practice?’
What the coach ends up thinking: maybe I need to go see the opticians sooner than I think because on my training cycle/ session plans I swear it says starts run-through pre-TTs
2. ‘ … so my swimmer X has an injury so cannot take part so could you run another one when swimmer X is back?’
What the coach is really thinking (with caustic British sarcasm): yeah sure especially when we have limited pool time and it would mean everyone loses another session of training and I would need to spend another 20hrs+ organising all the volunteer staff – so why not – anything to keep you happy and so I do not need to scarper under another rock.
3) ‘ …so my swimmer X did not do well in one event …’ – proceeds to send screenshots of all swimmer X’s times and previous PBs (personal bests).
What the coach is really thinking: so off by 1 second in one event yet PB by 3+ seconds in all other events – the problem is?
4) ‘ … so my swimmer X did not do well in event A/B/C – can they do the events again this weekend?’
Coach: who by now is exasperated and is just too tired to react. The email just gets a gleeful swipe right delete.
Newsflash: Swim Clubs are supposedly running a coach led athlete centred ethos program – not the world revolves around swimmer X program.
Swim mums and dads a kindly ask – give a little more thought to the wisdom of your emails. Every email that you send in detracts from any time coaches have to actually create a program; conduct research; mentor/share ideas with the coaching team to help build and deliver the best program that they can.
Coaches work hard and with long hours often without pay for the time off deck. Start celebrating the fact that your swimmer was actually given the chance to have a time trial when many clubs have decided not to run one (namely owing to the lack of pool time and the sheer amount of volunteers they need to run them under Covid guidelines). How about commending your swimmer for taking part and showing courage to race after being out of the water for so long? How about asking your swimmer if they enjoyed taking part? Did you ask them what they thought went well; what they felt could have gone better?
Start being part of the process to develop the swimmer and stop using PBs to signify to your swimmer whether they are doing well or not. At 10 years old swimmers should be showing up at races keen to show off their skills learned in practice and if they DQ they DQ (get disqualified) – but will learn a great deal from their mistake and will be a lesson better remembered than any given in swim practice. If they PB+1 they come away with a PB+1. If they come home miserable because they believe you will get mad at them for not swimming faster – they will never enjoy swimming and never show up with the driven mindset of wanting to know more to get better.
In short if you do not change your approach to how success is defined or achieved you may as well end your swimmer’s path right now with a swipe right delete … and that would be a great shame.