COACHES VIEW

MEET WRAP UPS

With the Winter Classic and Mako Invitation meets now behind us we can look forward to a few weeks of hard training, but before we do let’s take a look at things learned, and also things to work on as we move forward over the next few weeks.

Let’s start by giving the parents a big thank you for all the help and support over the last few weekends.  Thanks for having the kids where they were supposed to be.  The coaches really appreciate this as it one less thing on our plates that we need to worry about.

When looking over all the swims over the last two weekends, I like to evaluate the group as a whole to see if what we are doing is working and what needs to be added or deleted to help us move forward.  After that I look at individual swims to see areas that we can work on during practice.  When looking at the groups as a whole there was a lot of success throughout the weekend.  Certainly there were some individual swims that some of you might want back, but all you can do is learn, understand and move forward.  All athletes have those moments when they wish there could have been a different outcome, but you know what happened  so let’s understand it and move on.  That is what is unique about sports, outcomes are not pre-determined, you must have the heart to go and grab it and sometimes you miss.  Get over it. There are no predetermined outcomes that’s why we race and play the games isn’t it.  Now what about the meets.

First off you all were great working through your warmups and warm-downs throughout the weekend.  Now I will speak for myself here and it involves your little chats with coaches after your races.  Now I heard a coach this past weekend say, “I discuss the same thing after every race but they won’t correct it.”  For myself this is one of the most frustrating things that I encounter in coaching.  Those little chats are opportunities to learn.  For myself I try not to overwhelm you information, and I try to narrow in on one maybe two things that will help you in your next race.  Will it result in a best time, not always but with some attention it will eventually.  The best thing that you can do after the meet is keep a little log where you can write down your events, what worked or didn’t and what you discussed with your coaches that can help you in future races.  Please don’t look at these chats as criticism, it’s feedback to help you move forward.

Over both weekends it was great to see that all of you arrived at the pool with your game faces on.  Rarely did I hear from any of you that familiar line “ I’m tired” which told us right from the start that not only did you come to swim, but you were here to race.  From the start we were able to see all of your hard work starting to pay off on all aspects of your races.  We saw some great things with your underwater dolphins, some aggressive work in and out of your turns and some great detail in finishing your races to the wall.

The execution of your races was a lot of fun to watch.  For the longer events it was good to see so many of you step out of your comfort zones and really work the middle of your races and trusting the process and hard work that you have put in to be able to finish those races.  Personal best were abundant throughout the racing over the course of both weekends.  Yes, as in any athletic event some of you were faced with adversity but it was great to see that you were able to deal with it, move on and bounce back, one of the hardest lessons faced both in athletics and life in general.

You will be a better person because of it. 

 The way that you all supported each other both when things went well, and when some of us hit bumps was great to watch as the weekends went on.  Way to go by all of you who participated.  Great Job!

KEEP THIS THOUGHT IN YOUR MIND AS WE MOVE THROUGH THE WINTER MONTHS