USA Swimming hosts a National
Coaches Summit to bring together the top National
level coaches and discuss issues looming in the
future of swimmers at the National and Olympic
levels. We want to do the same for age group
coaches. The first thing we did was compile a list
of clubs in USA Swimming that have a history of
taking kids from the day they walk in the door to
the day they become National swimmers.
We were from all different parts
of the country, from all different economic groups.
At the start of the Summit, each coach had to get up
and give a little talk about “What makes my team
special.” In the process of tell what was special
about each of our programs, we also discovered that
everyone was saying the same things in different
ways. We finally narrowed down seven traits that all
of these really excellent age group programs
possess.
The seven traits are listed below
in no particular order. We will describe them to you
over the next few issues. I can tell you from
personal experience and from the hard road that
coaches travel to learn about this sport that there
may be more traits, but there are no clubs in the
country that have less. As you do your yearly
evaluations of club, staff and self you should know
that if your team is falling short of its mission
and goals then you are definitely missing one or
more of these traits. (Click on each trait
for more information)
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Consistent coach leadership. I
have often used the analogy of the limousine.
The limousine is the club, the passengers are
the board and membership, and the chauffeur is
the coach. The goal is to get the limousine to a
destination. The passengers set that destination
and then acquire a chauffeur to get them there.
The passengers then go about their own business
of preparing for the next duties when the
destination is reached. The chauffeur takes care
of the immediate task at hand of getting the
limo to its destination on time, safely, and
without losing too many passengers. Conflict
happens when the chauffeur starts getting side
tracked because he doesn’t want to go to the
destination he was hired to go to. Or when the
passengers all start redefining the route to the
destination even though the chauffeur knows the
best way. Such it is with swim teams. The limo
that gets to the most destinations is the one
that has hired the correct chauffeur, doesn’t
have to stop often to change drivers, and
doesn’t mandate changes in routes very often.
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Consistent Head Age Group
Coaches. There’s not a lot of
flip-flopping around. The direction of the age
group program is being set consistently by one
coach who passes well prepared swimmers on to a
head coach who has a consistent direction for
the Senior Program.
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System Wide Goals. All
the teams had system wide goals. Goals were not
something just being set up for the senior kids.
Goals went down as far as the novice kids. There
were yearly, seasonal, monthly, even daily goals
present in one form or another.
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Common Teaching Language.
There’s a common teaching language that is
introduced to the swimmers in the novice group
(the entry level group), and that language is
then expanded on and enriched on all the way up
to the National Program.
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Supportive Parent and Administrative Layer.
There is a supportive and administrative layer.
This administrative layer, in successful clubs,
is directed at the long term success of the
program.
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Stable Pool Situation. The teams
all had a permanent home, either owned or
leased. They all had some sort of back up pool
plan as well.
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Maintain a Standard of Excellence.
Each one of these groups wants to be the best
that they can be from novice to national. They
are not interested in being one of the gang.
From an edited transcript
of a presentation that Mike Lewellyn gave at the
National Age Group Coaches Conference in April 1999.
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