I’ve been involved in groups
where the only goals involved were the national
group or the top senior group. The kids that got to
that level had to learn how to make goals. It’s not
easy to do. You waste an entire season learning goal
setting before you can really implement it and use
it. I spoke at ASCA a few years ago and introduced
this concept, “If you don’t know where you are
going, it doesn’t matter how you get there.” I don’t
know where I stole that from, but it is a pretty
good concept.
If you don’t know where you
are going, it doesn’t matter. If you are not
planning on being the best swimmer in the whole
entire world, does it matter if you go to practice
this morning? If you are a 10-year-old and you are
not trying to master your strokes to go faster, does
it matter if you pay attention to the coach? If your
coach is trying to have swimmers who are learning to
be good so when they have an adult body they can go
fast, does it really matter if you plan out the
practice for today or tomorrow or next week or next
cycle? NO.
If it didn’t matter that I get to
Lake Placid, New York, this week, I could have
walked west from my house. If you don’t know where
you’re going, it doesn’t matter how you get there. I
think that the age group coach should introduce goal
setting to young swimmers. You need to introduce it
immediately. You, as the coach leader, should have
the goal of learning the skills and checking
yourself with goals each day.
My goal today is to teach
things correctly. My goal today is not just stand
there and watch the child do the skill wrong and go
“Why do they bother doing that wrong after I’ve told
them 50,000 times, they still don’t get the idea.”
Isn’t it amazing how often we try to get Bosco to do
things correctly? “ Bosco, are you out of your
mind?” On the outside, Bosco is seeing a coach
standing and staring at him but on the inside you
are screaming at the top of your lungs, but no words
come out of your mouth.
Whether your goals are set by
set, by skill or by practice, week or season, they
need to be established in the younger groups. I have
one practice group that starts in complete shambles
because kids are coming out of school, some people
get there at 3:00 p.m., some 3:15 p.m., some 3:30
p.m. and I can’t have a pre-practice meeting. And
this group is a mess, they are all over the place.
The group that follows them, which is 11&12 year
olds, the first group goes from 11-15 years old and
they are fairly fast kids, but the group that
follows them are tremendously well focused and they
are learning the core skill and the core concepts.
We talk about core skill because we are trying to
get them to use the word core as far as relating to
what they are trying to do. So it’s not just core
skills as far as relating to the center of stroke,
it’s core skills as far as getting them to use their
body core properly.
We are sitting here, today the
goal is to do this, this and this. We’ll remind you
as we get to each phase of the practice which goal
we are working on for that phase. The pride that has
come out of that practice group has been marvelous.
Your goals must be written so that they can be
referenced and reshaped. If they’re not written,
then you can say, “I meant to do that.” Inside the
head you are saying, “I want to go a 49.99, I want
to break 50.” After the swim you get a 51.20, you
say “Okay”, nobody knows you missed your goal by 1.3
seconds. But if you write it down, there’s some
accountability there.
Ideally all members of your staff
should have written goals. If you’re going to hold
that kid accountable to do the right thing at the
right time, guess what…YOU should hold yourself
accountable to do the same thing. You better do the
right thing at the right time. You better not sit
there and yell at Bosco in your head and not make
the changes. Your goal is not to yell at him in your
head, your goal is to get him to swim better.
You should have a goal
contract. At Kansas City, it was part of our
registration packet. In the goal packet, the coach
and the parent and the swimmer signed those goals.
That way we got everyone on the same page, it’s not
“I wish that is what I kind of want to have someday,
maybe.” It is “THESE ARE THE THINGS I WILL STRIVE
FOR.” Now on Tuesday I can go back to Bosco and say,
”Bosco, do you remember that piece of paper you
signed? It says here that you want to go and do
this.” He says, “Stop nagging, all right, okay, I’m
sorry I’ll do better”. The goal contract is going to
assure that everybody on the team is working towards
the same things.
If you’ve got 50 kids on your
team working on being the best swimmers in the LSC
and the goal is to be a National Champion, you have
a problem. When you know that everybody is working
on the same direction, and on the same page, then
you can increase the expectations. I can’t expect a
lot out of some of the kids in the group because
doggone it, they are not there and they don’t set
goals for themselves. I don’t know what to expect
from them. Maybe I should expect gold medal
performances, maybe I don’t have the right, but I
don’t know.
All the coaches should do goal
contracts. That’s something between you and that
assistant coach. It might be something down the road
that’s between the Board and the coach. Maybe it’s a
way of evaluating the coach’s job. But it’s a fair
process. You walk into that Board meeting and they
say, you didn’t reach 9 out of 10 goals you set
down. Or you didn’t move toward 9 out of 10 goals
you set. Some changes are going to have to happen.
At least you know it’s coming. At least it was under
your control and in your hands. You can not claim
that you walked into an “I gotcha” situation. You
don’t walk in and have someone say, you got 3rd in
the LSC championships. We thought you were going to
win Nationals, you’re fired. And that happens.
Coaches get blind-sided by that all the time. And
they should not, if they have stated goals that keep
them on task.
Taken from an edited
transcript of a presentation that Mike Lewellyn gave
at the National Age Group Coaches Conference in
April 1999. |