When Sally Swims Poorly…

How Mom and Dad Might Talk To Their Child at a Swim Meet

By John Leonard

Swim Meet conversation between parent and athlete can be either highly productive, or highly counter-productive.  Your goal as a parent should be to contribute to a positive swim meet experience for your child.  This is the same goal as shared by the coach and the athlete.  It is important that all three sides of the triangle be working together on meet days, as well as the rest of the swim year.

As I travel the country talking to parents, and observing swim meets and the effects of individual athletes, a few things stand out for comment.  The inter-relationship of athlete, coach and parent on the days of swim meets is one of the most important.  To discuss this adequately, it is necessary to define the role of each person.

The athlete attends the meet to attempt to gain or affirm some progress that has been made in their development.  This may take the form of a personal best time, or holding a stroke technique together for an entire race, or executing accurately a particular strategy for  "splitting" the race, or any of a multitude of other possibilities and combinations.  The role of the athlete is the active one.  It is up to them to perform, and the meet day is a selected time to perform the experiment.

The role of the coach on meet day needs to be thoroughly understood. It is dependent upon how the coach  has presented themselves in the athlete's swimming career.  Primarily, for most coaches, they are the technical resource that a swimmer depends upon to help them improve.  They also serve as a role model, and to a greater or lesser extent, as a motivator, friend, and co-author of the strategy or experiment being performed on that day.

The parent is the racing "support crew".  The parent makes sure they have all their human needs attended to, and continues their parental function of supervising personal development.  Their love, attention, and caring are key ingredients in creating a successful experience on race day.

Athlete, technical support, and human support. That's all it takes.

Now, back to the question of meet conversation. Lots of talk goes on at a meet, and coming and going around the meet. Let's focus on the conversations that go on around a particular swim, and see what can be learned from that item.

Sally is eleven years old, and she is about to swim the 100 yard freestyle. Sally is a pretty good little swimmer, and has a best time of 1:01.3.  She'd like to go a personal best time in this event at the meet, and she and her coach have been talking all week about how Sally has to concentrate on keeping her stroke long and strong during the last 25 yards of her race.  Sally knows she is supposed to stop and talk to Coach before she swims so she goes over to see her.

"Hey Kiddo, ready for the big swim?"

"Coach, I got it all under control, and I'm ready to go fast."

"What do you need to remember on this swim?"

"To keep my stroke long on the last twenty-five."

"Not just long, but...."

"long and Strong!"

"Right!  Have a real good swim.  Now, go get it!"

Sally blasts off, and gets out in front immediately.  Mom and Dad cheer like crazy.  Sally turns for home, and......  

(Now, at this point let's consider two endings.  We will take a look at each one.)

Sally turns for home and...... shortens her stroke bit by bit as she gets more and more tired, and struggles to the wall, with a time of 1:01.5.

Sally is disappointed, and she goes back to her coach choking back tears, and stands there, waiting for her to speak.

"Well, not quite what we wanted. How did it feel?"

"It felt awful! I was terrible! I couldn't do anything!"

"From here, it looked like you were only pushing through to your waist, and towards the end of the race maybe not even that far.  Where should your hand finish?"

"At my suit line."

"And what did your arms really feel like?"

"I got all hot and my arms were burning at the end of the race."

"Do you know why that is?  I think you haven't had enough good fast pace work yet.  Next month, we'll work on that, and by the next meet you'll be much better!"

Sally leaves happy and feeling much less like the Ugly Duckling. Now, she heads to see Mom and Dad.

Most parents I talk to think that this is a tough time to deal with their children.  It isn't!  (The tough one is next.)  All Mom and Dad have to do in this case, is two simple things:

First, deal with human things.

"Are you warm enough, honey?"

"Put on your warm-ups, and your towel"

"Do you need something to drink?"

Then, if all is well, STOP.  Do not get into the race unless the child wants to.  That is not your role. You are there to support.

But let’s say that Sally comes back and says....

"I Stunk!"

Mom and Dad say, "Stunk?  Stunk means you smelled badly.  All that chlorine is kind of nasty, but I wouldn't say you stunk.  What do you really mean?"

After Sally has a chance to get rid of her emotional response, you should ask, "What did Coach say?"

Now is a good time to explore this.  What you are trying to do, as a parent, is duplicate the same mind-set the coach is trying to re-instill.  Analyze what went wrong with the experiment.  You don't have the technical expertise to offer the answers that her coach does, but by asking questions that require a technical response, you shift Sally out of the emotional context.  This is nothing more than an experiment that did not turn out the way Sally and her coach wanted it to.  This is perfect swim parenting.  You reinforce the message that the coach is sending.

If you will simply take care of the human needs, and shift the emotional disappointment to an analytical response, all will be well in Sally's world.

Handling Disappointment from the Parent’s Side

One of the absolute toughest roles in the sporting experience is that of being an athlete’s parent. For the most part a parent wants only success for his/her daughter/son. The role the parent plays changes as the athlete gets older and more experienced. Imagine Michael Phelps’s Mom’s role over the years. As a swim parent you go through several levels as the swimmer grows up both chronologically and experience wise.

An 8 year old needs to be transported to practice even encouraged to go on many days. They need suits and goggles picked out and purchased. Events at meets need to be chosen and then entered (and paid for). Driving to the meet, feeding, handling the towels and all the logistics fall in your lap. In many ways all the 8 year old does is swim the race and you as parent pretty much do all the rest. The coach plays a role here but in reality probably much less of a role than she/he thinks. The overall focus here is FUN. Make swimming and racing fun and the little ones will keep coming back for more.

If a swim doesn’t turn out exactly how the swimmer wanted it to (and keep in mind that many of them have no real idea how they want it to turn out) as a parent you MUST hide your disappointment. Remind the swimmer they have lots more races and things will change for the better. For the young ones this is true beyond a doubt.
As the swimmer gets older they can start to connect the dots between effort put in to practice and results achieved in meets. They can begin to pick events they choose – not the ones you have chosen for them…remember they do the swimming. If you really think they should swim a 500 but they prefer the 100 perhaps you need to join a Masters team and enter a 500, you know, to sort of get it out of your system☺.

And remember, as they get older and start to distance themselves from you, you must still hide your disappointment when they do not perform up to their and or your levels of expectation.

Trust us on this one point if on no other. No matter what your relationship is with your swimmer, as a parent they so much want your approval, especially when things are going tough for them; and every swimmer on the planet has down cycles. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team as a sophomore. As a pro, he was trusted to take the game winning shot and failed 26 times in his career. He got over it. Your swimmer will get over his/her slow swim; they may never get over the look of disappointment on your face after a tough race. Show and give love and support and you will win another day, sooner than later. You MUST hide your disappointment.

Not long ago we were coaching at the local Junior Olympic long course meet. We observed a young man in the 15-16 age group racing the 1500 meter swim. His Dad was counting for him. After about 300 meters it was obvious – at least to the Dad by his body language – the swim was not going particularly well. At about 600 meters the volume in the Dad’s voice came up 20 or so decibels and had a decidedly critical tone to it. As the swimmer came into the turn Dad was furiously shaking the counter up and down and yelling “Kick harder, come on kick harder”. We wondered if the swimmer could read the counter since it was moving up and down pretty fast. We wondered if the swimmer could actually hear the words the Dad was yelling. We think there is a difference between a loud voice exhorting a swimmer on to glory and a loud voice yelling “commands”.

When the race concluded the Dad walked away from the end of the pool, heading down to the finish end, his head hung down dejectedly muttering to himself. One could only imagine the scene that was to become the swimmer’s next life’s chapter. The ride home gave us pause to think.

Swimming is important to our kids especially as they get older. As one gets closer to 0:00.00 the time reductions become more challenging to achieve. Olympians often go years without improving a time, rather they look for improvement in how well they swim, not merely how fast.

Our sport offers a refreshing respite from subjectivity. No one cares how good you look (though every coach worth her/his salt cares about how good you look in the water!!) they just hand out the medals based upon how fast you swam relative to the rest of the competition. And at the end of the day as a parent it is your responsibility to reward your swimmer’s effort based upon their level of accomplishment in the big view, not merely upon time. There are many swimmers who have posted a very fast time and yet the swim was not done correctly. Conversely, we have seen many excellent swims where the time was not a personal best but there was a lot to be excited about of which to be proud.

As Helen Swartz said many times in the last few months of her glorious life, “I think it is important for each of us to do the very best we can. And only we know if we are doing our best.” As most of you know, Mom’s often have the final word!

Posted by Don Swartz & Ken DeMont at 9:21 PM 0 comments Links to this post