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A
Different Way (Part 1)
By WILLIAM J
PRICE
Saluki Head Coach
Part 2, Part 3
Introduction
While driving over 2400
miles in the last few weeks to attend the New England Swimming (NES) series
of championship meets I decided that we have too many end-of-season meets
and began wondering what each meet was really accomplishing for the swimmers
involved. Coaches spend a lot of their "on deck" time chatting with other
coaches and the discussion usually revolves around changing the championship
qualifying times or the sequence of meets (lots of people would like to see
the district meets held prior to the age group championship again). What I
would like to see next year though has nothing to do with qualifying times
and I really don’t care when districts are held. My idea is heretical.
We need fewer championship
meets. Fiddling with qualifying times or the meet calendar won’t change
this. I am proposing that the 8 & under championship be eliminated
completely. Here’s why:
When I look at our seasonal
schedule I see a copy of what an elite athlete follows in order to elicit
peak performance i.e. a season of meets all leading up to a
culminating event and then doing the whole thing over again. This works well
for our older swimmers because they are mature enough to benefit not only
from the seasonal nature of training (with periods of preparation, overload
and rest) but also from the different types of training necessary for good
performance. But we have imposed this pattern of training on our younger
swimmers as well even though there is ample evidence that this structure
doesn’t work for children and leads mainly to high levels of burnout. Is
this really the best way to develop talented, long-lasting athletes or are
we just treating our 8-year-olds like 16-year-olds? NES consists of clubs
run mostly by professional coaches. Do we need to mirror what any child can
find in a summer league? There are other ways to keep youngsters (and their
parents) interested in our programs. Ways that will make them better
swimmers in the long run.
Pressure on young athletes is inappropriate and
detrimental
Studies on athlete burnout
reveal that this is a far more prevalent condition than many in sport
thought primarily because of the way it was previously defined. Young
athletes burnout not because of heavy workloads but because they have no
idea how to handle the unreasonable pressures they face. Pressures that are
hard to identify but that are present nonetheless. I don’t know how many
times I’ve heard "Oh, we don’t push him" or "It’s his decision to swim or
not" when talking with parents. What they really mean by this is that the
issue has never come to a point where a decision had to be made about
whether to continue or not. Parents do not have to create overt pressure for
it to be perceived by the child. Indeed most pressure that comes from
parents and coaches is indirect and inadvertent. But children see what
parents go through for them to participate in sport activities. They see
that what it takes to get that new swim suit, team bag or some other piece
of sport paraphernalia is their continued participation in the sport. They
see that their participation in swimming is hardly an individual issue
especially when family travel and vacation time is allotted based on the
swim schedule. They may not yet be able to verbalize these feelings but to
assume they are under no pressure because parents are not making them swim
is simply erroneous.
An 8 & under championship
meet raises the stakes. In addition to the normal competitive pressure
experienced by the swimmer, a heightened sense of excitement and
anticipation is created by parents and coaches merely because it is the NES
championship. The meet becomes a much higher pressure event for the child
for no apparent purpose (based on what we know about age group development).
This meet could be replaced by almost any other kind of meet that
8-year-olds participate in throughout the year.
We need a more careful
approach to what athlete development really is and guard against merely
copying the structure of summer league swimming. Summer league is a
developmental step but it eventually and inevitably loses its effectiveness.
USA Swimming does not offer age group standards or Top 16 record keeping for
8-year-olds. Some think they should. If it’s done on the LSC level (as the
argument goes) then why isn’t it done on the national level? I think the
question should be reversed: Since it isn’t done on the national level why
are we doing it on the LSC level? Is there a benefit to running young
swimmers through a series of age group championships every few months or are
we simply bowing to pressure from over enthusiastic souls by praising
development that isn’t really there? Since there is no evidence that
athletes who are successful at a young age have any better crack at success
when older our approach should recognize that rewarding them for being the
fastest 8-year-old in the LSC is meaningless in a long term sense. The
argument therefore that we should be providing these opportunities to
children so that they can become the best they can be is an empty one.
It takes an LSC
True athlete development is
something that cannot take place in the club setting alone. No matter how
talented the athlete, knowledgeable the coach or devoted the parents, at
some point outside help in the form of competition, organization or
structure will be necessary. That’s what USA Swimming provides on a national
level and what New England Swimming (NES) provides on a local level. Clubs
can direct this process but they cannot provide the whole thing by
themselves. It takes an LSC.
Those who ask why we go to
this meet at all if we believe it has no value are barking up the wrong
tree. What they’re asking, in effect, is if you don’t like the game then why
do you play? It’s not that simple. If the LSC has an 8 & under championship
then you can bet that every 8-year-old in the LSC is "training" for it, the
competition is being scouted and almost every family is clearing the deck
for that weekend. A lone voice questioning the value of such a competition
will have little effect. But something could be done at the LSC level. We
could decide that this meet serves no purpose and just not have it anymore.
Swimmers at this age don’t really need a championship meet to end their
season and would not suffer if this meet were never held again. There is no
evidence that peaking for a meet at this age is even possible let alone
beneficial. And other, smaller meets could easily fill the void if one were
indeed created. If we agree that age group swimming is a developmental
program then we also have to ask ourselves what this meet accomplishes in
furtherance of that goal.
Our present schedule is so
big and involves so many swimmers that it’s hard to imagine the NES
juggernaut being stopped in any way least of all to eliminate one of the
meets. The inertia of the end-of-season schedule invites a kind of
indifference to close examination but that’s exactly what’s needed.
Obviously changes of this nature would not be wildly popular. Eliminating
the 8 & under championship might disgruntle a few adults but the 8-year-olds
will be as happy as ever and better off for it.
I know there are coaches in
our LSC who would argue that what I just said about 8-year-olds also applies
to our 9- and 10-year-olds. I agree but I have a different idea of how to
deal with that issue which I will discuss in part 2 of this article.
Part 2,
Part 3
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