Contest this!

We can all agree that everyone loves contests, yes? Yes, yes we can. 

So, in a shameless effort to drive more traffic to my humble corner of the vast ether, here is the first of many contests:

See that poll over there on the right-hand side of this here blog? I want you to vote in it. Like, get out the vote and rock the vote, simultaneously.

My high school team's team spaghetti dinner is every Thursday night after practice. And I have a flair for the dramatic, so this week, I will bow to the dominance of the poll winner and add the crowned alternative topping to my spaghetti. And eat it. And have a swimmer photograph the whole thing for this blog.

Don't you want to be as happy as this stud?

He's so avant-mouth-garde

If you vote, and your topping wins, you will be.

Oh, and you can follow me on Twitter @fakecoachtim.

Can you feel the water tonight?

The high school competition season officially got underway two Friday nights ago, with our boys and girls taking on an opponent squad from way across town. The girls won their meet (boys and girls are scored separately) handily and the boys lost by a slim margin. Lots of spirit, lots of fun and a few swimmers actually posted regional and state cut times - right out of the gate. There was quite a bit to be proud of and excited about.

Members of the team and coaches went out to a late dinner following the meet, as per tradition. In addition to sharing more of our swimming backgrounds (the head coach and I are each in our first season with the team), learning about the phenomenon of "snap chatting" and cheering for Stanford's football team to beat UCLA in their conference championship game, a couple of the swimmers brought up the concept of "feeling the water".

It's not something that's talked about very often, at least outside of swimming-intensive circles. But it's an aspect of swimming that can be very important. You see, having a "good feel for the water", typically corresponds with a swimmer being in the pool practicing at least once per day, at least six days per week, at least 40-50 weeks per year. It means tapping into your reptilian brain.

Regardless of your physical state and stamina, humans just weren't meant to move through the water. As far as mobility's concerned, humans are primarily built to run - chase prey, escape danger and scorned lovers - and walk - gather nuts and berries, raise money for breast cancer research, etc. We are bipeds, not quadri-paddlers.

But while our frames are what they are, the reason why Planet of the Apes is just a movie and dogs don't walk us is because the unique brains of homo sapiens are adaptable: we can train our brains to think differently, to manipulate our default programming. This is learning. This is skill. This is swimming. Humans weren't made to swim, but humans can become swimmers.

Becoming something completely different doesn't happen overnight. And it's not something that stays put after you've achieved it once. Yes, muscle memory will help you get back in and do a flip turn without thinking, after you've been out of the water for years, but not much else. You can lose your "feel" after only being out of the pool for a week. It's tenuous - liquid, one might say.

Having a feel for the water is an elevated status of in-pool consciousness; after hours and hours of practice, it's nearly an out-of-body feeling that your moving through the water is somehow better or easier than moving over land.

However, many swimmers will admit they're not terribly coordinated on land. Maybe that's because they spend more time focusing on their movements in the water than the alternative. Maybe swimming just attracts the naturally clumsy. Maybe it's chicken-and-the-egg.

So is this state of feel for the water the ultimate goal in swimming? Or just a milestone, a means to higher achievement, faster times? Or does it even truly exist? Maybe it's just an imaginary figment swimmers convince themselves is real of to rationalize the hallucinatory effects of hours upon hours of exposure to diluted hypochlorite acid.

I guess it doesn't matter. Back to practice tomorrow.

Back on the Deck

I started this blog over the summer, while coaching for a community summer league team. Well, that season finished. And I didn't write much about it. Too bad. We move on. Now, I'm back coaching again. This time, with a high school team. This time, I will write more. I will.

I've never coached at the high school level before, though I have coached high school-age swimmers in summer league, so I'm not too worried. Kids are kids; swimming is swimming.

I'm a little late to the practice party, having had to wait for the requisite county TB test results, paperwork processing, background check, and concussion training to all sort themselves out. But yesterday I got to join the team, the head coach and the other assistant coach out on the deck. I was pretty stoked. Fortunately, I'm just in time for the first dual meet: Friday night versus a district opponent.

Everyone always says this about people younger than them, going through life stages they've already been through, but I have to say, the kids look smaller than I remember everyone being when I was on a high school team. Nothing against them, it's just my observation.

Tomorrow and Friday should be interesting. The personnel of the team will change somewhat from the first few practices of this week. That's because club swimmers who spend most of the week practicing with their respective club teams will suddenly appear. There's actually a rule for it: club swimmers are only required to attend 1 high school practice per week to be eligible to swim in meets. It's nothing new - was the rule when I swam - and swimming may be one of the only high school sports where this is the case. 

Why is it the case? Because most likely, a club practice (a year-round USA Swimming team) will offer more lane space, more challenging workouts, a more consistent skill and talent level in each lane, and better (read: higher paid) coaching. My club coaches preferred if we didn't attend any high school practices - in their opinion, you would get the same benefit as an hour-long nap, maybe less.

Unfortunately, consequently, I never felt much connection with the team as a hole. I had my handful of friends, but I wasn't there for the day in, day out interactions. The other swimmers didn't know what I'd worked on, and I didn't know what they'd worked on. But when the races started, none of that mattered. 

Because swimming is an extremely individual  sport. Out of it you get EXACTLY what you put into it. Talent will only get you so far, practice yards will only get you further if you DO THEM. And if you work hard, your times will drop, you will become competitive, you will win races. And those victories are yours first, then the team's. Obviously, you want to help the team out, and scoring points by winning races helps accomplish that. But aside from a select few programs, teams as a whole don't think about going to the regional, state and national levels of high school swimming to compete. Individuals do.

That's not to say individuals shouldn't embrace the team aspect of the sport. High school is the best time to do that. Make some new friends. Bond over this common interest that sets you apart from so many of your class mates. And have fun. I remember club meets being the most boring, noncompetitive, bland events ever. But high school meets? Loud, obnoxious, emotional - fun. 

High school = fun. Really? Did I just say really that? S'pose so. For now. 

What's in a meme?

This is one baby with a bright future

Memes are everywhere these days: Silly, stupid, sometimes clever snapshots of people, places and things, paired with basically non sequitur phrases, intended to flare up in popularity and be repeatedly copied and co-opted by thousands upon thousands of bored cubicle monkeys. And in that universe, there is a place for swimming, of course. I'm fond of this tumblr website: Swimming Memes (http://swimmingmemes.tumblr.com/page/6), from which I've posted an example. 

Swimming keeping up with the meme meme could be seen as a reminder that even in a world of sports that are constantly competing for public attention and participant retention, swimming is hanging in there. Like I mentioned previously in this space, I have swimmers who are also active in various other sports (for instance, I'm missing a large chunk of young ladies this week due to a field hockey camp at the local high school - yawn). 

Just like with the memes, if swimming can rise up out of the fray and make a really positive impression, then maybe, maybe, kids will remember it, even seek it out as time goes by... Awww... blech. Let's just go back to talking about how we all want to have Ryan Lochte's babies.

Out of the Blue

I hate to lose. No one aspires to not win, but still, I hate it. And I'm talking about achieving victory in a competition not decided by chance: First place by virtue of defeating the other contenders with a combination of skill, talent and will, within the rules set out for that particular event. 

When my skill, talent and will aren't enough to win, I feel wholly defeated. It's a painful experience. Losing threatens your personhood. You want to have confirmation that your best effort is enough to achieve your goals; however winning never forced anyone to question whether that was in fact their best effort...

Winning or losing in swimming is simple. First place is awarded for finishing with the fastest time. Period dot. There are no style points, no judges' scores, no foul lines to debate - numbers are black and white. Each race has many parts that can go well or poorly - fast, streamlined start but a foot slipped on the turn - but all you have at the end is a number, your time.

The question then is always the same: Was your number higher or lower than everyone else? And I hate when my number's higher; I hate to lose, but I also know it is OK to lose. Someone always has to lose for there to be a winner. And when we lose, we're more driven to improve than when we win. We should always be striving to improve, ergo losing is OK.

At this point, it might sound like I'm contradicting myself, saying I hate to lose but also think losing is alright, helpful even. Well, I'm not particularly fond of paying taxes either, but I know at least at some level I benefit from them. Perhaps the term 'necessary evil' is appropriate. It tempers the hate.

How, then, do you teach the positive side of losing to 5- to 18-year-olds in an American culture that's more competitive than ever. I have swimmers training in multiple sports, simultaneously, and if you're not making the top squad, participating in the best camps, making it to the highest level of competition (forget just focusing on one sport or extra-curricular activity!), then you've simply been left behind by the Joneses. These kids don't take losing lightly. They fear getting left behind.

Fortunately, there are other victories in swimming besides your race place, namely, the 'best time'. Finish the race second but finish with a personal-best time, and you're presented with cold, hard evidence of exerting your overall best effort. I don't necessarily believe in 'moral victory', but a best time at least provides positive fuel to the motivation fire that losing sparks. At least you're a black-and-white step closer to achieving that goal of winning.

My team lost its dual meet yesterday. And not by just a few points. Perhaps harder than losing yourself is watching people you care about lose. You can't flush the loss for them. But on the day, we had over 70 personal-best times. That's a lot of peak effort, and a lot of motivation to go back to work with on Monday.
  

take your marks

Today marked the end of our team's first full week of morning practice, as opposed to our nearly two weeks of afternoon practices that were necessary while school was still in session.

One nice thing about morning practice is the team's ability to use both pools that are owned by the community, rather than just one, to more comfortably accommodate the over 200 swimmers registered this summer. First world problems, right?

Also, I'll argue that at least the younger swimmers (8&under) have less energy in the morning than in the afternoon. Lethargic children can be a blessing.

The team's first 'A-meet' is tomorrow: A scored bout against another community team from the same division. There are over a dozen divisions in the league, each with five teams. It can get pretty competitive, though the 'main objective' is for everyone to have fun. Sometimes people lose perspective.

A-meets are comprised of individual events and relays, pitting the top three swimmers in each event from each team against one another, in all four competitive strokes. The catch is that each swimmer may only race in two individual events and a max of two relays. That's where having over a depth of 200 swimmers comes in handy.

It's pretty simple after that: Swimmers earn points for the team by finishing in the top three of the event; score the most points, win the meet. Depending on a team's win-loss record at the end of the season, they're moved up or down a division. Just to keep things interesting.

Developmental or 'B' meets take place on Monday nights. This is when the majority of the team gets a chance to compete - and better their times for a chance move up our ladder and swim on Saturday. Even though the meets aren't scored, there's still plenty of competitive spirit, especially on an individual basis when the swimmers know they're close to earning an A-meet spot.

I swam and coached with this team several years ago, and have missed it ever since. Working with kids is such an invigorating yet challenging way to spend your time - they're always coming up with new ways to prove they're more intelligent than you give them credit for, and inadvertently remind you you're older than they give you credit for. 

After a while, coaching here didn't mesh well with full-time job pursuits, being a part-time commitment out in the suburbs of Northern Virginia. But this summer, having just moved back from living abroad, I found myself in the not uncommon position of being between full-time jobs. I seized an opportunity to see if the work is as good as I remember it.

And so far, it is. There have been a few cobwebs and some rust to work out, but I think I'm getting it back. The whole work situation couldn't be much more different than my previous position (sub-editor for an English-language magazine based in Amsterdam), but the gradually resurfacing familiarity (apropos figurative language!) is helping to bridge that gap. My freestyle drills came back to me.

The season is as short as it looks on paper, wrapping up with an all-star meet in the first week of August. It's hard to believe three weeks of practice are already in the books. I'm writing this in an effort to slow down and marinate over the experience, before what ever comes next comes next.

So if the off-kilter observations of a late-twenties temporal suburbanite imploring sometimes reluctant youngsters to get in the pool and swim already is your cup of tea, then stay with me.