Yesterday, Swimswam posted an editorial advocating that the US join the rest of the world and go to swimming meters. Now, I haven’t read that article, but I’m going to respond to it because this is the internet and it’s incumbent for all of us to just spout off without having considered anyone else’s point of view. Before I could do that, Steve Schaffer said it best in a facebook comment:
One key skill in life is endorsing the well articulated thoughts of smart people, so I quickly moved to jump on Shaffer’s bandwagon before anyone else could be “first”.
Rather than quit while I’m ahead, however, I want to engage with the ridiculous folly of expanding on that argument.
Not only do I not think that the US should move to meters, I think the opposite. I believe that yards swimming is America’s secret weapon. The following are my assertions as to this, which I will back up with almost no objective information.
Smaller Pools are Better
You know what is awesome when you coach swimmers who aren’t very good? Small pools. Take it from someone who goes swimming with a six year old regularly. She can only just make it halfway down a 25 yard pool. What good does 50 meters do her? Or 25 for that matter.
It would actually be ideal for most kids in the early stages of the sport to swim in pools even smaller than 25 yards, but 25 yards is what we’ve got so I’m thrilled. In smaller pools, kids can get a hang out of the sport without the daunting distances in front of them. They are more likely to repeat key swimming skills like turns, pushing off underwater or sustaining the speed from that push off.
Watch a high level swim meet and tell me that American athletes aren’t consistently more skilled than their competition. I think yards plays a huge role in that.
The College System is like hundreds of extra NGBs
In America we basically have something that isn’t replicated closely in any other country in the world. Calm down Canada and Great Britain. You know it’s true. We have the college system. Now some of those colleges have 50m pools, but spend a lot of the year training yards. Why?
Because they compete primarily in yards, with the exception of the incredibly silly years where people decided NCAAs in a 25m pool was necessary for preparing swimmers to compete in a 50m pool.
It’s impossible to calculate how valuable college swimming is to American success, because the impact is so gigantic that it would be like trying to count how many swim coaches are named “Mike”.
Let me put it another way. When I coached in Denmark, Danish Swimming did a remarkable job having depth in international swimmers. The truth was, however, they mostly concerned themselves with a small group of 10-15 athletes. Swimmers that easily would have been getting a lot of attention in American college programs were ignored because they were seen as not having the narrow potential of being an international medalist.
In America we have colleges all across the country with coaches who are hungry for success, who have resources and expertise to put into literally thousands of long shots. Now, that college system is under constant threat, so the last thing we need is to let all the former football coach Athletic Directors in the country know that their non-meters pool doesn’t cut it anymore.
Even when colleges bring in athletes from abroad, it is Americans that benefit from a great training environment. Think about how many medalists in 2020 have come through the college system. Do you think they come here despite yards? Some may think so but I disagree.
One more good stolen idea
Down the thread, there was one more voice of reason that I deftly want to piggyback on. Can we please move the flags to 5m? The entire time I was living in Denmark, I never once properly executed a backstroke turn, due to 20+ years of muscle memory with flags that were 5 yards out. I regret that I cannot find the comment to screenshot that person.