At the moment, there is plenty to feel down about. I find myself constantly battling a deep pessimism all around me. The world is changing, and that’s very uncomfortable. People are dying, and that is sad and terrifying.
If for no other purpose than my own self improvement, I’m going to allow myself to daydream some positive outcomes from this current crisis. Please don’t take any of the below as ignorance of all the problems that American swim teams, and swim teams in general, are facing and will face in the future.
One of the most universally accepted, though poorly named, concepts in the Covid-19 era is “social distancing”. I think it’s a poor name because, as brighter people have pointed out, it’s really about physical distancing.
That is problematic for nearly every swim team I have ever seen or heard about. They practice in varying levels of density, from super duper crowded to London Underground tube crowded. In other words, everybody is crowded.
I once observed a team practicing in Calella, Spain. There was one coach and easily 50+ swimmers. If you’d told me it was closer to 100 I wouldn’t have argued, they were young (probably 9 to 10 years old) and literally no clear water existed in the lane.
The coach stood at the end of the lane with a stopwatch that he never took his eyes off. He called out starting times for the swimmers. They touched the wall, waited for their signal, then started another 100 freestyle. They did this for around 90 minutes, then practice was over.
Absurd, right? Well, of course, but the truth of the matter is that while most teams don’t try to fully fill their space, most are, in my opinion, way too crowded. So let’s set aside for the moment that we have a terrible virus with no vaccine or proven treatment that feeds off proximity. What if coaches actually got to coach an appropriate volume of swimmers?
Here are the team size related problems with the current “swim club” business model of American swimming as I see it. Some of:
Pools are expensive, whether you rent or own one.
Most teams charge too little (more on that later)
Teams then need to pack way too many kids into a “group” in order to pay for the pool and the coach
The pools in many cases are still in an economically precarious position, as are the coaches.
Now, I’ve argued a few times before that teams charge too little. I can already hear the chorus “but swimming is an expensive sport!”. Is it though? We have a sport with mainly upper middle class families participating and most of the best swim coaches I know are living month to month. Many families are spending way in excess of a club’s annual dues and fees on their kid’s swimming, so clubs are only getting a fraction of that money.
What if we actually created swim teams that delivered the entire package of what our customers wanted? What if coaches actually had ratios closer to 5:1 so they could actually spend significant time teaching each and every single kid that was in their practice? What if they got paid like normal, professional people who are playing a vital role in the lives of young people?
By the way, if the above was achieved it would cut significantly into my business. I have made considerable amounts of money by meeting swimming families beyond what they can offer. I’m trying to see if I can get people to cut me off from that, not because I don’t enjoy doing it because I think it would be better for swimming.
That’s what I’m allowing myself to daydream about today. Tomorrow? Swim meets! They’re also too crowded.