What does strike me as strange is that before this announcement USA Swimming had three crucial roles they were hiring for. One is the CEO, with Tim Hinchey’s long awaited sacking. Then there is the National Team Director who will oversee that entirety of the “wet” side of the operation. Finally there is the National Junior Team coach.
Earlier this week I posted a podcast with three-time US Olympic coach Greg Meehan. It’s worth listening to. There’s two things I want to comment with regards to the podcast.
One of the many advantages of working for yourself is that you can change directions fast. Last spring, I reached a point where it was time to make a change. One of the reasons that I work for myself is because it allows me the latitude to spend time engaging more with people in all corners of the swimming world.
This past week, the annual gathering of USA Swimming’s voting class took place in Jacksonville, Florida. A select few representatives made the decision for the rest of us on an even narrower list of USA Swimming decision makers.
Process. It's a buzz word in athletics now. People talk about "the process" and being "process-oriented" and "process-praise". More than any of those, there is a lot of talk about "trusting the process".
Where should we begin? Earlier this month, Dagny Knutson got her $617,800 judgment against her former attorney, Richard Foster, reinstated. Schubert managed to insert himself into this conflict in two crucial, despicable ways.
On Monday, I announced the recent, quite dramatic events going on with this blog. In that post, I made a couple of serious mistakes.
"the reference to the brother, however, was swimming related"
I wouldn't accept that explanation from my four year old. In fact, there is a lot about this situation, despite the adult nature of the texts, that warrants such comparisons. We'd have to have a conversation about the lying on top of whatever she did wrong.
I hold my son's head with my right hand, the left hand scooped under his butt. He screams. I bounce. He errantly flails his hands. I bounce and "shushhhhh". He kicked his legs with all his might. I bounce.
Slowly but surely, he gets a little more limp in my arms. His eyes start to get heavy, then close intermittently. Eventually, he will slump entirely into sleep.
I've been a New Jersey resident for close to two years now. I still can't make heads or tails whatsoever of the geography. When I'm driving some way I've never been, it feels as if I change towns every few minutes.
That's not just my imagination though. NJ has 500+ municipalities packed into a tiny little state. Something about taxes, blah blah. You're not reading this for New Jersey politics
Since starting this blog, I've gotten to a lot of areas in America that I never knew. I spent part of last fall out in Arizona in the pleasant hospitality of my friend Garrett McCaffrey and Grand Canyon University. I've visited Houston three times in the past year. I went back to Nebraska and saw a whole new part of the state.
That was all fantastic, but I have realized recently that I still know very little about what's going on within a short drive of my home base here in Jersey City, NJ. Likewise, it's been over a decade since I set foot on a pool deck in the LSC of my youth, New England
