Expect Weirdness in Budapest from Team USA

A friend of mine (for the sake of protecting his anonymity, let's call him G. McCaffrey) pointed out an anniversary of sorts the last time we talked. With the World Championships in Budapest (the pool portion) about to get underway, it was time for my annual bed-wetting about American swimming.

But nine years in, I've learned my lesson. In the year after the Olympics, the US team usually takes a dip from "extremely dominant" to "dominant" on the world stage. That is nothing to wet the bed over. However, if you don't follow your history, you might be tempted to get concerned as the results unfold next week in Hungary. 

That's why I'm hear with this message: expect weirdness in Budapest. What kind of weirdness? I'm glad you asked. I'll give you a historical example and then take some guesses.

The Relay Blunder of 2009

It's hard to fathom the US every missing a relay final in international competition. That very thing happened in 2009, when the Women's 4x100 Medley squad only managed 10th in the preliminary session

Yes, some of the swimmers on that relay didn't perform to their potential, but the US also elected to not use their fastest stroke swimmer in either backstroke, butterfly or breaststroke. For freestyle the coaches went with a swimmer who didn't even make the 4x100 night relay. Weird indeed.

More Than Just "No Phelps"

A US slip in the medal count will undoubtedly be attributed to "No Phelps" so I won't focus on that obvious narrative. There are other events in which the US all of a sudden finds it's position far less certain than 2016 and could lead to some Budapest Bed wetting:

1. The Men's 1500 Freestyle: The loss of Connor Jaeger puts the US well behind the world standard in this race, in fact our results from trials would have last looked promising for a medal even twenty years ago.

2. Women's Butterfly: Dana Vollmer's continued excellence is on pause to create life again, leaving the US without their most consistent butterfly Olympic medal threat. While the US has some promising swimmers in all distances, they need considerable improvement to make the medal stand in Budapest.

3. Women's IM: Likewise the women's IM are hurting for the kind of performances that Maya DiRado gave us in Rio. As good as Melanie Margalis and Leah Smith swam, there's another level for them to find to break through at this meet. 

4. Ryan Murphy is beatable: Ryan Murphy was the best non-Phelps male swimmer for the US Team in Rio. He crushed Australian Mitch Larkin's dreams and effectively ended the 4x100 Medley relay on the opening leg. But he looked far more human at Trials, He's a candidate for a "swoon" the same way that Phelps himself took a bit of a backwards step in 2005 Montreal

That said, most swimmers would probably kill for a disappointing Ryan Murphy swim.

Ultimately, the post Olympic World Championship meet is always good for a reshuffling of the world swimming deck, and even if the US team seems only normally dominant, any step back always seems to motivate them to crush the rest of the world by the end of the Olympic cycle. 

What's Going on In West Chester?

It's been four months since Jamie Rudisill announced that he was going to retire after 29 years at West Chester University. There are times when a coach "steps down" and you have to sift through coded language from an athletic director to find out that the breakup was not mutual.

This was not one of those times. Here is the quote from West Chester AD Dr. Edward Matejkovic:

"I am not sure that the string of championships that he has engineered can be duplicated".

Rudisill has been successful at West Chester in many ways through sheer will and ingenuity. As the article notes, the learn to swim program that Rudisill developed at West Chester teaches 4000 (!!!!) kids a year. 

So it's a bit curious four months later that there has been no public anything in regards to replacing Rudisill at West Chester. None of the possible scenarios are really good for the West Chester Swimming and Diving program.

Scenario 1: Internal Hiring Process

The lack of even a job posting seeking candidates for Rudisill's position could mean that they are searching for his replacement internally. Perhaps Scott Elliot (see edit below) who has done such a tremendous job as age group coach for Golden Ram Aquatics (as well as helping with the college team) could be sliding up. (EDIT: After finishing this, I got confirmation from multiple sources that Scott Elliot has just passed away from Cancer.)

But if that was the idea, they have done the team no favors with four months of no news. Furthermore, an internal hire's whole advantage is that you can do it quickly and move on without all the inefficiency of a new hire. This is the worst of both worlds

Scenario 2: There's a new AD

One of the things that can slow up hiring processes is if there are key decision making personnel missing in the athletic department. In West Chester's case, the previously mentioned Dr. Edward Matejkovic also retired this Spring. 

West Chester put an interim tag on Terry Beattie (who was already at the school) and he remains in that role months later. So it could be that West Chester is basically paralyzed, waiting to either have a new AD so they can hire new coaches, or for their current interim have that tag lifted so they can proceed.

Scenario 3: There is no hiring plan

None of these scenarios are exclusive of one another. Perhaps there is so much disorder that there is simply no plan for West Chester for how they will replace Rudisill. Which is a shame because the market is only shrinking for possible replacements they could get, and much of what Rudisill accomplished will need to continue running smoothly to ensure future success.

EDIT: After finishing this post, I got information from multiple sources that Jamie Rudisill's retirement would not be "official" until August, and that current assistant coach Steve Mazurek will be taking over. Mazurek is a West Chester alumn and no stranger to the team after serving as an assistant coach there for nine years.

If you have any information on what's going on at West Chester University, write me!

The Recruiting Fallacy in College Coaching

Recruiting. If you have ever held a college coaching job, applied to a college coaching job, or talked to a college coach, you have probably heard this word more than you'd ever like to. Recruiting is the lifeblood of college athletic programs, and most coaches will admit that it is at least as important as your actual coaching ability at this level.

That is true. Recruiting is incredibly important. It's also something anyone can learn to do, and may already have a lot of skills for that they don't even know. Coaches who look past well-qualified coaches because of lack of "recruiting" experience do so at their own disadvantage.

This is one of many reasons that college coaching remains a weird, cliquish sub-culture in the swimming world. Every year, hundreds of otherwise nice resumes face rejection from the college ranks because of this.

What is recruiting? For one thing, recruiting is marketing a college swimming program. A club coach who runs their own business may have experience with marketing. Now, in college coaching you have to deal with NCAA rules around how you can market.

These rules are made by what I can only assume are miserable people paid to ask the question "What would the most insane college football coach try to do to get an edge?" and then get their legislative pens out.

Recruiting is also sales. You sell to a family and a student athlete the promise of studying and swimming at your school. Coaching any kind of practice is it's own kind of sales job- after all you will not be successful as a coach if your swimmers are not "buying" the workouts you are "selling".

In fact, career club coaches can bring a lot to the table that career college coaches cannot when it comes to recruiting. Many of them have way more "reps" in their back pocket interacting with families and high school age swimmers.

They have seen the process from the other side and know what works and what doesn't. They have sat and wondered "why doesn't (anonymous college coach) just call me? Don't they know I could help them right now?".

The final absurdity is the notion that coaches without college experience are a great risk to commit NCAA violations. It doesn't hold water- especially when you consider how easy it is to pass a NCAA recruiting test (an open book test on one chapter of the NCAA manual) and the infrastructure that athletic departments have built in compliance to prevent this very thing.

Ultimately, the divide that exists between the skill set it takes to be a successful college coach and a successful club coach is not as great as the hiring market would indicate. College swimming would benefit from a more open coaching pool, and individual programs that see the opportunities in hiring "club only" coaches will gain a competitive advantage.

Are you looking for help getting involved in college coaching? Write me

Virginia Should Hire Stefanie Moreno

For the second time in four years, the University of Virginia finds itself without a head coach. Their previous boss man, Augie Busch, is leaving to coach the program his father led to a national championship. Swimswam commenters do not seem terribly positive about Busch, to say the least. 

I'm not here to join that flame war. Let's talk about something positive. Who should UVA hire to replace the departing Busch. They should hire Stefanie Moreno! If you're asking who that is, it is possible that you know her by her maiden name, Williams.

Let's review some reasons why Moreno would do a great job coaching in Charlottesville:

1. Her debut at Missouri: Moreno began her college coaching career at Missouri. Look, what I'm about to say addresses a perception that is completely unfair, but as long as it's out there, we might as well address it. She established that she could coach both men and women on a combined program.

Actually, it's probably fair to ask whether all coaches that will coach combined teams can coach both men and women, it's just that the question is most frequently posed in relation to women coaching men, as if all women coaches have to get an imaginary "can coach men" certification to proceed. But I digress

Missouri athletes from that era. have told me how well Moreno stepped right in and established herself as a leader on their team

2. Setting a new course for Ohio State- Moreno was tabbed to help Bill Dorenkott take over the Ohio State women's program in 2008. The program was far from where it is today, finishing 8th at the 2009 Big Ten Championships, Moreno's and Dorenkott's first year.

By the next year, they would move up to 5th. The year after that? 3rd and a 17th place finish at the NCAAs. Moving from 8th to 3rd in a competitive conference in a couple years is no small feat, which, along with her alumni connections, is probably what drew her back to...

3. Help begin a new era of dominance for Georgia- Great results, especially for women, are easy to pass over at Georgia. But even by Bulldog standards, Moreno's time in Athens has been exceptional. Georgia has won three out of five NCAA Championships during her time.

But the UGA men have also improved greatly since Moreno arrived, culminating with their huge presence on the recently selected World Championship team. 

Moreno has paid her dues, now it's time for her to take the reins of a program of her own. If UVA has a "search committee" or is doing a "national search" this is exactly where they should look.

Stefanie Moreno for UVA Coach 2017!

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Swimming Education Survey

Teri McKeever Got Screwed Again

Here's a shocker for you: the 2017 American World Championship coaching staffs are out and there are no women. As usual, Teri McKeever is the biggest snub, but the fact that she stands alone as a female with a strong objective argument for being on the team is a problem of its own.

So let's discuss McKeever's case first, before we get into the extremely alarming state of women in coaching. The decision to leave McKeever was probably made on some objective grounds, so as to avoid any sense that this was personal. 

It's worth noting that head coach Greg Meehan was rightfully lauded for using his powerful position at Stanford to promote female coaching.

USA Swimming's official selection criteria does not specify how coaches were chosen, so the following is an educated guess on my part. 

Coaches were selected by having the highest level performer- This system is used across the world in many cases and many different forms. Perhaps swimmers were rank-ordered in terms of FINA points, the measure that purportedly compares performances in different events.

They also could have made the coach selection based on number of events qualified for, in which Leah Smith of Virginia has more events than Abbey Weitzeil and Kathleen Baker of Cal. 

Selection on such criteria reveals a deep flaw in the way in which we evaluate coaches, all the way down to the lowest levels. We tend to single out coaches best possible result instead of the totality of their work.

McKeever's longstanding track record of producing top international results would be a huge asset to the US squad. Any subjective criteria should have selected her to the staff, as she would provide much needed "big meet" experience to the squad.

To the larger point, male coaches need to continue to advocate for women at all levels to right this situation. On the college level, this means going beyond the silly "quota hiring" and actually finding and retaining top female coaches.

At the club level, we should all be pushing together to make coaching swimming less of a "family killer" because that would be better for all of us, not just women. 

Warren Buffet famously said that he only had to compete with half the population, and the same could be said for many of the elite male coaches out there. If you truly love the sport of swimming, you want to see the best coaches on the deck. It's on us to make sure that this far from fair system.

Want help improving your hiring process? Write me

The Tipping Point of College Hiring

We have crossed the threshold of July, which means that in the annual game of musical chairs that is college swimming hiring, things are changing from a hirers to a job seekers market.

Although to be fair, when you look at the compensation for many of these college jobs (low) and the quality of people applying for them (high), it's fair to say that it is always a good market for those hiring. This is not to mention the ever-shrinking market of available jobs as programs face the cutting axe. 

Still, the best time to be hiring for an open position in college swimming is the spring. The spring is when coaches who are already established where they are think about making a change. The spring is a safe time to throw your name out there and see what happens.

The spring is also a time when there is little time pressure. Recruiting in many places is at its most relaxed point. The next season is well in the distance.

The warm and fuzzy happy hiring period lasts into July, when all of a sudden the pressure of a missing piece ramps up. 

As the summer progresses, chairs get filled. The pool of available, experienced candidates that want to change jobs shrinks. This is especially true the farther down you are on the college food chain. If Cal or Texas were looking for a head coach, they would get very good applicants in the middle of winter.

But for many other teams, the dwindling applicant pool and the pressure of a missing piece in recruiting or on the pool deck can really start to tip the balances in favor of those who apply.

The college hiring game of musical chairs lasts for months, sometimes with seemingly no end as open positions appear under often strange, poorly explained circumstances into September, October and even later.

The late period can be really great for "foot in the door" types who just want to get in but have found themselves rebuffed by the insider nature of college coaching. This is your opportunity to make your case and get someone to take a chance on you.

Want help with your college coaching job search? Write me. 

The Semi-Professionals Need Their Own Home

It's hard to believe that we are nearly a full year through another Olympic cycle, with Rio a fading memory and Tokyo seemingly approaching at breakneck pace. On the other hand, it's easy to believe when you look at the results of this week's  National Championships and World Trials. 

Team America is the Golden State Warriors of swimming, only if the team won some ridiculous total like 77-5 in Olympic years and then coasted to 60 win seasons the other three quarters of the time. 

The reasons for the slippage make sense. The process of making, then subsequently succeeding as a part of the US Team at the Olympics defies explanation. It is only natural that many of these athletes take some time away from the sport in the aftermath. 

Still it's worth to reflect, even when you're the best, or maybe especially when you're the best. Let's set aside the best from Rio: who are the swimmers that could best be pushing the ball forward in this off-Olympic year?

The answer is the post-graduates, the fifth (or sixth) years, the "semi-pro". There are a ton of capable athletes in this group. Relatively few seem to thrive. The answer is not in the 18 and under crowd, of whom there have been some really nice performances this week, and who deserve continued focus on their long term development.

Where are these athletes training? The opportunities for the most part still exist in some awkwardly grafted-on addition to a college or club team. This is not a successful formula for the group as a whole. 

The older a swimmer gets, the higher level they get to, the harder it gets to push their performance forward. However, the almost all of these "semi pros" exist in an environment where it would be amount to career suicide for their coaches to devote the big time resources to them that they need. College coaches are hired for college results. Club coaches are paid to coach the paying membership.

These swimmers need a true home, something that is actually designed for them, that gives them the resources that they need for elite performance. It is not USA Swimming's job to do this as top down solutions in this area are usually a mild to spectacular failure. 

I've heard a lot of dissatisfaction from the would be sponsors of these athletes. They do not feel they are getting value in return for there sponsorship. This kind of solution would be costly, and it is essential that we identify who is sitting on the sidelines, why they are doing so, and what would be valuable to them in return.

Ultimately, the development of a whole swath of capable swimmers could be a lot better. It will not be easy, but it is possible and, I believe, worth it.

Are you involved in sponsorship of swimming? Write me!

Why David Marsh Makes Perfect Sense At UC San Diego

I don't pretend to know David Marsh very well. I've met him a couple of times. But it appears there are many people out there who also don't know David Marsh very well weighing in with rumors about what he might do. A lot of those people were shocked to hear that he would take over as Head Coach of UC San Diego.

Marsh, who's coaching resume means that he has had his name floated for every "extra super high profile" coaching opening for what seems like over a decade, is probably not what a lot of people expected to take over a program transitioning from Division 2 to Division 1 swimming.

But Marsh to UC San Diego makes a ton of sense, and speaks to the changes in the landscape since Marsh left college coaching to incubate a pro group in Charlotte, North Carolina. Let's tick off some obvious reasons why this move makes sense

1. San Diego is by all accounts a lovely place to live. Beautiful weather year round. One of the trickiest aspects of building professional swimming is making places to have professional swimming attractive to adult athletes, while balancing that areas that are attractive to people in their 20s and 30s are often expensive.

But my guess is that San Diego will be a much better draw for professional swimming talent than Charlotte was, even if it appears that Charlotte will continue to have professional swimmers.

2. The Bob Bowman affect. There are only a few truly creative people in charge of hiring swim coaches in the college system. One such person is Ray Anderson of ASU, who went for broke to get Bob Bowman to cross the country and take over a struggling team. Bowman's instant success has essentially provided a model for what Marsh will be doing in San Diego. 

3. UC San Diego will see a talent boom in coaching. Likewise, San Diego will be an attractive destination for coaches, and now doubly attractive with David Marsh running the show. As I once said in a video, being a head coach of a combined program is far more about managerial skill than coaching skill. 

David Marsh is perhaps swimming's top manager. He has figured out how to scale his own coaching ability by finding great coaches to work for him and putting them in positions to be really successful. A great example from the very successful Charlotte training group was that he had Bob Groseth, a vastly overqualified assistant coach, roaming the pool deck with him. 

You can expect UC San Diego to be an even better platform for Marsh to put coaches in strong positions to be successful and find a way to create positively imbalanced situations like Groseth's.

It will be exciting to see what happens in the next few years in NCAA Division 1 Swimming, as there are for the first time in my memory five or more teams who are honestly pulling out all the stops to win a NCAA Championship.

Want creative ideas on hiring to make your team better? Write me!

Aerobic Base is A Myth

It's amazing that in 2017 people still believe in aerobic base. Although, I guess when you compare this to people believing the earth is flat, the belief that you can magically hold on to a training effect for months or even years of de-training sounds fairly innocent.

Witness this interview from the most likable person in swimming, Elizabeth Beisel:

Beisel returned from months away and can still swim a pretty slick 400 IM. She credits the "base" of her training from years of high volume work with both Chuck Batchelor of Attleboro Bluefish and Gregg Troy at Florida for her continued ability to put up solid times in an endurance event.

All credit due to both men, who coached Beisel to a long stretch of outstanding, world class swimming. I have never met Troy, but I have met Chuck Batchelor. He is a wonderful guy who has done a lot to raise the standard of what was quite a depressing LSC prior to his arrival.

But Beisel's claims are very tame when it comes to some of the whoppers I've heard about aerobic base. I've heard at various times over the years how a strong "base" was key to Tom Jager's 50 freestyle performances in the 1980s, or basically any older swimmer that hardly trains and can still reproduce best times or near best times.

When I myself produced a best time in a 100 training three times a week and roughly 1000 yards a practice (at age 27), many people told me it must be due to my "base" even though it had been five years since I had done anything that was then considered "aerobic" training in swimming

To me, these performances say far more about how far we have yet to get with the sophistication of swim training systems. The fact that there is such a relatively small dip in performance from an athlete like Beisel, or any number of post-collegiate athletes after months of de-training indicates to me that the training is not making as big of a difference as we would like. 

I don't believe in magic, and I don't believe in training adaptations that last forever. As far as we've come in swimming, there is an incredible level of performance waiting for us in the future if we embrace how primitive the methods we have for improving swimmers are right now. 

Do you want to try and swim faster, practicing less time than you do now? Write me

Professional Swimming Starts From the Ground Up

Let me first say that Katinka Hosszu is absolutely right. Swimming is not a professional sport. Although she herself has been able to make a profession out of it through pure prize money, and yet others have strung together enough sponsorships to stay afloat, there is nothing resembling what we consider a true professional class in swimming.

She is right to rail against FINA, which is absolutely corrupt to the core and disinterested in creating a professional sport. Likewise, we should not look to the governing bodies, who invest far more heavily in non-swimming personnel than directly funding athletes. She is right to say that "it has always been right in front of us"

Swimming is a sport where sizable amounts of money changes hands, but surprisingly very little of it gets into the pockets of the people who add the most value to the sport. The bureaucracies we have in place are designed to enrich a select few, and leave the rest fighting each other over scraps.

It's not surprising that some swimmers whined and complained for the rule changes to World Cups that hurt someone like Hosszu. They are fighting for the survival of their meager professional careers. Two things are obvious:

A swimmer of Hosszu's stature should not have to compete for prize money to make a living in the first place. She is right to be firing off at the power players in Hungarian Swimming, who have had little to do with her success but nevertheless are enriched for it while she hustles every weekend.

When I coached in Denmark, Lotte Friis, the woman who almost beat Ledecky, was barely able to sustain her swimming career to the 2016 Olympics. I helped to broker a meager sponsorship through a private donor to help her continue to train and prepare. What did we get in exchange? We got our club represented by one of the most selfless, wonderful athletes our sport has ever seen. 

Many were critical. "What a waste of money" they said. I couldn't disagree more. We should all, from the ground up, be looking for ways to support the elite athletes of our support to a manageable level. My only regret was that we weren't able to find a way to support Lotte more. Only then will we see more athletes with the security to put on a show the way Hosszu has done for so many years.

Only when we make it inevitable from the very bottom of swimming's bureaucracy do we have a chance of breaking the stranglehold of corruption that holds all of us down. We cannot wait for federations, or USA Swimming, or FINA or (ugh) ASCA.

Athletes may form a union, but that union will be useless unless the rest of us, the rank and file of the swimming world, rally behind them wherever we can. We need to see supporting the top level of swimming as valuable to every level below it, not as some petty waste of resources.

The Power of Crying In Sports

Two weeks after my daughter was born I found myself a blubbering mess. I was watching the Star Trek movie (the 2009 reboot). The opening scene has James Kirk's father sacrificing himself so that his wife (who is in labor) and crew can escape certain death. He lives to hear the first sounds of his son but never sees him.

In that moment I was heartbroken for a movie character. However silly it might have been, the catharsis was real. Like most men, especially athletes and coaches, crying was not something I did often. It was much later that I realized how weak that made me. 

A League of Our Own

Sports suffers from a hyper masculinity complex. To reference another movie, Tom Hanks said "there's no crying in baseball", but he was absolutely wrong. There should be plenty of crying in baseball.

Think about what crying actually is: a raw display of emotion. Sometimes we cry when we are sad, or feeling great joy or love. But crying is just a physical display of the emotions we are feeling. 

We cannot control our emotions, but we can control our reaction to emotions. So many of us, especially men in sports, have learned that despite the sadness, joy or love we might feel in a moment it is bad and weak for us to wear that emotion so visibly.

Worse yet, as coaches we can often struggle to deal with athletes who cry when they are in a heightened emotional state. I have often heard coaches mutter about athletes crying, especially around big competitions. 

The truth is, at least athletes who can release their emotions in this way are in touch with how they are feeling. Yes, crying can cross over and be "too much", but I find more often than not, it is over-suppressed in sports. 

Coaches should be working on emotional skills with their athletes rather than shunning tears. That means bringing some of our less in touch athletes out of their shell. It also means that we need to build a runway for emotional athletes to land their plane safely.

Sports should not be an arena for emotional suppression, rather it should be a healthy place where we learn to harness powerful emotions for the good of ourselves and those around us.

Want to learn more about getting athletes out of their shell or safely landing the plane? Write me. 

We're Doing Board Run Teams Wrong

Over the weekend, the news came out from back in Denmark. Sigma, the perennial "best" or almost best club in the country, was breaking up into two. Why? Well, put simply, because the (parent) boards of both teams simply couldn't get along.

In America, the conventional wisdom is that coach run/owned teams are a better competitive model than board run teams. It's true that many coaches prefer this model, especially because of the volatile nature of board run clubs. The situation is much the same in Denmark, where not one of the major Copenhagen area clubs has the same head coach that they had when I moved there a little over four years ago.

But coach run teams have their own problems too. I'm personally uncomfortable with the lack of oversight that many coach run programs exhibit. Coaches need checks and balances just like anyone else, and they need productive ones.

Enter the board. Here's the problem with almost any board I've ever heard of in swimming: It is made up mostly of parents of swimmers on the team. The inherent conflict of interest is the root of most problems on teams with boards. It's an impossible expectation to put on parents to set aside the interest of their own child or children when serving as a volunteer leader for a team.

I feel for the parents who serve on team boards. Their hearts are in the right place, and often times they are filling a role that no one else will even step up and do. 

So who should serve on the board? There is actually a more important question to answer first. How do we get people other than parents interested in serving on the boards of club swimming teams? I don't pretend to have all the answers to how to do so.

A good start would mean identifying people with strengths outside of the the typical "parent" group who would be able to contribute something to the board. They could be local business people, former athletes, educators. Then ask them some questions: what would it take to get them interested in serving on the board? What would they value in return for contributing to running a team?

I can promise this: the process alone of attracting new talent outside of parents to team boards would give you a huge competitive advantage.

Want to learn more about how to structure your team? Write me

Mad Scientist Ray Looze Shoots for the Moon

Let me preface everything I'm about to say with this: I do not know Ray Looze. My impression of him is mainly formed from pool deck gossip and fifteen or so years of following the Indiana University Swimming and Diving team from afar.

I started nerding out about Indiana in the early 2000s, when a star of my local club scene went to swim there. It was an eye opener for me. I felt like a real country bumpkin watching our local hero miss the conference team and compete in a last chance meet instead. Furthermore, I recall them having a guy (named Murph Halasz, I think) who went 1:46 in the 200 fly, and that was not fast enough to qualify for NCAAs. 

I couldn't believe it. It was my first introduction into how crazy fast NCAA swimming is and was. In the subsequent years, Indiana remained a fascinating program for me. I remember how impossibly fast Colin Russell seemed, and then the drama that ensued when Colin Russell got ushered out of NCAA swimming.

The Russell saga established Looze' reputation as someone who pushed the boundaries. Indiana remained an always solid national presence, often derided by other coaches for exceptional recruiting classes and somewhat less exceptional results.

As I wrote about earlier, all of that changed when Looze shocked the college swimming world by managing to recruit former heated rival Dennis Dale over to his staff a few years ago. Now he's made two stunning pickups.

The first was Coley Stickels, the man who, in my humble opinion, has the most creative workouts in the country. Stickels has cut a swath through various club coaching jobs over the last decade, and success has always followed. Although, Stickels has a reputation for being even more of a loose cannon than Looze. That's where the mad scientist part comes in. 

He followed that dagger by pulling in Mark Hill, formerly of Michigan and currently at Old Dominion Aquatic Club (and his own business Flow Swimming). Hill played an instrumental role in Michigan's 2013 National Title, and has spent the last year disrupting the swim clinic game. Hill will also help IU's already strong recruiting with his impossible-to-not-likeability. 

While NC State is everyone's favorite ascendent team right now, Indiana is now staking their claim. They've built a coaching staff that can put them in contention for a National title very soon, even if Eddie Reese doesn't retire. 

Want advice on how to put your coaching staff together for a competitive advantage? Looking for a college job and want someone to give you an edge? Write me. 

It's Our Responsibility to Make FINA Additions Work

Last week, FINA addressed a longtime wrong in the swimming world, adding the women's 1500 to the program (as well as a men's 800 and a mixed relay). But it seems many in the swimming community were less than satisfied. "Where are the 50s?" they cried.

Since then I've seen a lot of squabbling about the change. There seems to be broad consensus that adding a women's 1500 is a really good thing, especially since the original reason for it not existing was so blatantly misogynistic that it was very embarrassing to still have on the books.

Two major criticisms have emerged. One is that the distance events are not in of themselves additive to the growth of swimming, particularly pro swimming in between Olympics. The second is that the 50s would be. I think both these arguments miss the point.

Let's take distance races, for example. American audiences are never shown 800s or 1500s in their entirety on broadcast TV. I've seen worse sins in Europe, where many meets go to the extreme of droning pop music over races 200 and above. They seem to have given up on developing any true fandom with this strategy.

Why do they cut away from distance races? Because Americans find them boring. Do you know what else Americans find boring? 1-0 Soccer matches. The rest of the world, however, has managed to find them absolutely thrilling. 

We have a responsibility to educate and bring in new fans to our sport in both distance and sprint swimming. Sports are no fun when you don't know what is going on. Which is why whenever possible you should have an announcer at your meet, especially for the distance races, to give context to the people watching.

The 50s are marginally more exciting to an uneducated audience, and you can count me among the many who would love to see them on the Olympic stage. But the quick splash and dash nature only papers over the same problem we have with growing our sport- even some people who should be top fans of swimming have little context for what happens during a fifty. 

Swimming's biggest problem right now is that we are not an inclusive sport. We make many decisions without empathy for wide swaths of people involved (or potential people involved) that haven't been fully converted to rabid fandom. If we want a true professional sport, we're going to need a lot more than me and some other bloggers in the basement to do it. 

The Joy of Swimming By Yourself

I swim by myself*. That's not very remarkable. After all, plenty of people show up to the pool, put their heads down and plod back and forth on the black line. Many of them are not competitive swimmers, they are the "recreational" swimmers that drive many "competitors" to practices. Also, swimming with other people can be fun and motivating.

For many people though, doing workouts on your own can make or break whether you continue to compete. Better yet, there are a lot of reasons why swimming on your own can be even better than being on a team. Let's talk about them:

1. You do a workout just for you- Every time you add another variable to a given workout (another person), it becomes more and more challenging to fit that workout to the swimmers to it.

2. You swim on your own time- I've heard rumor that people are busy these days. Sometimes even the most well made schedule of practices can mean that you sacrifice going to the pool because it just doesn't fit. When you swim by yourself, you swim on your own time when it works for you.

3. You are an introvert- For introverts, the socialization at large group team practices can really be draining and distracting from the energy you need to workout. Especially if you use training to "recharge" from other activities, a solo swim can be an incredible time to not have to talk to other people.

4. Swimming by yourself is infinitely better than not swimming- If there is any other immovable object stopping you from swimming by yourself, get in the pool alone. A lot of people who want to swim consistently don't because they beat themselves up over a 30 minute swim by themselves not being "good enough". Hogwash.

Today I started my day by going to my local pool for a swim. It was refreshing for both my mind and body, and I left with a feeling of accomplishment. Another day at the pool is a good day.

Want help training for competitive swimming by yourself? Write me.

A Frustrating Listen: What Comes First

Yesterday, I took a listen to the Gutter Lane podcast's return. Zac Adams, the host, had one of the most well-regarded coaches in the country on. Todd DeSorbo has received a lot of well-deserved praise for his outstanding work with sprinters at NC State.

But I couldn't help but get frustrated very early on in the podcast. As both men admitted, they were recording just after the funeral of Jason Turcotte, a coach admired by so many in the swimming community. The issue of work-life balance in swimming could not be more topical at the moment.

Adams tried to engage DeSorbo on the topic. Surely, on a staff with multiple coaches at the age where they have young children, they must have discovered some secret sauce for work life balance. If they have we didn't hear it.

Instead, DeSorbo demurred (all that follows are not direct quotes and paraphrasing:.. "I could certainly do better, we could certainly do better" he said. "Our goal is to outwork everyone" was almost a defensive response to any suggestion that they were taking less time to do an outstanding job. Finally, I heard the same old tired story I've heard a hundred times before "my/our wives are very understanding".

I'm sorry, but screw that. I got angrier and angrier the more I listened to the podcast. DeSorbo had plenty to say about recruiting, training sprinters and the professional career of Cullen Jones. Family? We'll figure that out later. I totally understand that many people would like DeSorbo to "stick to swimming", but it clearly seemed like Adams knew something really great about how they do things at NC State but never got DeSorbo to get it out.

As pretty much everyone knows, "we'll figure that out later" almost always turns into "never". It shouldn't be a pre-requisite to high level success in the swimming world that your spouse just "knows how it is" and accepts a lesser standard from you.

As coaches, we have a higher calling. We talk about coaching people first and athletes second. We need to walk our talk. Our athletes need to see us leading healthy complete lives. They need to see us putting our families first, and asking our work to understand that.

The coaches that look up to us need to see that the path to the top is not paved that way.

I have to imagine DeSorbo's family life is better than it sounded. If this post makes me sound angry at him, I'm not. I'm angry at the culture he describes, but for him I feel great sadness. Having met Todd many times, I've found him to be a kind and humorous. I have no doubt that he loves his family very much. 

When people are dying, no one thinks to themselves "I wish I'd worked more". But you can bet they do think "I wish I'd spent more time with my family". I truly believe that you don't have to change your measures of success to live that way. I think there's an even higher level of athletic success we can find when we as coaches start living a healthy, full life. 

The Pessimism Trap

Over the last weekend I had the pleasure or presenting on the skill of optimism to swimmers at the Midwestern Elite IMX Camp. It's a tough conversation to have with anyone, but especially young athletes. Why? Because pessimism can be a performance enhancer for young athletes.

First, let's back up and define both terms. By optimism and pessimism I am talking about explanatory style. Explanatory style is the way you explain events to yourself. Pessimistic explanatory style involves taking good events and depersonalizing them while making them seem specific and unlikely to happen again. Let me give you an example.

Let's say you had an athlete that broke through and qualified for Sectionals for the first time. A pessimistic athlete might explain it themselves the following way:

"It was so easy" (It had little to do with my effort to create the result)

"I was really feeling good in the water" (It was specific and not pervasive)

"I had the swim of my life" (Once in a lifetime events are by nature not likely to happen again).

Some coaches might find those statements to be "positive" or even praiseworthy. While most coaches wouldn't encourage all of those statements, pessimistic young athletes have a certain false humility that can be tempting for coaches to encourage. They are "tough on themselves" and "accountable". They don't "rest on their laurels". I say false humility because humility is also a term we misunderstand in sports contexts.

The core of humility is putting yourself on an equal plane with others and recognizing that in the words of the late, great, Chris Peterson "other people matter". Humility is not dismissing your own personal role in the positive events that take place in your life.

Young athletes often succeed with pessimism for a couple reasons. One is pessimism can work as a motivator in the short term. Sometimes we call it "staying hungry" in sports. The second is that younger people are in many ways nearly as emotionally resilient as they are physically.

This morning, my three year old transitioned from crying to singing happily within about three minutes. Teenagers are known for their "mood swings", which are really an evolving emotional resiliency. Adults are far more "steady". This is when pessimism's positives for athletic performance get overwhelmed by the damage it does.

The motivation that pessimism creates is not enough to overcome the downward spirals of pessimistic thinking. The older an athlete gets, the harder time they have pulling out of these spirals. Eventually, they are left "burned out" or worse.

It's incumbent on us as coaches to teach optimism as a skill for the long term development of athletes (and people). Otherwise, we are sacrificing long term life success for very short term athletic success.

Want to learn more about how to up your mental game? Write me!

Step Outside Your Swimming Bubble

This past weekend I traveled to Fremont, Nebraska, for the first Midwestern Swimming IMX Elite Camp. It was my third trip to the cornhusker state, the last two being for Olympic trials in 2008 and 2012. This time I was leaving the enclave of big city Omaha for "real" Nebraska.

I grew up in one of the smaller swimming communities in the US. Over the last decade plus I've had the chance to explore the swimming world. I haven't nearly gotten to it all, but I can't recommend this strongly enough: if you get the chance to meet people far away from where you are, take it!

Stepping into middle America, it was easy to see why the US is the world's greatest swimming power. It wouldn't be hard to come up with a list of excuses for American failure. Instead everywhere you look there are thriving pockets.

What I saw in Nebraska made me feel more hope for the future of our sport. For all the talk of "kids these days" and the associated problems, I saw great strength in the young people in and out of the water.

Much is made in coaching circles about how there are "many ways up the mountain", and that's true I guess. But I think it often misses the point. Young people are exceptional at adapting to many different kinds of training and stimuli, finding a way to take imperfect coaching and make great results.

As the weekend wrapped up, that great promise was on display. We did a start session at the end of the weekend. Ten repetitions for each swimmer over thirty minutes, and there was measurable improvement all around. Coaching is a hell of a drug.

Do you want to supercharge your team's or your own swimming? Write me!