....who can only just do a decent crawl and a passable breast-stroke.
If you had told me even 5 years ago that I'd be a swim coach one day, I'd've laughed 'til I peed (in the pool). After I'd finished my lap of poodle-style breaststroke.
Yet today was my first day as a swim coach -a
paid swim coach, no less. Ok admittedly there was no competition for the job and I'm only paid because getting me (and my partner in crime, another swim mom) on the payroll also gets us insured etc.... but it brings a whole new level of responsibility -one that i'm determined to take seriously. not just responsibilty for the kids, but also to them. Plus this is my first paid job in the US!
First, a little background....
My kids go to a public school, but it's one with an alternative ("hippie") approach to education, and so is a magnet school -that means all kids within the school disctrict can go there (if they can get in -lottery entry, long waiting lists). It's small (because our program works best in smaller learning communities) and it's K-8 which means we have middle schoolers. Middle school students can compete with the other middle schools at various sports throughout the year. Historically, the Open School hasn't done much of this because we're all about co-operative learning and personal goals rather than winning. Plus we only have 150 middle-school kids, compare to the 1000 or so in the other schools, and ours live all over the city not locally, so kids who've wanted to compete in sports have just joined the team at their local middle school.
Recently, there has been more interest in competitive sports at the school, We've fielded a few eams in the "easy" sports -the ones most kids and teachers know and need little coaching. But never a swim team before. My friend and I decided that needed to change because our daughters entered 6th grade and we know there are many other good -seriously good- swimmers who would love the chance to represent their school, so the "Athletic Director" (my 4th grader's teacher who gets a ittle extra for the title and has a vague interest in sports) said, if you coach it, we can do it.
So now here we are.
First day of practice. 15 kids showed up which was great -we had about 25 said they wanted to join, but there was no bus home after practice today (for whatever reason
), so some bus kids couldn't stay, and some didn't realize volleyball would clash with swimming, so opted for that instead. I asked around, and about 20-30 is the usual size of the team in the middle schhols with hundreds of kids. also at our school turn-up is usually only a maximum of 50% of expressed interest, and we need only 10 to run the team, so we were happy.
we were even more happy to learn that 13 of them could swim very well, about half of them are reaonably skilled in all 4 competitive strokes (we already knew that), the rest make a reasonable showing in all but butterfly.
So I got the two "drowners" -this what what we thought would be the best way before we started, but just seemed to occur naturally anyway. (the other coach is a former swimmer and swim instructor so is all up in the fancy stuff, I'm a swim mom of many years standing... if you spend long enough in the bleachers, you know a decent stroke when you see one... and enough time watching lessons will give you the terminology for dealing with the basics...)
A is a small 6th grader, who I suspect is a loner -and that's possibly why swimming appeals. He has a basic idea of freestyle, backstroke and breastroke, but no power, more of a lick and a promise (a UK term I LOVE,feel free to google it
) His arm movements were minimal, his legs bent like a cyclist and he took about three minutes to swim a lenth in any stroke. Well maybe not that much but it felt like it. but he was super-keen and ready to learn.
D is a big 7th grader with some educational/social issues. Not sure what, it was a bit of a surprise as usually parents mention such things.. but anyhoo, he presents as a high-functioning aspy type, so I can deal with that. He started by telling us he couldn't do crawl, but his doggypaddle was OK, then proceeded to do a really nice crawl, just tired early. His breastroke was more like two-armed doggy-paddle, and his backstroke had the lifeguard over in a flash. it was hard to tell which direction he was supposed to be going in, it was more like a sucession of oyeters from a synchronized swimmer.
I felt like a fraud as a coach when I started this adventure, but somehow I managed to get both A and D to trust me and try the things I suggested, and by the end of the hour I had them both doing a recognizable backstroke and breaststroke, and the life guard went over to learn flipturns from the other coach.
I found that both kids responded well to learning why it's best to move their arms and legs in a certain way -how it made the water flow around them. -Not to "windmill" in the backstroke but to push the water down the sides of the body...) Looks like I found nerds like me
. I know what the strokes should look like -I've sat on enough pool decks and watched enough coaches, but apparently, these two kids have done that too. The first time i demonstrated what I wanted, the improved a little, but the second time when I told them why it works and to focus on moving the water rather than moving through it, they improved a lot.
Similar story for the breaststroke. Maybe I'm not such a fraud, after all? I feel good about practice tonight. Coach M is gonna have to teach them the fly though. Then I'll explain why it works....