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Notes from the USA Swimming Age Group Chairs Workshop
April 22-24, 2005
Barry Silver, CSI Age Group Chairman
The event
USA Swimming sponsored a weekend workshop for all LSC Age Group Chairs at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. Attending were 36 LSC representatives, plus eight of the ten members of the USAS Age Group Planning Committee, Program Development Vice President (and former CSI General Chair) Leanne Spletzer, and many USAS staff members.
Overall impressions – where we stand
CT Swimming is exceedingly strong in terms of the organization and effectiveness of our Age Group Committee. A number of AG Chairs operate without much committee support or input – or even without any committee at all.
Where we don’t measure up is in the area of "fun". Others have more creativity in their meet programs.
Parent education is a crying need, one that USAS is emphasizing and CSI can focus on in the coming year.
We should work on a job description for the AG Chair. Ours would look a little different from others’. In particular, we have less involvement in our LSC’s time standards development and in the regular season meet schedule.
We are urged to develop clear working definitions of and objectives for "age group" and "senior" swimming, to be used consistently in framing LSC program development. It seems that we have made a few attempts at this in our coaches long-term planning conversations, but not produced a finished product.
What the National Team coaches want from Age Group programs
The National Team coaches were meeting elsewhere in the complex. Prior to speaking to us, the keynote speaker (Ruby Newell-Legner) met with them informally and asked what the message should be to the country’s age group program planners. The answer:
Remember that age group swimming is more than just 12/unders
Put in place a logical, sequential meet program
Keep it fun, and keep ‘em coming!
There is some challenge for all, including those of us from CT, in these short lines!
Parent education
We are urged to develop a "parent philosophy" on the LSC level:
Enjoy the sport
Understand the sport
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Athlete growth and developmentRole of the parent
The USAS parent handbook is being re-worked and will be distributed when completed. We will be getting copies of the parent presentation (given at our Swimposium) which will allow us to present it ourselves or develop our own program around it. Some of the most interesting and useful content was an outgrowth of USAS’s "Sport Science Summit" held in 1998-9 as a multidisciplinary study of athlete development. It is emphatically in the interest of both our swimmers and our program to try to get some of this material in front of as many of our parents and coaches as possible. I strongly suggest that this be a priority initiative of the Age Group Committee in the coming seasons.
Among the suggestions were:
Parent information can be included in meet programs
An LSC registration packet can include information on our programs, the LSC philosophy and where the parent fits in, and a guide to web and other resources
Coach education
In the specific area of coach educational programs:
The Sport Science Summit produced analysis of swimmer development that is highly relevant to all aspects of age group coaching: training, skills development and social/psychological. One simple concrete recommendation is that coaches track growth metrics for all their swimmers at least twice a year (eg. height and weight) to be able to follow their developmental stage as well as their chronological age.
It was observed that many (or most) of the coach education programs tend to target experienced coaches. Yet, many of our entry-level and developmental swimmers are coached by younger coaches, including rookie coaches. Many new coaches "coach the way they remember being coached", and their freshest memories may be college swimming, not 10/under swimming. This points to the need for targeted education programs at the LSC level.
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We shared ideas of many creative meet formats which have been well-received in our LSC’s. We came up with the idea of submitting all the meet announcements for these to USAS and creating a meet format library on the USAS website. Some examples:
Meets with barbecues or socials/dances following (one LSC – winning team gets steak, second team gets burgers, others get hot dogs!)
Dual or intrasquad meets with older swimmers acting as personal coaches for younger ones
Series of "passport" meets – each with a different country theme, participants get passport stamped, culminate in season-end USA-theme meet
"Border Brawl" with neighboring LSC
All boy and all girl meets
Mystery meets or events – swimmers get to blocks and event is picked at random, or IM order picked at random
Pirate theme meet – losing coach made to walk the plank (high dive)
Odd-age or single-age group meet
"Iron Man" meet – 200 fly + 400 IM + 1650
8/under skill meet – swimmers scored on a technical skills checklist with no times recorded
Relay meets
Round robin of dual meets for prelims – winning teams get extra points – then overall top 9 at finals
A logical progression
We are urged to think in terms of developing our programs around a "progression ladder" which allows athletes, coaches and parents to understand where they are and where they can go in the sport. This is (only) an example:
Camps
Some changes are coming that will include a setback for our program. We received a preview of the proposals to be made at this fall’s convention.
The USA Swimming funding of LSC age group "Catch the Spirit" camps will be ending. The materials will still be available. This program has been used by only a few LSC’s (including CT!!) recently
The funding will be re-directed into a new series of Zone Select Camps (one for each of the 4 Zones). Each Zone will select the swimmers with the fastest 2 times (swum at any LCM meet) per event/sex. Each swimmer can only "represent" one event – that with their highest power point rating, so a total of 26 boys and 26 girls will be chosen for the 2 ˝ day camp. Girls must be 12/13 at time of qualifying swim and boys 13/14. The Head Coach will be selected from a different Zone to avoid conflicts. Assistant coaches will be drawn from LSC Zone team Head Coaches.
Selection will be in September for a May (?) camp
USA Swimming will pay for the camps, but the swimmers must transport themselves there. It is hoped that the LSC’s will pick up some or all of that cost.
The Zone Select Camps are viewed as a step in the progression that then includes the National Select Camps and the National Junior Team
This plan seems to make sense, but it will present a budgetary challenge for us!
Time standards
USA Swimming is developing a new "power points" ranking system, which will be (exclusively) part of the next version of Hytek Meet Manager. This idea is to improve upon or replace the current "motivational" time standards with a more flexible, comprehensive system. Each event and single age will have a new National Reportable Time (currently national 25th place averaged over the last 3 seasons) which will correspond to 800 points on a scale of zero to 1300, and all times will map to a point value that is meant to be comparable across events, age groups, etc. Hytek will have the ability to print point values with results. Some possible uses:
Power point values can assist us in planning our own meet time standards. For example, we may wish to use our current method targeting event entry size, but subject to adjustment if the resulting time standards imply substantially different power point values event to event
Swimmers may compare themselves to others in other ages or events
Swimmers may measure their own progress as they age up one year at a time
LSC’s can compare strengths and weaknesses in age cohorts and events (for example, boys vs. girls, sprint vs. distance, 11/12s vs. 13/14s, etc.)
Meets can be scored based on national power points, which takes away the element of "who happens to show up"
Keeping score is viewed as a way to keep boys (in particular) interested, an this will assign every swim a score-
The implication is that we may want to begin to focus on a transition to Hytek for CSI-sponsored meets, since LSA will not have this capability.
Boys in swimming
We heard preview highlights of the report of a task force set up to assess and study the imbalance in participation between boys and girls in swimming and recommend action. In summary, they found a serious and growing problem. There are many recommendations which were presented to the USAS Board, including:
Marketing and promotion – many mostly national intitiatives, but the LSC’s are urged to help expose boys to college swimming
Swim meets – a number of alternative meet formats will be developed to appeal to and retain boy swimmers
Coach education – a national position paper will be produced on this topic
Practice and training – recommendations include separation of boys and girls in practices and camp situations where possible, and specific motivational programs at the club level
Parent education – a number of national and local initiatives
Recognition – support movement to single age-group records and Top 16 at the national, LSC and club levels
Organizational relationships – work to resolve conflicts with High School swimming and summer leagues
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