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First-time summer swim coach seeks advice from parents!
How many kids on the team? We have probably 75 or so, from under sixes to high school. Really, what you need is eyes in the back of your head - supervising can be a bit tricky, especially for the 9 to 12 group, which can be a bit of a problem in my experience. Lesley, There are about sixty kids, seventy if you count guppies. Eyes in the back of my head...hmm, can I pick those up on amazon?? Last year, I actually had the biggest problem with the oldest swimmers: I'm 5'2 and weigh 100 pounds; sometimes the older ones don't really want to listen to someone who looks like their baby sister! Any ideas about that? Thank you for your advice! |
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First-time summer swim coach seeks advice from parents!
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First-time summer swim coach seeks advice from parents!
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First-time summer swim coach seeks advice from parents!
Louise wrote in message . ..
Thank you, Louise, for your good advice! I'm not a swimming coach; I'm a hockey coach and board member. If you're going to try to change prevailing custom about the level of parent involvement (i.e. if they never had parent volunteers before), you'll probably do better if you consult the people who hired you (the parents' board, the city recreation department, whatever). If you can get them to agree it's a worthwhile exercise (even if they say "Oh, it'll never work, that's not the way we do things here"), ask them to help publicising the request. I think Rosalie suggested having a volunteer signup or skill listing on the kids' summer registration form. You can also ask them to include a note on any advertising they do about the program. I like your idea of having volunteer sign ups at registration. I am meeting the board members next week and I will suggest this to them. Dragonlady also gave you some good advice about how to take the authority you'll need, by making sure that you always dress and act like an adult around the swimmers and their parents. She did, which I did not get a chance to reply to. Thank you dragonlady. Also, my with a gun and a uniform yelling at the kids is a funny mental image... Other related advice that I would give a young coach includes - DO NOT FLIRT or do anything that might encourage an older swimmer to take a romantic interest in you. That won't be an issue; I'm romantically challenged!! - Don't appear to have "special friendships" with certain families, even if they're your neighbours or the board members. It doesn't take much for people to think you're playing favourites. Point taken; I will admit I had a bad tendency to do that a bit last year. Yeah, so I took a liking to the kids who tried the hardest, etc. Bad thing, nonetheless, and I will work on it. - Don't change with your female athletes. Don't go in the changeroom when they're changing without another adult. The kids don't have locker rooms; they come to practice with their suits and then just go home (or stay to play in the pool). - If you find yourself having a disagreement with a board member or other parent, don't discuss it in front of the swimmers. I will. - Keep your board (or whatever other body you answer to) informed about how things are going. It looks much better for you if they hear about problems from you before they hear about them from an angry parent - then they can help defend you and the program to an angry parent and can also get involved in preventing similar future problems.. The problems might be something like "our schedule changed at the last minute because of double-booking the pool" or "David was pushing people on the pool deck again so I told him to leave and not to come back until next week." Good advice; I relate well to children but am sometimes intimidated by adults. I will remember this. If you want to have a chance of eventually making a career of coaching, it will probably improve your odds if you get credentials and experience in teaching swimming as well. Definitely work on attaining the WSI and doing some work as a swim teacher (maybe next winter or when you're in university). Later in the summer, identify some articulate individual among your employers and ask him or her if you can use his or her name as a reference for future coaching work and your applications to colleges of education. Good advice. I actually think that a recommendation from my previous stroke clinic instructor/mentor that helped land me the job! He's pretty influential around here. I will remember this in the future; you never know who you might run into! Oh yeah: thanks so much to everyone who has helped me so far! I've put all your advice in my swim team notebook. If there are any more ideas, I would love to hear them!! Thanks! ~Katie |
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