Bad summer coach- who should feedback go to?

[Anonymous]

My daughter and a few of her teammates were comparing notes and we slowly realized that they had a similarly bad (but not SafeSport kind of bad) experience with one summer team coach. Their experience was not universal so for most of the summer my DD and me thought we were going crazy or overreacting. Coach is a rising college freshman and 1st year coach and has never been affiliated with this league, so in my mind not in a situation where it would be appropriate for a parent to give them direct feedback.

Do I talk to parent reps? Pool manager? Board? Would feedback even make a difference?

[Anonymous]

If this were my DD and our team and I decided it was worth pursuing, this is something I’d bring up to the team reps.

[Anonymous]

Team reps and board if there is one

[Anonymous]

Are we talking 19 y.o. flirting with a 17 y.o, bad or 19 y.o. flirting with a 13 y.o. bad?

[Anonymous]

Team rep, definitely, and in private. Then you and team rep decide together where to go next if needed. It is very important that any information-gathering be done as objectively as possible with the utmost care for the athletes' welfare according to the rules (e.g. any interviewing of swimmers should be done in a SafeSport way - some organizations would have an extra observer present, don't know what SafeSport wants), even if what is at stake is something like how flip turns were being taught. If there are any questions on how to gather information appropriately, ask the league (likely through the rep) _before_ anyone improvises or screws anything up.

[Anonymous]

This is feedback for your reps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Team rep, definitely, and in private. Then you and team rep decide together where to go next if needed. It is very important that any information-gathering be done as objectively as possible with the utmost care for the athletes' welfare according to the rules (e.g. any interviewing of swimmers should be done in a SafeSport way - some organizations would have an extra observer present, don't know what SafeSport wants), even if what is at stake is something like how flip turns were being taught. If there are any questions on how to gather information appropriately, ask the league (likely through the rep) _before_ anyone improvises or screws anything up.

Thanks for thinking this through for me. I'll discuss it with the team rep and will also go back to my Safesport training before I talk to any other parents or kids. I want to reiterate that it's not relationship stuff like suggested above. It's related to a summer dive team, not a summer swim team, so no flip turns, but there are indeed physical safety issues regarding progressions and training setups, a few injuries that could have been avoided and had incident reports, and many near-misses. Some of it I reported to the aquatics director during the season but other stuff came out later regarding negative verbal stuff that I think I need to mention.

I thought about it and the dive universe is so small that it's likely this person might get asked back to a different league pool even if they weren't asked back to ours, so I'm going to discuss with the parent rep about taking it to the dive league rep so we can ensure that this person doesn't return to one of our other teams. Injuries and near-misses are a huge deal at the league level because we insure our competitive program as a league, not by individual clubs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Team rep, definitely, and in private. Then you and team rep decide together where to go next if needed. It is very important that any information-gathering be done as objectively as possible with the utmost care for the athletes' welfare according to the rules (e.g. any interviewing of swimmers should be done in a SafeSport way - some organizations would have an extra observer present, don't know what SafeSport wants), even if what is at stake is something like how flip turns were being taught. If there are any questions on how to gather information appropriately, ask the league (likely through the rep) _before_ anyone improvises or screws anything up.

Thanks for thinking this through for me. I'll discuss it with the team rep and will also go back to my Safesport training before I talk to any other parents or kids. I want to reiterate that it's not relationship stuff like suggested above. It's related to a summer dive team, not a summer swim team, so no flip turns, but there are indeed physical safety issues regarding progressions and training setups, a few injuries that could have been avoided and had incident reports, and many near-misses. Some of it I reported to the aquatics director during the season but other stuff came out later regarding negative verbal stuff that I think I need to mention.

I thought about it and the dive universe is so small that it's likely this person might get asked back to a different league pool even if they weren't asked back to ours, so I'm going to discuss with the parent rep about taking it to the dive league rep so we can ensure that this person doesn't return to one of our other teams. Injuries and near-misses are a huge deal at the league level because we insure our competitive program as a league, not by individual clubs.

It sounds like you're working through this really well. Starting with the rules and keeping the circle need-to-know will help minimize gossip and rumors that can essentially 'contaminate' the data you will be gathering, too. You might even want the rep to reach out to the other families rather than you, to keep the situation at a similar distance from everyone involved.

Major kudos to you, though, OP, for being able to keep emotion out of this and trying to do what's best for everyone involved objectively and logically. Even the problematic new coach needs to be treated fairly, even if the end in view is for them not to take a similar position until they have had a great deal more experience and training.

[Anonymous]

Our coach was not practicing Safe Sport. She is texting older swimmers individually.

She has also made several racially insensitive comments. She was late to every meet. Not a great coach and not really fun. Lots of yelling. There’s more but what can you do. Season is over. We will move on. Kid had fun for the most part.