How do I bring this up diplomatically without accusing coach of having racial biases?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Swim always goes by times, so this isn't racism. Sure, it’s not necessarily "fair" but the other kid could be swimming with a year round group.

What is unfair is picking a slower kid that is more “consistent”. Maybe they’re more consistent because they get to swim the stroke more often!

Anyway, I don’t know why but this thread has me wondering if a law professor is having fun with a hypothetical.

[Anonymous]

Are you white?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In the past our swim team has always used best times to decide who gets to go to A meets or other events. It was very clear cut. This year there is a new coach who usually uses times but has made a few decisions to disregard some kids' times and pick others. When a few parents raised the question he said it's due to the other kids being more consistently fast. I respect that and think that makes sense that sometimes kids have outlier times due to timing irregularities or other reasons.

But the thing I've noticed is that the decision of leaving things up to the discretion of the coach always results in the non-white swimmers not getting picked. The last A meet there was one swimmer who had an outlier time from a B meet who had not been improving, does not go to practices and just happened to get a time that was half a second faster than another swimmer who goes to practices, has been improving and has consistently gotten lower times. If we follow the coach's own stated logic for picking kids the more consistent swimmer should have been picked and not the kid with the outlier time. But the kid with the outlier time is white and the more consistent kid is not white. It's the same every time there are gray area cases and the coach just makes up a reason why the white swimmer is picked.

Would you point this out to someone? Who? I don't think the coach is openly racist but he seems to give white swimmers the benefit of the doubt while non-white swimmers are not given that respect. We are in a majority white area with all white coaches.

Is your kid the one being overlooked?

Either way, you are a parent, right? You don’t get to second-guess a coach. Stay in your lane, no pun intended.

Wrong. Parents absolutely get to question coach. More parents should question coach. Especially in a parent driven organization like summer swim. Safe Sport happened for a reason. Coaches have enormous influence over our children. There’s no question a coach should be uncomfortable answering.

[Anonymous]

Racism is terrible, but I would be very careful if you’re going to accuse somebody of this. I’m not saying you can’t do it, but accusing/labeling somebody a racist shouldn’t be taken lightly.

[Anonymous]

Affirmative action was struck down but nvsl goes off a ladder time

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Swim always goes by times, so this isn't racism. Sure, it’s not necessarily "fair" but the other kid could be swimming with a year round group.

What is unfair is picking a slower kid that is more “consistent”. Maybe they’re more consistent because they get to swim the stroke more often!

Anyway, I don’t know why but this thread has me wondering if a law professor is having fun with a hypothetical.

Seriously? Because that is not the way the sport works. It’s all about times, not consistency.

[Anonymous]

We are in mcsl and also a majority white pool with a white coach. My kid is black and I haven’t noticed this at our pool luckily. My kid is top in her age group but we are division N, not division A. I think I would say something to someone but make sure you have evidence to back it up.

[Anonymous]

But you are accusing the coach of racism, aren’t you?

The best thing is what one PP recommended: contact the team rep with your concern and suggest the team return to the ladder system, based strictly on times. Remove any subjective element. You would be doing the coach a favor.

[Anonymous]

Why does this matter?

The only difference between A and B is when the meet is. You swim your race and get a time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Swim always goes by times, so this isn't racism. Sure, it’s not necessarily "fair" but the other kid could be swimming with a year round group.

What is unfair is picking a slower kid that is more “consistent”. Maybe they’re more consistent because they get to swim the stroke more often!

Anyway, I don’t know why but this thread has me wondering if a law professor is having fun with a hypothetical.

Seriously? Because that is not the way the sport works. It’s all about times, not consistency.

It's all about which times? There are many times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In the past our swim team has always used best times to decide who gets to go to A meets or other events. It was very clear cut. This year there is a new coach who usually uses times but has made a few decisions to disregard some kids' times and pick others. When a few parents raised the question he said it's due to the other kids being more consistently fast. I respect that and think that makes sense that sometimes kids have outlier times due to timing irregularities or other reasons.

But the thing I've noticed is that the decision of leaving things up to the discretion of the coach always results in the non-white swimmers not getting picked. The last A meet there was one swimmer who had an outlier time from a B meet who had not been improving, does not go to practices and just happened to get a time that was half a second faster than another swimmer who goes to practices, has been improving and has consistently gotten lower times. If we follow the coach's own stated logic for picking kids the more consistent swimmer should have been picked and not the kid with the outlier time. But the kid with the outlier time is white and the more consistent kid is not white. It's the same every time there are gray area cases and the coach just makes up a reason why the white swimmer is picked.

Would you point this out to someone? Who? I don't think the coach is openly racist but he seems to give white swimmers the benefit of the doubt while non-white swimmers are not given that respect. We are in a majority white area with all white coaches.

Don't rush the race issue.

Ask the B parents/kids if they want to swim A. Make a list of names, and send it to the team leadership. Show the list to the parents/kids who are swimming, and ask them to share space with the B swimmers who are inexplicably left out of the A races. Bring receipts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Swim always goes by times, so this isn't racism. Sure, it’s not necessarily "fair" but the other kid could be swimming with a year round group.

What is unfair is picking a slower kid that is more “consistent”. Maybe they’re more consistent because they get to swim the stroke more often!

Anyway, I don’t know why but this thread has me wondering if a law professor is having fun with a hypothetical.

Seriously? Because that is not the way the sport works. It’s all about times, not consistency.

That’s what I said. “Consistency” sounds like a made up reason to promote someone the coach favors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Swim always goes by times, so this isn't racism. Sure, its not necessarily "fair" but the other kid could be swimming with a year round group.

I think you missed the part where the OP said the coach didn’t just go by times before and picked a slower white swimmer who was more consistent, but didn’t extend the same privilege to a black swimmer in a similar circumstance.

This is a good illustration of what can happen when coaches play around with things, instead of just using the times. Messy. Better to have rules that eliminate bias.

I am pretty sure the software exists for seeding meets that flags seeds that aren’t based on matching fastest times from each team in each event. That would be one way to help reps monitor coach’s substitutions. Is this is a thing? Though I saw something about it somewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In the past our swim team has always used best times to decide who gets to go to A meets or other events. It was very clear cut. This year there is a new coach who usually uses times but has made a few decisions to disregard some kids' times and pick others. When a few parents raised the question he said it's due to the other kids being more consistently fast. I respect that and think that makes sense that sometimes kids have outlier times due to timing irregularities or other reasons.

But the thing I've noticed is that the decision of leaving things up to the discretion of the coach always results in the non-white swimmers not getting picked. The last A meet there was one swimmer who had an outlier time from a B meet who had not been improving, does not go to practices and just happened to get a time that was half a second faster than another swimmer who goes to practices, has been improving and has consistently gotten lower times. If we follow the coach's own stated logic for picking kids the more consistent swimmer should have been picked and not the kid with the outlier time. But the kid with the outlier time is white and the more consistent kid is not white. It's the same every time there are gray area cases and the coach just makes up a reason why the white swimmer is picked.

Would you point this out to someone? Who? I don't think the coach is openly racist but he seems to give white swimmers the benefit of the doubt while non-white swimmers are not given that respect. We are in a majority white area with all white coaches.

Don't rush the race issue.

Ask the B parents/kids if they want to swim A. Make a list of names, and send it to the team leadership. Show the list to the parents/kids who are swimming, and ask them to share space with the B swimmers who are inexplicably left out of the A races. Bring receipts.

No, this is an absurd idea. Take it to the team reps with the receipts. Swimming is a timed individual sport, if this season swimmer A has a faster time than swimmer B in a particular event, swimmer B should not be selected over swimmer A. Swimmer B needs to do the stroke in a B meet and get a faster time if they want to jump swimmer A. This Coach is screwing up one of the most simplistic and wonderful parts of swimming. The clock does not lie.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why does this matter?

The only difference between A and B is when the meet is. You swim your race and get a time.

It matters for a few reasons. If you don’t race an event in an A meet, you won’t get a seed time for that event at divisionals in NVSL. So you’ll automatically go in a slower heat. Which tends to make you slower, which could mean you might not make an all-star cut.

Also, if you never swim in an A meet, you can’t swim in Divisionals at all.

Finally, you have fewer opportunities to drop time and qualify for Divisionals in an event if you don’t swim it twice a week.

So there are opportunities for swimmers that could be taken away if bias enters the coach’s seeding decisions.

Every child should have equal opportunity to participate at A meets, based on the times they can swim.