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. |
Are you white? |
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. |
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. |
Affirmative action was struck down but nvsl goes off a ladder time |
Seriously? Because that is not the way the sport works. It’s all about times, not consistency. |
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. |
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. |
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's all about which times? There are many times. |
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. |
That’s what I said. “Consistency” sounds like a made up reason to promote someone the coach favors. |
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. |
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. |
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. |