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

[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.

In which way are the kids more or less consistent? If by time, I agree, fastest time is fastest time. But if it’s dq’s, then I’m not defending this coach, but sometimes consistency trumps time. In a situation with points on the line in which a swimmer often dq’s, then yes, coaches on the club level will choose a more consistent swimmer to swim. It only really happens in a relay situation because there is no limitation on individual swimmers in club. And it’s usually a matter of a swimmers being shuffled around so that no one dq’s.

For example, for a medley relay, Abraham is very fast at free and is ok in backstroke. Bobby is very slow at free and is faster than Abraham in backstroke, but often dq’s. On paper, Bobby should swim back and Abraham should swim free. But club coaches will almost always start Abraham at back and Bobby in free to avoid the dq.

Since summer swim has limited entries and since coaches and parents are much more rabid about points, I can see kids being shuffled around to avoid being dq’d in individual races. But even in that case, I think it’s the wrong call. Dq’s are a good way to learn with consequences. One dq is worth a month of the coach saying “two hand touch” at practice. In relays, it’s understandable because the whole team is disappointed when one of the four gets all of them disqualified.

In most cases, the solution to problems like this is to ask for an equitable transparent process to be installed, rather than accuse individuals or create a whisper campaign.

[Anonymous]

Only legal times go on ladder. DQs do not go on ladder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Except NVSL hides the clock. Seeded meet times are not available and the team does not share the ladder. The lack of transparency, which NVSL is promoting by their institutions to only give the seeded meet times to a select few promote this type of behavior.

[Anonymous]

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

Nope. My sons swam at Chesterbrook in McLean for a number of years, and when I pointed this out to a coach once (son wasn't sent to an A meet in spite of faster times) he made up some BS about effort, and blah blah. THe team reps are notoriously useless.

[Anonymous]

Our team uses coach discretion. My kid in on the ladder for backstroke. He had one great day. Since then he’s has 1 DQ and 2 times slower than his time trial. Should he actually be in A meets when other kids consistently swim times very close to his ladder time? I don’t think so. My kid knows why he isn’t swimming Saturdays and he’s working on it.

[Anonymous]

It's tricky on relays, lets say kid A for fly is 30/31/29/30 and kid B is 33/DQ/27/DQ.


I mean, that's a hard call to make. Yes, kid B *might* get a faster time but the track record isn't great. Both kids have a reasonable argument to make here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's tricky on relays, lets say kid A for fly is 30/31/29/30 and kid B is 33/DQ/27/DQ.


I mean, that's a hard call to make. Yes, kid B *might* get a faster time but the track record isn't great. Both kids have a reasonable argument to make here.

Relays don’t count for the ladder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

You are on a goofy team. Our team posts the ladder after every meet.

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.

Except NVSL hides the clock. Seeded meet times are not available and the team does not share the ladder. The lack of transparency, which NVSL is promoting by their institutions to only give the seeded meet times to a select few promote this type of behavior.

[Anonymous]

Don’t be a white savior. Only speak up if you are a minority and therefore affected by this.

[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.

One important difference is that B meets oroduce times that coaches can use to arrange A meet rosters - but those B times aren't official for things like All Stars. The atmospheres and experiences at the two meet types are also different. Both can be very fun and very supportive of the kids, but they are distinct from one another. Different times of day, too.

[Anonymous]

Another perspective that might show how these things are not always related to race. My kid is a pretty good swimmer but a very serious rock climber. At time trials, he laid down a fast time and he can meet that time or has been bettering it at A meets this season. But, he kept putting down a slower time at B meets because he has been spending 8 hours practicing with his rock climbing team on weekdays and his arms were spent on Wednesdays in a way that they weren’t on Saturdays. Then, we wouldn’t get picked for the A meet. We solved the problem by saying he was unavailable on Wednesdays for B meets so they didn’t pull down his time but we could also have talked to the coach to see if they would disregard his B meet time when considering who swims on Saturday. You might not know the circumstances of the other swimmer. What looks like racism to you might be a situation like this one that has nothing to do with race.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another perspective that might show how these things are not always related to race. My kid is a pretty good swimmer but a very serious rock climber. At time trials, he laid down a fast time and he can meet that time or has been bettering it at A meets this season. But, he kept putting down a slower time at B meets because he has been spending 8 hours practicing with his rock climbing team on weekdays and his arms were spent on Wednesdays in a way that they weren’t on Saturdays. Then, we wouldn’t get picked for the A meet. We solved the problem by saying he was unavailable on Wednesdays for B meets so they didn’t pull down his time but we could also have talked to the coach to see if they would disregard his B meet time when considering who swims on Saturday. You might not know the circumstances of the other swimmer. What looks like racism to you might be a situation like this one that has nothing to do with race.

*he wouldn’t get picked

[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.

I respect where you're coming from but a half second difference in best time is a huge gap in swimming. Full potential for speed/speed ceiling certainly can be another consideration. But the additional points about the kid who is a half second faster kind of never showing up I think are important, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

Nope. My sons swam at Chesterbrook in McLean for a number of years, and when I pointed this out to a coach once (son wasn't sent to an A meet in spite of faster times) he made up some BS about effort, and blah blah. THe team reps are notoriously useless.

DP. Same story different team. Our team has a rule that meets are seeded based on maximum points—but coach diverges from this and the reps don’t seem to care. I don’t think most parents notice it because they aren’t hunting down seed times on the NVSL site. The coach seems to favor certain kids and we aren’t sure what the reasons are to be honest. It doesn’t seem racially motivated at our pool, but it could be anything—innocent or not so innocent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

One important difference is that B meets oroduce times that coaches can use to arrange A meet rosters - but those B times aren't official for things like All Stars. The atmospheres and experiences at the two meet types are also different. Both can be very fun and very supportive of the kids, but they are distinct from one another. Different times of day, too.

Only divisionals count for all stars and teams choose their divisional swimmers