St. James

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is 0 stroke correction at the SJ. Kids just swam and swam. Lanes were unorganized.

That is what it was like at our highly rated club—for three times the cost! So we’re just shooting for convenience and cost-savings at this point. Good coaching would be a bonus, lol. Will check out the other options discussed here too.

Our club is "highly rated" and often mentioned here. It is not one of the pricey clubs - so I get what I pay for with my kid. It is okay. The club does not correct like it should, particularly at the higher levels. Right now a lot of swimmers from FISH's upper groups are jumping to our club. I think that they will be very disappointed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The people I know whos kids swim for the in house St James team do it for convenience. they like that they can participate in 3 month increments vs committing to a full 9 months. However, I have not been impressed with any of the kid I have seen who swim there. Their technique is pretty bad. Not sure it that is because of poor coaching or because these kids just aren't that committed.

For as small as their team might be they have a few kids that are the top swimmers in PVS at the championship meets.

Why do people talk out of their @sses with stuff like this? There were a grand total of 2 St. James swimmers in the the 3 PVS champs meets this summer and neither of them made finals. They were better represented in the spring 14 and Under SC champs meet, 12 swimmers, but only 3 of them made any finals, none of them placed first, and it appears they have 2 female age groupers who are strong breaststrokers. That does not equal “top swimmers in PVS at the championship meets”.

Sounds about right. Point is the coaching is plenty good enough to help kids get better if they want to and to help even part time swimmers compete at a high level if they want to.

That sounds like what we are looking for, thanks. Our kid is competitive, but we aren’t going to drag them to unnecessary morning practices and add more pool time to their busy week just to make the club more money. They cross train. I don’t buy into all of that mileage garbage for 12 year olds.

New commenter here but from what I hear at my summer pool it’s actually the exact opposite of what you are thinking.

The times for champs are not very fast and should be easily achievable for anyone with the slightest bit of decent professional coaching. If a team is only sending a few swimmers to these meets it’s almost certainly actually because those swimmers are just very naturally talented and got there despite the coaching not because of the coaching.

What Summer Pool are you at saying this? SC Champs and LC Champs have qualifying times that are set to limit the kids that can get in. So only the top X percent can make it into the meet. So they do not understand club swim.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The people I know whos kids swim for the in house St James team do it for convenience. they like that they can participate in 3 month increments vs committing to a full 9 months. However, I have not been impressed with any of the kid I have seen who swim there. Their technique is pretty bad. Not sure it that is because of poor coaching or because these kids just aren't that committed.

For as small as their team might be they have a few kids that are the top swimmers in PVS at the championship meets.

Why do people talk out of their @sses with stuff like this? There were a grand total of 2 St. James swimmers in the the 3 PVS champs meets this summer and neither of them made finals. They were better represented in the spring 14 and Under SC champs meet, 12 swimmers, but only 3 of them made any finals, none of them placed first, and it appears they have 2 female age groupers who are strong breaststrokers. That does not equal “top swimmers in PVS at the championship meets”.

I think that if you look at NCAP and how large they are it makes sense how many swimmers they have at the top levels. St. James is like a team of 250 or so. It is really small. The Marlins is like 400 some kids. Size of the team matters.

That is definitely a part of it. For the large clubs like NCAP, Machine, RMSC, who have multiple sites, it makes more sense to look at them site by site. If you’re looking for a program for a 12 and under, look at the individual sites to see which site produces the top swimmers, if that’s what you are interested in. Part of the benefit you get from being at a big club is that there are so many kids at varying levels that you are pretty much assured of being in a training group that fits your level. At some of these smaller clubs, they may have 1 or 2 standouts but when those swimmers don’t have a training cohort that can train at their level it becomes a detriment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The people I know whos kids swim for the in house St James team do it for convenience. they like that they can participate in 3 month increments vs committing to a full 9 months. However, I have not been impressed with any of the kid I have seen who swim there. Their technique is pretty bad. Not sure it that is because of poor coaching or because these kids just aren't that committed.

For as small as their team might be they have a few kids that are the top swimmers in PVS at the championship meets.

Why do people talk out of their @sses with stuff like this? There were a grand total of 2 St. James swimmers in the the 3 PVS champs meets this summer and neither of them made finals. They were better represented in the spring 14 and Under SC champs meet, 12 swimmers, but only 3 of them made any finals, none of them placed first, and it appears they have 2 female age groupers who are strong breaststrokers. That does not equal “top swimmers in PVS at the championship meets”.

Sounds about right. Point is the coaching is plenty good enough to help kids get better if they want to and to help even part time swimmers compete at a high level if they want to.

That sounds like what we are looking for, thanks. Our kid is competitive, but we aren’t going to drag them to unnecessary morning practices and add more pool time to their busy week just to make the club more money. They cross train. I don’t buy into all of that mileage garbage for 12 year olds.

New commenter here but from what I hear at my summer pool it’s actually the exact opposite of what you are thinking.

The times for champs are not very fast and should be easily achievable for anyone with the slightest bit of decent professional coaching. If a team is only sending a few swimmers to these meets it’s almost certainly actually because those swimmers are just very naturally talented and got there despite the coaching not because of the coaching.

That last paragraph is objectively not true. We are with one of NCAPs best locations and we have a lot of PVS champs/NCSA/Zones qualifiers but not every kid has that ability. Same coaches, same training, and they still aren’t going to be able to get one of those cuts. Which is totally fine, they still work hard and love swimming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The people I know whos kids swim for the in house St James team do it for convenience. they like that they can participate in 3 month increments vs committing to a full 9 months. However, I have not been impressed with any of the kid I have seen who swim there. Their technique is pretty bad. Not sure it that is because of poor coaching or because these kids just aren't that committed.

For as small as their team might be they have a few kids that are the top swimmers in PVS at the championship meets.

Why do people talk out of their @sses with stuff like this? There were a grand total of 2 St. James swimmers in the the 3 PVS champs meets this summer and neither of them made finals. They were better represented in the spring 14 and Under SC champs meet, 12 swimmers, but only 3 of them made any finals, none of them placed first, and it appears they have 2 female age groupers who are strong breaststrokers. That does not equal “top swimmers in PVS at the championship meets”.

I think that if you look at NCAP and how large they are it makes sense how many swimmers they have at the top levels. St. James is like a team of 250 or so. It is really small. The Marlins is like 400 some kids. Size of the team matters.

Marlins had 40 kids at 14 & Under champs in the spring vs The St James’ 12. They are less than double the size yet have over 3 times as many qualifiers so I’d say size doesn’t really matter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The people I know whos kids swim for the in house St James team do it for convenience. they like that they can participate in 3 month increments vs committing to a full 9 months. However, I have not been impressed with any of the kid I have seen who swim there. Their technique is pretty bad. Not sure it that is because of poor coaching or because these kids just aren't that committed.

For as small as their team might be they have a few kids that are the top swimmers in PVS at the championship meets.

Why do people talk out of their @sses with stuff like this? There were a grand total of 2 St. James swimmers in the the 3 PVS champs meets this summer and neither of them made finals. They were better represented in the spring 14 and Under SC champs meet, 12 swimmers, but only 3 of them made any finals, none of them placed first, and it appears they have 2 female age groupers who are strong breaststrokers. That does not equal “top swimmers in PVS at the championship meets”.

Sounds about right. Point is the coaching is plenty good enough to help kids get better if they want to and to help even part time swimmers compete at a high level if they want to.

That sounds like what we are looking for, thanks. Our kid is competitive, but we aren’t going to drag them to unnecessary morning practices and add more pool time to their busy week just to make the club more money. They cross train. I don’t buy into all of that mileage garbage for 12 year olds.

New commenter here but from what I hear at my summer pool it’s actually the exact opposite of what you are thinking.

The times for champs are not very fast and should be easily achievable for anyone with the slightest bit of decent professional coaching. If a team is only sending a few swimmers to these meets it’s almost certainly actually because those swimmers are just very naturally talented and got there despite the coaching not because of the coaching.

What Summer Pool are you at saying this? SC Champs and LC Champs have qualifying times that are set to limit the kids that can get in. So only the top X percent can make it into the meet. So they do not understand club swim.

The typical conversion between SCM and LCM is right around 1 sec per 50 and the 100th place time for NVSL in almost every 9-10 50 event (free back and breast) is more than a second faster than the PVS LC champs cut in that equivalent event.

If I had to guess almost every NVSL team has at least 1 9-10 kid that is top 100 in a single event (equal to what St James sent to chanps) and plenty of teams have college (some even high school) kids as their head coach so I don’t think St. James having a qualifier says much about coaching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The people I know whos kids swim for the in house St James team do it for convenience. they like that they can participate in 3 month increments vs committing to a full 9 months. However, I have not been impressed with any of the kid I have seen who swim there. Their technique is pretty bad. Not sure it that is because of poor coaching or because these kids just aren't that committed.

For as small as their team might be they have a few kids that are the top swimmers in PVS at the championship meets.

Why do people talk out of their @sses with stuff like this? There were a grand total of 2 St. James swimmers in the the 3 PVS champs meets this summer and neither of them made finals. They were better represented in the spring 14 and Under SC champs meet, 12 swimmers, but only 3 of them made any finals, none of them placed first, and it appears they have 2 female age groupers who are strong breaststrokers. That does not equal “top swimmers in PVS at the championship meets”.

Sounds about right. Point is the coaching is plenty good enough to help kids get better if they want to and to help even part time swimmers compete at a high level if they want to.

That sounds like what we are looking for, thanks. Our kid is competitive, but we aren’t going to drag them to unnecessary morning practices and add more pool time to their busy week just to make the club more money. They cross train. I don’t buy into all of that mileage garbage for 12 year olds.

New commenter here but from what I hear at my summer pool it’s actually the exact opposite of what you are thinking.

The times for champs are not very fast and should be easily achievable for anyone with the slightest bit of decent professional coaching. If a team is only sending a few swimmers to these meets it’s almost certainly actually because those swimmers are just very naturally talented and got there despite the coaching not because of the coaching.

What Summer Pool are you at saying this? SC Champs and LC Champs have qualifying times that are set to limit the kids that can get in. So only the top X percent can make it into the meet. So they do not understand club swim.

The typical conversion between SCM and LCM is right around 1 sec per 50 and the 100th place time for NVSL in almost every 9-10 50 event (free back and breast) is more than a second faster than the PVS LC champs cut in that equivalent event.

If I had to guess almost every NVSL team has at least 1 9-10 kid that is top 100 in a single event (equal to what St James sent to chanps) and plenty of teams have college (some even high school) kids as their head coach so I don’t think St. James having a qualifier says much about coaching.

One out of how many? It looks like St James only had a couple of 9-10 kids in their summer LC program; 1 boy and 1 girl competed in the PVS LC open meets. In which case, the fraction that qualified for champs was REALLY high.

[Anonymous]

If you go back to the May LC meet they had a couple of additional 9-10 LC champs qualifiers who simply chose not to compete in the summer session. It looks like several of their 9-10 JO qualifiers from the spring skipped LC altogether as well. So summer champs aren't a good measure of the depth of their talent pool either.