Reply to Summer swim team, what are head coach's responsibilities?

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[quote=Anonymous]Wow, our MCSL team is reasonably commensurate in size (about 120+ kids, I think?), and my DCs have always received personal attention even at regular practice.  I am beginning to get the impression on these boards, though, that we might have a little more water time than some other teams (not sure).  We have about 7 coaches total (not counting pre-team coaches), and there are 3 practice slots every morning M-F and 3 practice slots every afternoon M-T and Th-F (no afternoon practice on Wednesdays because of B meets).  What this means is that there are never a huge number of swimmers at any one practice once the routine settles into place by the week after time trials or so.

Our coaches are available to interpret DQs right away at odd moments during the meets, and even our head coach offers individual feedback right after races.  But truth to tell we don't have that many DQs generally - and we're not in a super high division, either.  If a team is racking up so many DQs that the coaches do not have time to explain them to the swimmers, the coaches might want to re-think their B meet entry baselines.  There is plenty of debate as to how much of a bar should be set there, but to me as a parent, I would want a team to only enter as many swimmers in a B meet as they can reasonably support, manage, coach, and help to improve during that 3-hour window.  If they all DQ, fine, as long as they have the chance to learn from it.

It sounds like your DC is working on breast and/or fly (DQ in back is really easy to see, and DQ in free is really hard to do!), and private lessons can be helpful with that no matter what.  But one way you as a parent can help to support this in the (frenzied) summer environment is to observe practice when you can and ask the advice of others around you.  In this geographical area, there are a _lot_ of former swimmers who are now fellow team parents and can provide some good feedback on what DC is doing well and not so well.  Our team's S&T judges are also in that category, and they have pointed out in conversation some really useful subtleties in one of my DC's strokes that it took _DC_ an entire season to understand, notice, and feel.[/quote]

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