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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What to do if 12 yo child did not make ASA Jr team but wants to swim 4 times a week? Wants to be on a team?[b] Has the capacity and genetics (both bio parents were division one athletes)[/b] to excel but needs an opportunity to be taught and practice.  He has some form issues that were not addressed in once a week stroke and turn clinics. He’s currently taking private lessons.   He’s signed up to tryout for RMSC in August but that’s just as doubtful.  I regret not accepting offered spots on teams when he was little but can’t do anything about that now. Do you have suggestions based on experience w your child?[/quote]

OP, is this about your kid wanting to become a better swimmer or you wanting to raise an athlete?[/quote]

I think if her 12 yo didn’t want to swim, he wouldn’t be attending tryouts. OP didn’t mean to say she was pushing him or something [/quote]

OP.  Since you asked, my son has told me he wants to swim —I am attempting to help him without breaking his desire (because he’s not making it with tryouts.) If I were pushing him I’d having him play football or basketball. I am following his lead.  [/quote]

Is he swimming daily now?  Because honestly that is going to help him make the most progress fast.  So I am going to suggest a different approach than maybe the path you're on.  Keep working on finding a team, because it helps and going to meets definitely is invigorating, but he needs to be swimming now all the time to improve.  He should be swimming daily at your local pool.  He should be doing a series of timed sets on areas of focus.  Does your pool have its own swim team or does your local public have a swim team with a coach?  Ask that coach (pay him/her) to help you put together a 5-day series of timed sets that he can rotate through.

He will need to be self-motivating.  I look at it like when one of my kids is out in the driveway shooting hoops for an hour after he gets home from practice or another kid is throwing lax balls against the side of the garage and he doesn't stop until he's done 200.

Your son will need to push himself.  This won't be coasting along swimming easily.  He will need to keep decreasing the times for his reps so that he is getting to the end of a set and he feels like he can't go another stroke.  He will need to be taking his heart rate to hit his target so that he knows he is going as hard as he can.  He will rest to get the HR back to normal and then he starts the next set.  Use your D1 skillset to help him develop the internal motivation and rigor to go it alone until he makes a team.

FWIW, I didn't begin swimming until I was around 11.  It was part of my physical rehab after an accident.  I literally had not been a swimmer, just a splasher, before the accident so I had to learn to float before I could even start the rehab part!  However, by the time I was in high school I was nationally ranked and I could have tried out to make the Olympic team if that had been my choice.  My focus was on the outcome of swimming for my body and what it meant for my physical recovery so my focus was a little different than your son's.  I didn't even know about sets and once I was ably swimming my PT wasn't even around so I was mostly swimming laps and telling myself 'the next one I want to do in x seconds.'  So it is true to say that for the most part I did it alone until I was good enough that I made the various high school and competitive teams.  Frankly, I don't know who was more surprised by all of that, me or my parents or the team of physicians monitoring my progress!

IMO swimming is a very forgiving sport so there is no time like the present to get in there and go. [/quote]

Thank you for this thoughtful reply. What you say make sense. I will do this with him.  My child is adopted and his of his bio birth parents were Div 1 athletes when he was born.  Sadly neither I nor his dad are athletes! [/quote]

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