Reply to Explain to me your thought process (parents) with being highly competitive with your swimmer

Forum Index » Swimming and Diving

Reply to "Explain to me your thought process (parents) with being highly competitive with your swimmer"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The parents were probably competitive HS or college swimmers themselves and are trying to relive their glory days.[/quote]

I doubt it. Every friend and family me ever I know that is a D1 athlete is the opposite with their kids.  Encouraging multiple sports and pretty chill.  Those people know the burn out and how tough it is and swim is incredibly tough.  Early morning practice up and down a lane.  It is not like team sports where there is a lot of camaraderie on and off the field.

My girlfriend was a D1 swimmer and has some incredible athletes.  Their kids all play multiple sports and with swim in particular they don't rush technical improvements because she says they will need those tweaks in the coming years so they don't plateau for long periods of time.  She also points out the kids that will likely not make it to swim in college because they have the parents making them cry on deck.  [/quote]
+1[/quote]

I swam D1 and my child swims with a laid back club team one day per week, and goes to our summer team’s maintenance program once per week if other sports don’t conflict (which happens more than half the time). My child likes swimming but doesn’t *love* it at least not right now. They are long and lanky and I see the potential. They are usually in the top 16 in their best events at big open meets. They can hang with the fastest kids for a 50 but then there is a clear drop off because they just don’t swim enough to have a strong back half. Their starts, turns and streamlines are pretty bad, and the strokes all need work (fly and breast are yikes, lol). I do not tell my child these things. I figure they will either want to start swimming more and improve, or not. I can’t make them want it.

I remember the crazy parents. One kept a notebook of all their kids’ times (before online databases existed) and would scream at them if they added time. Only one of those kids ended up swimming four years of elite D1. The others plateaued as teens or dropped out after a year of college due to burnout/injury.

I think if you have a truly elite age grouper it’s easy to get excited and caught up in it. But it’s so much better to be the slow burn kid who avoids injury and burnout by not ramping up too young, and is still getting better at age 16, 17, 18 and beyond. I don’t know if other sports are quite like this so maybe people without a swimming background don’t get it. The goal at the younger ages should be retention. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics