Coached

Coach Paul leading a visualization session with some of our swimmers.

Wrote this a couple months ago, but never posted! Here’s a written record of my first dose of club coaching:

I’m a freshly certified club coach. I took my first few tours of the coach’s hospitality room last weekend in Tempe, Arizona. We were up there for an open meet called Holiday Fest. I had only been on-deck with the senior group for two days prior to the meet, so I was suffering from name amnesia all weekend. But there’s no better place to work on names than at an age group swim meet. I had forgotten what marathons they could be…

Saturday’s morning session went from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Finals were from 4 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. That’s a 13-hour day at the pool. It did not quite feel like that long, but it did feel long. As a swimmer, that’s still a long meet, but the hours are filled with a different type of exhaustion. A fellow coach gave a good analogy of coach energy exertion versus swimmer energy exertion. Coaches experience a prolonged period of moderate intensity accompanied by moderate to high stress. Swimmers experience a prolonged period of low stress with spurts of high stress and high intensity. I always thought the coaches had it so easy. Lounging on their luxury fold-out chair, feasting on coach’s hospitality, and giving some feedback with my splits.

I’m not sure how many athletes Ford Aquatics (my team) had competing, but we had one to three people in nearly every heat. And I was only watching one of the competition pools! I scribed for Coach Zac and scribbled down my own technical advice for these little sea horses. With swimmers 12 and under, there are ten comments to be made about any one stroke. Most of them are still very green and it’s fun to be able to distribute pointers that could lead to a 20-second drop.

I left the meet with 50 percent of the kids’ names stowed in the noggin and an enlightened appreciation for those meets my parents and coaches sat through. I cannot imagine what the summer club meets are like in 110-degree Arizona. I’m relieved I’m starting in December, and need not fear the wrath of the sun for some time.