Finding Swim Coaches

It is not that easy to find good swim coaches. Sure there are plenty of former swimmers out ther, who may have the knowledge, but knowledge is the least of the worries when it comes to beginning as a swim coach. It is the ability to work with young people. The ability to criticize their race and still make them feel like they want to keep on trying. The ability to work with parents and deal with all the criticism that comes your way. The ability to nicely explain to a parent that their young swimmer doesn't need to swim 3000 yards in a workout. The ability to motivate a swimmer to go to their first meet, and when they get dead last, you know what to say to make them feel like they did an amazing job. This is only what age-group coaches need to know how to deal with. Head Coaches have so many different and difficult hurdles in their way.

I think about looking for a new coach for a young group, and you know that you can't pay them a lot, so there is a great chance you may have them for less than a year, when another job comes available that probably most definitely pays better. It's not that we can add hours as a swim coach. There are only so many hours you can coach young kids with a school schedule.

I believe in the idea that longevity is the best thing you can have in a coach. I had my assistant with RCA, Nicole, who might not have known a whole lot about the technique or training cycles. She was a former club and high school swimmer. She knew a little from those days. What she did though was teach the things that I needed them to know for when they moved on up to me. They all knew how to listen on the wall. They knew how to leave the wall. They knew the four strokes (ok we had some problem getting breaststroke kick with some). They knew how to circle swim. They knew how to properly do air exchange. They had a lot of fun. They knew how to dive. They had a good background of freestyle kicking. The big thing though was that I had her for most of the years that I coached.


Learning the system is the main thing. The coach is taught the system, and they use their own personality and grow in the position. I think that the main thing you need is someone who loves to teach kids, a person who is caring, and someone who can communicate nicely to both swimmers and parents. From there, they must be willing to learn the system of the team. After a few weeks of coaching in the system, they should be free to grow and become their own coach.

It's a job that is driven by passion. It's hard to get started as the first few years you won't get paid a lot, but you spend the time learning and become as involved in every aspect as possible. Gain the experience. I think most of the time a coach must move on, unless they are lucky enough to find a position where a lot of the coaches are close to retiring or close to being out of there. Other wise after a few years experience a coach must move on to move up in the coaching ranks.

So now I am in the position where I and my boss may be looking for a coach sometime in the near future, and we will need to start someone fresh, and begin developing a new coach. If you are out, feel free on contacting me and telling me that you'd be interested if I have another position open. This summer I lost four coaches I planned on using for summer league teams, mainly to other jobs. This was with me telling them that they would be the coaches we would look to to fill coaching roles in the future, but still I lost them all but one, and what do you know, she is going to coach our new satellite program.

Finding Coaches. It is not easy to find them. Parents and others may feel like you need to find new coaches, but sometimes development through experience is the best route to go, compared to starting anew.