Developing a swim team

I have to say that I have seen the development of two teams, and they were very different, and I have not seen them all the way through, but what I have learned from going through the process.

The first thing is that you must figure out what you want to do with your team. Not all swim teams are equal, and they don't all have the same focus. Knowing what you want to create is a step many forget, and just decide in their mind that they want to be the best swim team.

With what you want your team to be, what kind of numbers do you need to develop what you want your team to be. When I first sat down with my Head Coach at CSSC, this was the biggest things that we created in our minds about the future. What kind of numbers. We reached our goal much faster than we thought we were going to, which makes right now really exciting. Numbers are important. There will not be 100% retention. Look at the national statistics, across the country retention to the sport of swimming is not 100% and not even in the 90's. You can only develop with what you have on your team.

Set your philosphy next. I asked my Head Coach, what is our team culture now? and what is the culture we ultimately want? This was not a straight forward answer, but a converstation that made me understand where she was coming from. I then told her my philosphy, and how we can adjust to make our philosophys work well together. From there we made choices based on what we wanted the culture to become.

You do need to look at performance as well. We looked at the team's performance and realized that there was some good performance on the team, but it lacked depth. This was a byproduct of lack of numbers in our developmental part of the team. We knew that numbers would come first, and to stay consistent with our performance as we re-develop a base. Well, we soon were outperforming very quickly.

Choices you make are many times financially connected. Both teams I have been on, I have come in with bad financial situations. It is hard to limit things because of money, and even harder to realize something is really important for the future of the team, and then have to sell the idea to a parent board. But this is how it must be done. Financial choices become hard and excruciating, and can delay a teams progress at times.

One thing I learned about the first go around was that there are going to bumps. Sometimes really big ones. I wasn't ready for that in the first go around, and I handle them much better now. I was also there to help my new Head Coach through some of those hard bumps on this go around. Funny thing though, sometimes it is a big bump in the road, that really helps push you to the next level.

As you in motion with executing your plan, you may get ahead of the timeline. That has occurred here at CSSC. We have now had conversation about where do we go now. We can't just sit around and be stable with no new vision once we already reach one point. It is good to re-evaluate where you are now, and whether you need to make adjustments according to where you have come. We know what we want to accomplish now, even though we were slightly ahead of schedule. We put higher goals on the table now, and we continue to push to accomplish the higher goals.

Vision is the most important thing. Know the details of that vision, and then monitor how those details are doing within that long term vision to see what changes or adjustments need to be made. Sounds similar to the goal setting process that we teach our swimmers. Because it is the same, it is how we feel you can become successful in everything: swimming, developing a team, school, and any other activity you wish to succeed in.