Coach Turner's Corner Week 5

GHWO v. Belterra, Hays - Another Victory!!

What an incredible meet!  The home venue lent itself to amazing energy including the psych-up music and the standing room only viewing (we do put on the best meets, don’t we?).  Did I mention the FOOD??!! Our meet DJ (or is he called the announcer?) created an entertaining environment for all.  The home turf advantage was definitely with the dolphins yesterday.  It was like being at the 50-yard line of the Super Bowl, with all of the cheering and noise.  Our parents were, as usual, a powerful team of meet volunteers, encouragers, a vocalist (amazing National Anthem) and fast swimmers (way to go parent relay)!  Once again, I was proud of our swimmers as I witnessed unprompted displays of sportsmanship, race intensity, and cheering for one another.  Thanks to all of you were courageous enough to get down and do the Macarena with the coaches!

A special note as well on Fun Friday--it was a blast!!!  We had intense games of Sharks and Minnows, some crazy relays (check You Tube for the Tasmanian Hula if you want a laugh) and a very competitive water polo match with the 13 & ups and the coaches. Thanks to all the parents who distributed popsicles!  Summer is here!

The Rewards of Consistency

This week’s meet was the culmination of several weeks of consistency on the part of our swimmers.  So often in the midst of a season, it is hard to see when the reward will come.  It is so tempting to lose focus, and become complacent in our training (especially the last week with school parties and festivities). 

Our victory this week was a deserved reward for our swimmer’s practice and hard work!  I have been so amazed with the overall effort and consistency of our Dolphin swimmers.  I saw a number of swimmers at the pool this week, practicing turns, starts, and swimming outside of our regular times.  Showing up to practice when you’d rather stay home, and doing the workout with effort, are also elements of consistency.  This week we saw many fewer DQ’s than last week, which I attribute to an improvement of focus in practice and in the meet OR it could be the coaches screaming “two-hand touch” while wildly waving our two hands in front of the swimmers faces!  Seeing the improvement in our fine details made the coaches do the Happy Dance after a two-hand touch or an underwater pull-out on breaststroke.  Gaining mastery of the fundamentals of swimming takes time, practice and coaching correction.  Summer club is an excellent time for your swimmers to learn the essentials of their strokes while having fun. Taking advantage of the opportunity to refine and improve each week, should not be missed.

During a typical practice week, your swimmer has an average of 50-100 turns to execute at our workouts.  Being lazy on those turns and streamlines, standing on the bottom, stopping in the middle, is missing the opportunity to master the best swimming technique for competition.  I have witnessed the end result of consistency of practice in our most diligent swimmers.  Eventually, a swimmer develops an intuitive knowledge of how to execute these fundamentals.  At some point, your swimmer no longer has to think about touching with two hands, or nailing their turn, they just do it instinctively.  Swimmers as young as eight (our swimmer of the week this week) can show the maturity of swimming mastery.  If you want to see what this intuitive knowledge looks like in action, pull up a chair to the final heats of our older age groups.  It is awesome to see the level of precision the fastest swimmers can achieve in their starts, strokes and turns.

Coaches' Challenge

In an attempt to raise the bar for the team, and try to achieve something AMAZING together this season, through group and individual effort, the coaches are issuing a challenge to all of our swimmers.  If we can make it through an entire meet with NO DQ’s for one-hand touches on breaststroke and butterfly, we will have a special pizza party to celebrate.  This is a very attainable goal, one that will take focus, practice and teamwork to achieve.  We believe it is possible from our youngest swimmers to our oldest.  Rest assured, we will not single anyone out or discourage any swimmer trying to achieve this goal!  This is a team-motivated effort!  Go Dolphins!

Looking forward to another great week!

Coach Turner