Coach Turner's Comments Week 6

GHWO v. Shady Hollow, Courtyard, and JCC

In our LONGEST meet of the season (whew, it was like an Ironman), our Dolphins showed outstanding effort, improvement, and most importantly, sportsmanship!!  We had an impressive showing against Shady Hollow, the JCC, and the Courtyard.  We anticipate an exciting rematch with Shady Hollow in our own pool, this coming weekend!

This past week, the coaches initiated two significant challenges to our team.  The first was our Coaches’ Challenge to have 100% two-hand touches in the meet.   We came amazingly close to making our goal, (just close enough to raise the excitement and intensity of the challenge for next week), and the hanging carrot of a pizza party is dangling in front of us!  The coaches were absolutely THRILLED with the progress and consistency of all our swimmers in their two-hand touches. 

The second challenge we issued to our swimmers was one of sportsmanship.  During practice this week, we emphasized sportsmanship to one another on our own team, as well as sportsmanship to competitors on other teams.  We practiced shaking each other’s hands at the finish of a race, saying comments like, “Good race,” “Good job,” “Congratulations.”  We had some amazing sportsmanship role plays during our dryland this week, including an acting debut from our 15-18 year olds, Clarissa and Chad, that made the High School Musical cast look like amateurs.  The kids executed our sportsmanship challenge with enthusiasm this weekend, rewarded for their efforts with a Dum-Dum lollypop (bribery or reward?!). 

Thoughts on Sportsmanship

During the course of this week, I have really pondered this concept of sportsmanship.  How do we teach our children the value of being a good sport?  Like swimming technique, some children seem to take to sportsmanship instruction more quickly than others.  Yet, sportsmanship is as important a component of swimming, in my perspective, as the swimming talent itself.  I can remember swimming at the college level with competitors displaying the immaturity of a 3-year-old pitching a fit.  Throwing goggles, sulking, brushing off teammates gestures of support, bragging, or having a spirit of arrogance are all unattractive behaviors that detract from the giftedness of the swimmer. 

I view these early years of swimming as a time to ingrain the habit of sportsmanship in our young athletes.  Like learning a foreign language, converting feelings of rivalry, disappointment, and anger to displays of graciousness and humility is a learned practice. In a summer league, we have a great opportunity to teach the fundamentals of swimming, including the character traits of a role-model athlete whom we would want our child to emulate.   Teaching skills is easy compared to training behaviors of character. 

As a parent working this out in my own relationships with my children, I want to encourage each of you to be creative in the ways you seek to build sportsmanship in your own child.  Encouraging edification of teammates and other swimmers, instead of debriefing on other’s faults is a good place to start.  Modeling active gestures of kindness and encouragement to all swimmers, which our volunteers and parents do at every meet, is another great opportunity to demonstrate these qualities.  I stood next to a Mom from our team who cheered and congratulated every swimmer leaving the pool after their swim.  She had no official volunteer role, she was just expressing support of every swimmer’s effort.  I am so thankful to be involved with a team where the parents and children value and support efforts of sportsmanship. 

Thank you for letting me be involved in this very special part of your young athletes’ development.  I welcome your suggestions and stories of sportsmanship, as I learn so much from you and your wonderful children!!

Go Team! 

Coach Turner