Making Waves
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Santa Clara Swim Club September 2009 “BELIEVE IN YOURSELF” Making Waves FROM THE POOL DECK by Head Coach John Bitter Welcome back and welcome to all new members of the SCSC family! The season is now upon us, the swimmers have been assigned their groups to get started and another season is off and swimming. Since last year I have made a few changes to the age group structure and coaching assignments, again with the intent of making the program stronger and better for all. New for this year, we are splitting the girls and boys in the Blue Bell groups into gender specific groups with Erik serving as the lead coach for Blue Bell Boys and Luba serving as Lead Coach for Blue Bell Girls. I have done away with the 1, 2, and 3 divisions, but each Blue Bell will be staffed with an assistant coach to help with the running of the workouts. Both lead coaches will be in charge of writing the workouts for their specific group and also having group meetings, teaching the swimmers to stat log books, maintaining meet tracking, etc. for the year. The 11-12 (non high school 13 year olds) is the pivotal grouping in any swim program. It is the time when many swimmers decide the path they want to take once they graduate from age group swimming to senior swimming at age 13 or 14. Following the end of the season, I spent a lot of time talking with other programs of our size and vision and also with people at USA Swimming and found that many clubs chose to separate the genders at this point in their development. The reason varied, but the one common reason they all had was that this is an age where the girls are maturing more quickly than the boys and it has been found that some boys become discouraged and eventually quit, even though they had not yet experienced their growth. Remember my goal has been and will always be to create more opportunities for all of our swimmers and what I want to see is a growing, enthusiastic, developmentally ready group graduating each year from age group to senior and I feel this change will allow for this to happen. With the moving of Luba to Blue Bell Girls, I elevated Coach Brie, who proved to me her love for the sport, her love for the swimmers, and her ability to take her knowledge of the sport and parlay it to the kids with enthusiasm and care for their development as swimmers, to be one of the lead coaches for Yellow Bell and then went out and hired another coach who I felt would be a plus to this age group in Coach Rob. Both of these coaches will be leading both the Yellow I and Yellow 2’s this year and these groups will stay co-ed. Having both coaches work with both groups allows for them to constantly evaluate and make sure that each swimmer is in the appropriate group throughout the year. Just like the Blue Bell’s, both Brie and Rob will be in charge of creating the workout and then incorporating in their assistants to work with all of the swimmers. Coaches Barbara, Sara, and Abby will now head the White Bell group. Until we get the Harker facility back following water polo season, unfortunately, we are limited to one workout time. When November comes along, we will be introducing another White Bell workout time from 6 to 7 and we will keep you up to date as to when this will be up and running. I am excited by the work that each of these coaches has done with our program and their excitement about working with our youngest swimmers as they begin their journey that I hope will end with either me or Dave in the National or Gold groups. Page 2 Making Waves FROM THE POOL DECK (continued) Finally, Coach Gabby will again head the Junior Bell program with Coach Matt, Coach Barbara, and Coach Brock assisting. Gabby took over this program at the beginning of the summer and has done an excellent job with it. She has brought to more organization, opened the lines of communication, and created a truly systematic progression to move the swimmers from this program to our White, Yellow, or Blue groups. For the month of October the Junior Bells will be swimming at Bucknall campus for the Harker School and will move back to the Saratoga campus of the Harker School following the conclusion of the water polo season. Right now the water polo program at the Harker School is utilizing their pool until 7 pm each day and I do not want to have little swimmers in the water after 7 pm, therefore we will be utilizing another of the pools owned by Harker during this time. Last year we made some tremendous strides throughout the program. The National men finished third at USA Swimming’s Junior Championships. The senior swimmers of SCSC won the USA Swimming Western Gold Sectionals. SCSC finished third at Far Western Championships. The team went from 79 during the swim season of 2007-2008 to 51 during the swim season of 2008-2009 in the USA Swimming Virtual Championships for long course swimming. But as I mentioned to my coaching staff this past week, just as those first drops in time come with X amount of work, if we are going to continue to see growth and move into the top 50 clubs in the Virtual Championships and continue to score in the top ten at Juniors and then work towards scoring in the top ten at Nationals, it is going to take even more than what we did in the past. To demand excellence of our swimmers, we have to demand excellence of ourselves as coaches. To this end I have already challenged the coaching staff to be more aware, be more enthusiastic and excited about what all of their swimmers can do, to better tract and better organize their workouts and to give the swimmers, especially the 11-13 year olds a greater feeling of ownership in what they are doing. I have also given Coach Dave more of a say over the coaching staff and by doing so I have also asked that he be more cognizant of what they are all doing each and every day. Just as we ask each of you to step up for meets, and ask the swimmers to step up at practice, Coach Dave will be making sure that the coaching staff is stepping up and fulfilling the mandates I have asked of all of them. Over the Labor Day weekend, I had some time to catch up on some reading and to reflect back on why I coach and why I choose this vocation or being an architect, like my parents wanted for me. I am now 45 years old and I took time to look back on some of the jobs I held and the subjects I studied in college and still remember my father telling me as a child, on one of those days when the only thing I wanted to do was do nothing, but instead had to mow the grass, trim the hedges, and border the lawn, tell me that if there is one thing he wanted for me as I grew older was to find something that I loved to do and it did not matter if it was cutting grass, cleaning toilets, or building homes, but whatever it was do it with a passion to be the best at it and not to do it as work or for money. I took those words and proceeded to explore the realms of possibilities about what I could do and who I was and then what made me the happiest in terms of work and vocation. Going to college, I went as an architecture student, loved the idea of building things, but all I was doing was building things. I switched majors and graduated and was accepted to law school, for again I found the intricacies of law interesting and when look at through an idealist and noble eye, you are doing something to help people. I know many of us have a tainted view of attorneys, but there is still something fantastic about law and how it can serve the people. But again I still did not feel that this was vocation that would allow for me to fulfill the true wishes I had for myself. At this point a good friend of our family stated to me that “life is always fragile…each one of us is given only one journey” and from these simple words I realized that each day is about living to the fullest and to give back to others in ways that can have lifelong impact upon their lives and the directions they take in their own personal journeys. To this end, this is what I have asked of my coaching staff for this year. TO better engage the swimmers, to present to all of them tools that they can use Page 3 Making Waves FROM THE POOL DECK (continued) to continue to develop and progress as people both in and out of the water, and to become a true advocate of this sport and what it can allow in terms of opportunities and chances to discover just who and what the person can be. I am excited about the changes made and I know we have been through many during the three years together, but I feel these were the changes I had envisioned three years ago when I took over, but I needed time first to develop the base of our program before finally putting the final pieces in place.