5 Misconceptions of Gold Medal Clubs and the Truth

by SwimSwam 21

March 04th, 2015 Club, News, Opinion

Swimming Opinion is courtesy of Gavin Cooley.

Swimming for a gold medal club is tough, if you weren’t aware. The competition in the elite groups is extremely intense. The rest of the teams in the state look at you with scorn, and you hear the rumors. “Oh, I heard they each have personal dietitians ,” and, “They PAY the athletes to swim there,” are two of my favorites. Your gear is stolen frequently at meets, for no good reason. Sometimes, it is simply hard to get the head coach to notice you, let alone know your name. These are the top five misconceptions about that team that always wins the state meet.

ONE – They only let crazy fast kids on the team.

Whether that means the kid has Junior National cuts, or is on the Olympic team, this team only takes the best of the best. Nothing less.

THE TRUTH
Many teams have their fastest swimmers in high school come from their age group program. I can tell you from personal experience, not all of these kids were very fast when they were younger. In fact, a majority of them were considered SLOW. Speed can come from anywhere.

TWO – There are a thousand members on the team.

SwimMAC, Palo Alto, North Baltimore Aquatic Club… They all have a lot of kids, right? So aren’t all fast clubs like that?

(Editor Note: NBAC appears to be a large club because of their depth of talent, but they average about 220 swimmers.) 

WRONG
Carmel Swim Club only has 450 members. Yes, that is a moderately large number, but definitely not huge. York YMCA only has 80! Quality over quantity.

(Editor Note: NBAC appears to be a large club because of their talent, but they average about 220 swimmers.) 

THREE – They do an insane amount of yardage.

“Oh, the good old days of 80,000 yards a week… Now that produced strong swimmers!”  – said any older swim coach you’ve ever met.

KIND OF?
Yes, there are days when they go really far…and I mean REALLY far. 12,000 yard Saturday morning practices are the best. In contrast to the popular belief, they do not do this kind of stuff every day. A more accurate average would be 5-7000 yards per practice.

FOUR – They have the best and newest technology to work with.

IKKOS glasses, a casual swim flume, four 50 meter by 25 yard pools, OMEGA touch pads, a massive weight room, anything you can think of.

DO NOT NEED IT
The best coaches know, nice equipment helps. At the Queensland location for SwimMAC, they have Paddock Evacuator, and it keeps the air quality crystal clean, but they would be a high-powered club without it. The extra tech is a bonus (and good for their longterm health).  However, at the end of the day, the best clubs work with what they have.

FIVE – Only clubs that were fast before have a chance to be fast now.

I mean…really? Do you honestly believe that?

DENIAL
If you  believe it, you’re holding yourself and your team back. New gold medal clubs pop up fairly consistently, and everyone wants a shot to call themselves the best. If you can get just three of your fastest swimmers to lead your team, and support and raise your less experienced swimmers to new heights, Gold Medal standing is within reach.

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Kayla
9 years ago

I totally agree. I swim for a silver medal swim team so it’s not exactly the same but we still have several misconceptions. We are a fairly small team but I personally think that’s why we are so good. We know everyone’s names and push ourselves to get our goals.

Coach Perspective
9 years ago

The Club Excellence Program is extremely flawed. Don’t get me wrong, it is great that clubs are being recognized and they have every right to take pride in the CE level they are awarded and use that to promote their club. In addition, I do ultimately support the Club Excellence Program, but I believe it needs to be improved.

As David Berkoff points out, it heavily favors large clubs. His statistics clearly support that. However, as others have pointed out, it is not impossible for a small club to be recognized in the Club Excellence Program. The York and SMAC examples show that. This is because the program only recognizes the achievements of the elite swimmers of a club.… Read more »

Work,works
9 years ago

SMAC-VA worked its way up to Silver medal in Waynesboro, VA with only 80 kids annually. Nothing compared to York YMCA, but the little pool with 5 foot wide lanes at the Waynesboro Family YMCA did climb to Silver medal club. If it can be done in Waynesboro, VA it can be done anywhere. This is a team that has existed since the 1950’s and there are pictures to prove it hanging outside the pool in the YMCA.

I believe that it takes supportive parents, supportive commuitee, and most importantly a coach that believes it is possible and willing to work for it!!

Coreycc
9 years ago

Interesting article and conversations. I have coached 3 teams to club excellence awards (Silver & Bronze). The largest of those team was around 75 kids. I know we can never compete with NCAP or RMSC and there multiple locations and swimmers. I have never really viewed club excellence as a barometer of which clubs are the best. All you do for club excellence is put in top times. The club recognition program really does seem to be a better gauge of all around quality (not perfect either). It would be nice to find a way to rank different club sizes. Don’t have an answer myself.

Bery small team coach
9 years ago

David that you for the numbers and your comments.
As team of 10 swimmers that swim in a 20 yard pool (winter months) we do not even apply for the award program. I have a national level swimmer and couple up and coming swimmers. We would like to grow our program, yet we are locked out of 2 taxpayer college pools in the area by the 1 large team.
How many small teams ever hear from USAS?

Parent Carmel Swim Club
9 years ago

Sure you need a facility. More importantly you need a fantastic
coaching staff that is embraced by
the athletes and parents. Quality
coaching is hard to find! It needs to
be recognized and appreciated. They
are educators, have a spirit of generosity, see the best in others,
have high self esteem, are emotionally
mature and are life long learners! This
creates a strong positive culture to inspire our children who then want to
work hard and achieve their personal
goals!

NM Coach
9 years ago

It would be interesting to see what the percentage of teams either own their facility or have an “exclusive” use agreement. When you don’t control a facility, it can really hamper growth.

The comment above concerning NITRO swimming in a metal building barely big enough to hold a pool…a 50 M pool…but it’s theirs! Mike Koleber had to train his kids in a country club pool until they could build their numbers…but when he was at the mercy of other “entities”, he lost pool time virtually announced! But now they actually have 2 facilities and they are rocking!

So Dave Berkoff…coach owned and facility controlled are the keys…would the numbers show that in your opinion?

ANon
Reply to  NM Coach
9 years ago

There are no club owned facilities in the D.C. area where you have NCAP (No. 1 club), RMSC (silver) and Machine, FISH and ASA (bronze). NCAP and RMSC are “mega clubs” while Machine is approaching that level. FISH and ASA are small.

David Berkoff
Reply to  NM Coach
9 years ago

I think Nitro is doing a great job–very impressive and they should be gold. But, they also have the advantage of being in a swimming hotbed with a big and relatively wealthy population. It is a difficult job trying to measure club excellence accurately and fairly. I don’t claim to have all of the answers but I am hopeful it will be altered to make it less based upon club size.

David Berkoff
9 years ago

Gavin, I agree with most of your comments, but I do disagree with your assertion regarding club size. When it comes to Club Excellence and who gets gold and silver, the statistics do not lie and yes, SIZE DOES MATTER.

I am on a task force for Sr. Development and one of the things we are doing is coming up with ideas to better the Club Excellence program and to make sure it is fair–aka we are rewarding clubs and coaches for doing an excellent job developing swimmers. One of the things I did was put together statistics relating category or award to club size. Here are some statistics:

Clubs sized 0-50 (this size club makes up 33% of… Read more »

Martin
Reply to  David Berkoff
9 years ago

Best response ever! You go boy!

Gavin
Reply to  David Berkoff
9 years ago

Thanks for the insight! I think the point I’m trying to get across more is symbolic than factual (I haven’t done quite as much research as you on the matter). I think those facts can be changed though. The mental factor of having a small club is what I think holds back many clubs, and there is no reason that can’t change!

David Berkoff
Reply to  Gavin
9 years ago

Gavin. I agree and disagree. I have been coaching in Montana for 20 years–the last six being the part-time pay/ full-time duty Head Coach of a club in Missoula. I have helped grow the program from 80 swimmers to 140 and we have incredible parents, volunteers, community support and support at the two pools we use. To get there, I have take a ton of time and energy to “change the culture” from that of a small town-small expectation mentality to that of individual and team excellence. Yes, changing culture and “thinking big” is a must-do for any program wanting to be part of Club Excellence. Yet that’s not the only factor. The biggest constraint for rural clubs (Wyoming, Idaho,… Read more »

Ferb
Reply to  David Berkoff
9 years ago

A couple of comments: first, the statistics you present are skewed by treating very small clubs and very large clubs (and everyone in between) the same in terms of their percentage of overall membership. In other words, for example, you consider the ten largest clubs to represent the same percentage of the total as the 10 smallest clubs, despite the fact that the ten largest clubs represent many times the number of swimmers as the ten smallest. It would be more meaningful to give the percentage of total swimmers that each club size category (clubs size 0-50, 51-100, etc.) represents. The numbers would still favor larger clubs, but at least they would more accurately represent the distribution of swimmers.

Second,… Read more »

David Berkoff
Reply to  Ferb
9 years ago

Actually, the numbers don’t really change that much when you look a #’s of swimmers served in each category of swimmer. Clubs sized 0-150 serve 40% of the USAS membership (1 gold, 8 silver, 19 bronze). Clubs sized 151-250 serve only 26% of the individual members (3 gold, 22 silver, 6 bronze), and clubs sized 250 and above serve just 34% of the members (yet 16 gold, 51 silver, 44 bronze). So again, 80% of the gold clubs represent only 34% of the USAS individual members while 20% of the gold clubs represent the remaining 66%. Numbers don’t lie.

As for WHY those clubs got big, the reasons are not often based upon the good reputation of the coaches or… Read more »

swim coach
Reply to  David Berkoff
9 years ago

all usa-s recognition programs are led by the “big” clubs… club excellence, virtual club championships.

sure, small clubs can produce fast swimmers, but those clubs do not have the depth of talent to score big points in the club excellence or vcc. my current club averages approximately 50 swimmers and has twice been awarded a bronze medal… we were fortunate to have some extremely talented swimmers.

usa-s has said it is working on a system which can award smaller teams, but has yet to actually do anything.

that said, as long as a team is in a heavily populated area, has adequate access to facilities, appropriate feeder programs and can compete regularly, the major recognition will be to… Read more »

ASwimDad
Reply to  David Berkoff
9 years ago

What a great reply!

I don’t understood the goal of the club excellence awards. Whose behavior does the program try to change?

Coaches? Aren’t they already trying to help their swimmers get faster? Are the coaches/administrators really motivated by the logo they get to put on their web site? What do you want them to do differently than they are doing today?

Prospective members of a recognized team? I doubt that new-to-swimming athletes or their parents even know this exists, or what it means. And those with more experience probably already have heard through the grapevine, the good, bad, and otherwise for clubs in their area.

Eugene
Reply to  David Berkoff
9 years ago

Where is the Terrapins Swim Club in your breakdown? It has about 120 swimmers and it is a Gold Medal Club.