High school and summer league swim teams present unique challenges for coaches. The biggest challenge is time – you only have a 3 month season. Once it’s over, you have to wait an entire year before the next season starts.
Here is how a typical short season runs…
As the first practice approaches, you get slammed with questions and concerns from swimmers and parents. Questions about everything – do they need to try out, what the kids will swim, when does it start, how many kids are on the team, and on and on…
“Your swimmers need to be ready to compete in 7 practices. Yes, only 7 practices…”
You do your best to keep up and the first practice is here before you know it. And your first meet is the end of next week. That means that you have only a couple of days to get suits, caps, and t-shirts ordered, a meet lineup started, figure out which swimmers can’t attend, confirm the details with the other team, and make sure transportation is available for the athletes.
On top of that, your swimmers need to be ready to compete in 7 practices. Yes, only 7 practices…
After the first two crazy weeks, you start realizing how much work this really is going to be. You have 3-4 practices and 1-2 meets every week that need lineups, practices written, attendance tracked, swimmers and parents to communicate with.
Time is not on your side.
The best thing to do is to get ahead of the work early. Get organized and be ready when things don’t go exactly as planned.
Here are the 3 keys to success as a swim coach with a short season:
Planning – setting seasonal targets and breaking them down into practices so you can approach each practice with a purpose behind it.
Adapting – practices won’t always go as planned. You must be able to adapt to changing conditions and stay focused to keep moving forward.
Tracking – to keep focused on seasonal goals, tracking the daily practices and any changes are critical.
“Time is not on your side.”
Let’s look at how each of these helps create a successful season…
1. Planning
Think back to the coach described earlier. That season was just getting started and already had a ton of work to do and people to follow up with. All of that is on top of just trying to run practice and make the athletes better.
Spending time before the season starts to plan out the season goals and how you are going to get there makes the day to day much simpler. You are setting your team up for success by knowing how each practice fits with the season plan. You know that you are bringing them closer to the goals and can communicate it.
With a short season, you have to use every session you have to your advantage. Knowing what you have to work on with your swimmers in advance allows you to adapt effectively as situations change.
“You have to use every session you have to your advantage.”
Which brings us to the second key for a successful season…
2. Adapting
Practices rarely go exactly as planned. At times we write practices that look great on paper – it looks like a work of art hitting every goal for the day.
Then you reach the pool and right from the start, it goes off track. The athletes aren’t making the intervals, there are too many swimmers to safely swim that drill, the power goes out 20 minutes into the practice…
You could get frustrated and blame the swimmers or the facility that the perfect practice didn’t work out. Or you can confidently adapt and modify the practice to meet your goals just in a modified format.
“Practices rarely go exactly as planned.”
It takes practice to write high-quality practices just like it takes time for the swimmers to complete them. You have to be willing to make adjustments to the practices to keep swimmers engaged and the practice moving.
Now if you end up changing every practice, it is hard to know you are still working towards the same goals. To stay on target, it’s important to write down the changes after practices complete.
That’s where the third key to success in a short season comes in…
3. Tracking
There is no way to know for sure if the swimmers are making progress without tracking what your swimmers are doing day to day.
What should you track?
- Distance for the set, and each repetition.
- Technique challenges for the swimmers. This tells you if more drills need to be added or time to teach the skills must be adjusted.
- Intervals – are the swimmers getting the desired amount of rest for each repeat? Are the intervals making the practice too easy for some and too hard for others? How can that be changed?
- Did you change the entire practice? Some days you come down and nothing is working as planned. How did you modify it to still deliver for the swimmers?
“There is no way to know for sure if the swimmers are making progress without tracking what your swimmers are doing day to day.”
Tracking the different aspects of the season allows you to go back and see where improvements could be made. Without tracking it, you would just be going based on how you felt it went.
The key aspects of planning, adapting and tracking are critical to moving the swimmers forward and helping them grow. The better you plan your season, the easier it is to adapt your practices and still move forward. You end up able to make small adjustments that give you the same benefit because you know why you wrote it that way.
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