A Swim Parent’s Guide for Coaches and Teams

Every swim coach knows that if you want to achieve you must partner with the parents. This is one of the biggest opportunities (and a necessary step) for a team’s growth and leadership on the way to a truly successful program.

Educating parents without coming off as a back-seat driver can feel intimidating…but it doesn’t have to be.

Coaches must remember that everyone wins when parents are involved. It’s imperative that team leaders make every effort to share their valuable and unique perspectives on their athletes with parents to build that coach-parent partnership.

The following guide is meant to serve as a parent resource for coaches and teams. Print this out, put it in your newsletter, on the website, use it as a template, or email it to parents to grow the connection and conversation that the success of your athletes and team depend on.

A Swim Parents Guide to Supporting Your Swimmer

Being a swim parent is no easy feat. You’ve got a big responsibility raising an athlete–just having enough food on the table can feel overwhelming. This, combined with work, other kids, and other responsibilities of parenting can make one feel in the dark on their swimmer’s lives and lost among the swim jargon. This guide is meant to provide insight and reminders of how to connect with your swimmer and their coaches to empower and provide your athlete with the tools necessary for success.

Partner with Your Coaches

Both coaches and parents want the same thing: a happy, healthy, and successful swimmer with great character. The success of the athlete and the team depends on the quality of the relationships that support them. It’s vital that parents, coaches and athletes are on the same page as they each constitute one leg of a three-legged stool holding each other up. Because parents and coaches are each so invested in their athletes it’s important to honor coaches as the experts in coaching, parents as the experts in parenting, and acknowledge both can provide valuable insight for the other in their efforts to help the athlete.

Communication Is Key

Keep channels open by staying receptive to the coach’s input, reading team emails, and by keeping the coach informed about family plans, injuries, concerns, etc. If you want to discuss your swimmer’s progress, college swimming, or learn more about your team’s coaching philosophy, set up a time to talk with your coach. Coaches appreciate when you take a step towards them and show interest in being on the same page. A great example of communication is including the coach in planning family vacations. Taking time away from training can dramatically impact your swimmer’s performance. Communicate with your coach to identify an ideal timeframe to travel.

Long-Term Development

Even if you have a 10-year-old who is nationally ranked, swimming is a marathon. It is imperative, for the health and longevity of your child, to talk to your coaches about their long-term development. Without their professional insight, it is easy to develop unrealistic expectations for progress and success. Set up a meeting with your coaches to discuss long-term goals and how to keep your swimmer in the sport and succeeding.

Code of Conduct and Expectations 

As representatives of the team and role models for every swimmer on it, coaches and parents must adhere to strict codes of conduct in order to create a safe, positive, and supportive environment. As parents, you have a tremendous impact on team culture–actively as a model and passively, through your swimmer as well as other parents you talk to. Get familiar with your team’s Code of Conduct so you can be sure your behavior and actions support the vision and mission of your team.

Working Through Challenge

Coaches are well acquainted with the emotional challenges swimming presents to athletes. The demands of training and racing paired with school, family, and growing up can be a lot. It’s important to communicate to your coaches if your athlete is going through hard times so they can support them through any setbacks or challenges. If you’re doing everything you can at home to help them, sometimes, just hearing it from a different voice is the medicine they need.

Empower and Connect with Your Swimmer

Foster Independence

While it can be difficult as a parent to embrace differences in your swimmer’s ambitions or passions from your own wishes for them, giving them autonomy and letting them take ownership of their swim journey helps cultivate their independence and long-term success. Talking to your coaches about what this looks like for your swimmer at different stages of their journey will provide valuable insight on how to support them. A simple example for age groupers is to let them decide, with the coach’s approval, what they want to swim at meets. Another is to make sure as they age up they are taking initiative to talk to coaches directly without your help. Though this may take some prodding, it can be a big step in learning how to advocate for themselves.

Teachable Moments

Swimming offers incredible opportunities to grow as a human being. There are countless teachable moments over the course of a swimmer’s career and it is vital to seize those moments to build their character so they can succeed in swimming and in life. For losses and disappointments, help them reframe things and find the value in their efforts. Take the opportunity to talk to them about values such as resiliency, courage, and accountability.

Embodying the profound role you have as a teacher in your child’s life and letting the coaches focus on the details of training, racing, and coaching will transform the way you experience parenting and the way your son or daughter performs.

What Your Swimmer Really Wants To Hear After Practice or a Meet

John O’Sullivan, a leading authority in youth sports found in his interviews with youth athletes that the worst part of sports is the car ride home. He reminds us, “Emotions are high, disappointment, frustration, and exhaustion are heightened for both player and parent, yet many parents choose this moment to confront…criticize…and chastise their child, their teammates, their coach, and their opponents. There could not be a less teachable moment in your child’s sporting life than the ride home, yet it is often the moment that well-intentioned parents decide to do all of their teaching.” Remember, your swimmer just wants to have fun, improve, and eat lots of food. Ask:

• Did you have fun?
• What did you learn today?
• What do you want to eat?

Inspired by John’s words, you can follow up with this super-parent comment, “I love to watch you swim.”

Compare Your Kid To Who They Were Yesterday

There is a point when comparison to others, a natural thing in the competition pool, becomes detrimental to one’s performance. As parents, you are able to help your swimmer learn how to use comparison in a healthy way. You can help by comparing them to who they were yesterday, not who is in the pool with them. By helping them see where they can improve or grow in relation to where and who they were yesterday, you preserve their self-worth, their relationship with you, their teammates, opponents and overall team culture.

Reward Effort

Over the course of their career, your swimmer will fail many more times than they succeed. Rewarding them for their effort will carry them miles beyond any attempt to coach them on what they should have or could have done or what someone else did. By rewarding their effort you are telling and showing them that you love them no matter what happens and instilling in them a growth mindset. This type is the type of praise they really need.

Listen More, Talk Less

In your attempt to be involved in your swimmer’s journey you find that they either explode and storm out of the room or they seem to have little to say. The more you probe, the less they share (especially in the teenage years!) Sound familiar? Here’s what you can do:

• Talk less and listen more. This shows your swimmer that you care about them, not just their swimming and will increase the chances of them coming to you.
• Sometimes it’s a phase you just have to deal with. Talk to their primary coach to see how things are going.
• Consider time and place when you try to have swim-talk

Valuable insight into your athlete’s progress and how to support them will always be found by talking to their primary coach, a figure who does and will have a significant influence on their life. Through open and regular communication with coaches and respecting their expertise you, the parent, can better understand the demands of competitive swimming and support your athlete in a positive and constructive manner. The stronger the stool, the happier and faster the athlete!