courtesy of ASCA
The American Swimming Coaches Association (ASCA) and Fitter & Faster Swim Camps are pleased to announce the TOP 10 AGE GROUP COACHES OF THE YEAR FOR 2024.
Congratulations to the following outstanding coaches (in alphabetical order):
|
Name |
Club |
|
Joe Finke |
Saint Petersburg Aquatics – FL |
|
Rod Hansen |
Irvine Novaquatics – CA |
|
Tom Himes |
North Baltimore Aquatic Club – MD |
|
Mike Julian |
NOVA of Virginia Aquatics, Inc – VA |
|
Russ Kasl |
SwimMAC Carolina – NC |
|
Luke Nelson |
NOVA of Virginia Aquatics, Inc – VA |
|
Rob Norman |
TAC Titans – NC |
|
Thomas Pearson |
Crow Canyon Sharks – PC |
|
Peter Robinson |
Nitro Swimming – ST |
|
Sherwood Watts |
North Carolina Aquatic Club – NC |
The national winner of the Fitter & Faster ASCA Age Group Coach of the Year for 2024 will be revealed at an awards ceremony on September 5 at the 2024 ASCA World Clinic at the Rosen Hotel in Orlando, Florida. For more information on the ASCA World Clinic go to www.ascaworldclinic.com. The Top 10 finalists will be introduced and honored at the Awards Ceremony.
The Top 10 age group coaches were compiled using the USA Swimming Power Points of the top ranked 11-14 year-old swimmers for the 2023 Long Course season and 2023-24 Short Course season. Each athlete was limited to a maximum of 4 swims contributing to their coach’s total.
Tom Himes was my first-ever club coach…and my beard is mostly white. He coached a 9-10 relay NAG record in 1983(ish?). That is some serious longevity!
I’m generally no fan of trying to rank age group coaches, but that’s a list of pretty darn good, hard working coaches.
No one is debating that. Just the fact that not one single woman or non-white person on this list is indicative of a bigger issue and ASCA needs to address it. It’s upsetting they didn’t earlier.
they ranked it based on points not genders or races… what point are you making
They’re saying that the coaches on the list are the ones benefitting from opportunities that are not based necessarily in the merit or skill of the coach but rather something else; which then could suggest that there is still lack of opportunity in coaching the ‘top level teams’ due to ______.
Larger clubs are going to amass more points. There are great coaches (female and male) who continually turn out D1 athletes/top national athletes that are from smaller clubs and would never seemingly make this list.
That it’s a failure at an institutional level if only white men are recognized at this level. And that the points should be published. If its only points that needs to be public.
I agree that there is a systemic problem if only white men are recognized at this level.
But I’m not sure that I understand the link between publishing points and that problem. Are you speculating that they fudged the points to ensure that only one kind of person made the top 10? IDK, I don’t think that’s something (modern) ASCA would do.
Buuutttt I do think that the points would be really interesting, so I’ll ask for them anyway. 👍👍
No I’d just like to see them. If it’s all objective, I don’t see why not and it’s helpful in stopping the speculation and bad feelings and can give people goals for future
So show us the points. What were these men’s score? Keeping it hidden feels weird.
EXACTLY!!!
Any idea what the average size club of the nominee is? This seems heavily skewed towards big swim clubs.
How big is NOVA? They have 2? Definitely skewed.
The hard-work and dedication of these men deserve to be celebrated, but it’s disappointing that in 2024 ASCA was unable to recognize even ONE female coach or any coach that is not a white man.
No selection criteria will ever be perfect, but please, when making a criticism, please lay out a suggested alternative.
an objective criteria was listed:
or should there be a subjective criteria based on something else? We are in a very objective sport, get to the wall first, feel like this is an objective award based on performance criteria. There are other awards recognizing other categories, including impact on the sport, etc: https://swimmingcoach.org/page/recognition
Seems like this needs to be a bigger conversation on how to support, develop and celebrate diverse coaches. Alternatively, perhaps ASCA needs to be more transparent on what these scores were? If this is simply objective, please publish the scores for each of these coaches! Or they need to use more criteria such as team size, yearly score improvement, etc.
It wouldn’t guarantee more diversity, but there are some ways that the criteria could be adjusted to give more coaches a chance. Right now the system is set up to be much easier for coaches who happen to work with the top 11-14 year olds at the biggest clubs in the country. So it’s kind of a mix of how good of a job did you land, and how did this past year go.
A simple adjustment might be to limit the number of swimmers contributing to a coach’s total.
More complicated but potentially helpful might be to try to reward improvement, either by looking at the individual kids’ rankings from one year to the next or the team’s.
Good point. Perhaps we need to take a bigger look at the diversity of coaches hired in those roles on the larger teams. For a sport that is 50% women, it is disappointing that no women made this list.
If this is an objective award based on performance criteria, then the scores should be public just like swimmers times and meet scores. Feel like that would eliminate some bad feelings.
It does feel skewed toward big teams who already get awarded over and over in club excellence. Also making it 11-14 instead of 12& under definitely lowered the pool of female coaches which seems unfair.
I wouldn’t call this a criticism, just disappointment in an alarming disparity. I don’t doubt these men earned this award based on the criteria presented, but I think this proves the criteria needs to be changed or USA swimming/ASCA need to urgently assess their DEI initiatives.
I’d love to see what the point total was for each of these coaches. Can anyone show us that? It would make objectivity much more visible. Also maybe club size, year to year improvement should be taken into consideration to widen the net?
To not acknowledge there is a disparity issue here is ignorant. There is clearly a failure by USA swimming or ASCA in how we’re hiring, promoting, growing and making visible female and diverse coaches. Or there is an issue in this award and its criteria. Both should be evaluated more thoroughly.
Yeah this feels less like a problem with the award and more of an institutional, systemic problem.
(Which, incidentally, ASCA also has the ability to do something about – it’s just a lot more work than changing the math on the award).
If it’s so objective how come they had to wait two weeks to publish this??? show us the scores!! It’s a huge regression to have no women win this for an age group coaching award. Embarrassing.
Sherwood Watts = 🐐
Is that the same Sherwood Watts from Sarasota ? Amazing if so .
The same one.