Management and Administration

Age Group Coaching ExcellenceA Panel of Coaches of Top 10 Age Group Teams

Moderated by Tom AvischiousTom Avischious: John Leonard and I were talkingabout trying to do something a little bit different in theage group track this moming and these 6 fine panelistshave agreed to be the guinea pigs. John was talking tome about the age group programs in the country that areconsistently the best. Was there a way that we couldget some of them to come in and speak about theirprogram? And one of the things that we were trying tofigure out was, how do we pick out who those teamsare? As a starting reference, we used the USASwimming Virtual Club Championships and we ran amythical Virtual Club Championships based on pointsfor age group swimming from 9-14 years old. Wecame up with the top 10 ranked clubs and we have sixof the ten represented here today. We did have 4 thatwere not able to attend, just so you know why theseclubs were represented here today. I contacted the headcoaches of the teams and they asjced one of their agegroup coaches to sit in on the panel here.

First of all I would like to introduce the panel: to yourright is Ken LaMont from Irvine Nova. Coach LaMontis an Associate Head Coach at the club's Northwoodlocation, where he has been involved with Irvine Novafor a very long time. Next to him is Dave Kraft fromRockville Montgomery. He has been coaching atRockville Montgomery Swim Club since 1996 and hascoached the National Development Group - basicallyages ranging from 10-14 - since 2000. In that time hisswimmers have racked up 250 National age groupreportable swims and 99 have qualified for PotomacValley Zone Team. Next to him is Leigh Robbins fromNova of Virginia. I do have to mention that NovaVirginia asked if they could have two coaches on thepanel. So, Leigh and Dave Schreck are going to switchout. I was informed before hand that Leigh is the bigpicture person, and in Leigh's exact words, "Dave is theMicro Manager." It will be interesting to hear thedifference between the two when they talk. Leigh hasbeen Lead Age Group Coach and SeniorDevelopmental Coach with Nova of Virginia since2000. She works with both the age group and seniorlevels of the Nova program. Her primaryresponsibilities include developing State Champion andNationally ranked 12 and under swimmers, as well asdeveloping 14-18 year olds targeting the sectional.Junior and Senior National levels of the sport. Dave has21 years of age group coaching experience on the USA

swimming level and has been part of the Nova ofVirginia for the past 9 years, where he has been votedVirginia Age Group Coach of the Year the last 5 out of6 years. Next to Leigh, is Ad'm Dusenbury with theMission Viejo Nadadores, where he has been for thepast 3 1/2 years. He is the 13-14 Division Director andprior to that he worked with Coach George Block fromAlamo Area Aquatic Association as both a women'sage group coach and as a head high school swimmingand water polo coach. Next to him we have RickySilva from Palo Alto Stanford Aquatics. Ricky is theHead Age Group Coach of the Rinconada site of PASA.Ricky began with PASC which has developed into ateam of over 700 swimmers. Ricky works with thejunior groups, which include swimmers from novice toJunior National levels. Finally we have Yuri Sugulyamafrom Curl-Burke. Coach Sugulyama is entering his 3"*year of coaching with Curl-Burke Swim Club. He isthe Head Coach of the Holton Arms training site whichis located in Bethesda, Maryland and is home toapproximately 130 of the club's over 1,000 athletes.

Here is just a little bit of what we are going to try to dotoday. This is going to be three 1 hour sessions. Ipromise we will take breaks. That is more for thepanelists than you out there and that we will probablygo about an hour or so at each time. We are going to becovering a variety of different questions. I sent them asmall list of 45 questions to be thinking about. Oncewe start going through them, if there are some questionsfrom the audience we will certainly entertain those aswell. We are going to try and go in order of thequestions that I sent them ahead of time, and hopefullywe won't be repeating questions.

This will not be three 1 hour sessions of the same thing.We are going to try to go through a bunch of differentthings. What we wanted to try to do is make thissomething that we have never done before. The goal isto get some in-depth discussions going from clubs thathave done a very good job at the age group level. Oneother thing I want to mention to you is that we hadasked Ken to be one of the participants on the panel. Heoriginally came to the clinic because his father wasbeing inducted in the ASCA Hall of Fame for coaching.Originally his fiight arrangements didn't include beingon part of this panel, so he will be leaving.

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The first thing that I would like to do is just have eachone of the panelists give a couple of minute overview oftheir program. This is so you can get an idea of thetype of program that each one is operating under. Theotiier thing I would ask, is for panelists to please use themicrophones. We will start with Ken.

Ken Lamont: Again, my name is Ken Lamont. I amwith the Irvine Nova Aquatics, which is part ofSouthem Califomia Swimming. L,ike most of the teamshere I believe, we are a multi-site program. We operateout of four different locations. Out of those fourdifferent locations we actually have five 50 meter poolswe get to use. Before you start to drool too much, wedo not have full access of all those pools all the time, sowe are restricted as much as you guys are. Thank youfor that, I appreciate your sympathy. One of ourlocations is in Fountain Valley, where we run the fullgauntlet of the program; everything from our seniorprogram to our age group program to our developmentprogram. Our second location is out of SOKAUniversity in Aliso Viejo. We run the full gauntletthere as well. One of our head coaches is also the HeadCoach of SOKA University. We get a little bit ofcontrol over that pool and that is part of our rationale ofhim taking the position at that pool.

Our other two locations are in Irvine and we very oftenrefer to those two locations as one site. That is becausethey are both managed by the City of Irvine. One is atNorthwood High School and the other one is at theWilliam Woollet Aquatic Center, which is probably thepool you think of most when you think of our team.The Woollet Center is where our age groupers swim.The Northwood location is where our senior levelswims. Between those two locations we run the fullgauntlet of the program.

At all of the locations we try very hard to run the exactsame program. At every single site the coaches have allgotten together to make sure that the time standards forthe age group program are all the same to qualify forone of the age group programs. The time standards andrequirements for the senior program are all the same aswell. If for some reason a kid within our program wereto move for whatever reason, he would find the exactsame fraining, water time, dryland time and grouprequirements at any other site.

At each of the sites, we have an Associate Head Coachwhich manages the site and then we all report to ourHead Coach or CEO, Dave Salo. He is still very activein the program. We still have meetings with him once aweek and I see him as much as I ever did. Thank you.

Dave Kraft: My name is Dave Kraft and I am from theRockville Montgomery Swim Club. We operate out of5 sites in Montgomery County, Maryland. A lot of thethings that Ken just mentioned are pretty much the

same in our program. We do run 5 sites and four of thefive are run by the county] They have the exact samelevel progressions and group requirements and thingslike that. One of our sites is mn by the City ofRockville and it is a little Ijit different and independent.

I know that nobody is going to cry for my problemseither, with this club of 1400 swimmers and all thesepools and things to our advantage. We do fight acouple of fights against exercise classes and things likethat. You wouldn't believe that a competitive programthat has been arouhd for forty years would have to takea back seat, but it does and we fight for some smallwater time when it comes to that. I think anotherreason that we are successful is because of the amountof levels that we ai-e able to offer. Again, this is aluxury for a big club like ours. At every site we have 8different levels of progression that go from a sfrictly 8and under group, to 4 different levels of what weconsider age¡ group fraining. Those range from the 2day a week tJDtal novice to the 5 day a week 13 year oldthat is ready to make the jump. And then we have 3different levels of senior swimming as well; a highschool supplement, a 5 day a week thing, and then ourNational fraining group. I

I IThis allows us to do a lot of things club wide, eventjiough the coaches at each site sometimes do things alittle differently. I think we are becoming morecollaborative as the years go by and we will be sharingsome of those thoughts later today. Thanks. •

Leigh Robbins: Good moming. We are not a multi-club site and we are about half the size of Rockville-Montgomery. We are probably one of the largest teamsin the country still operating under one roof. We willprobably hit about 700 swimmers this year. We owno'ur own facility which has|two fraining pools - 10 lanesXI25 yard - tliat are under the same roof. One was builtin 1996 and the other was built at the end of 2005. Weown the Virginia Swim Shop which operates as a fundraiser for our, program. We have a swim lessonprogram that does hundreds of thousands of dollars ayear. Our senior swimmers are huge factors in teachingthe swim lessons. This is all apart of our budget and weare pretty self-sustaining. ^

1 believe we work with 8 full-time coaches. Everysenior coach in our program also works with one of theage group programs, including the head coach who hasbeen coaching for over 30 years. There are four of usthat are full-time senior coaches and we each have twocoaching responsibilities. For instance, our head coachJeff Brown, runs our National group and he is the headcoach of our Novice Gold program, which consists of110 eight year olds. He sees for two hours - twodifferent hour long groups every day - 5 days a week. Ido the same thing. 1 work with a senior group. One ofour senior - basically a senior development level group

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- Junior National level - 14-18 year olds and I alsowork with our 10 year olds that gold level so we havebroken some things out. David does the same thing - asilver level and a gold level within the age groupprogram. That is a big part of our philosophy. I thinkthat it has been very successful. I would say - 1 cameinto Nova in 2000 - David came in two years ahead ofme. We had about 250 swimmers in the program andso I know for a lot of you - 1 have been at smallerprograms and the idea of leaming from a team that has1400 and 700 and you know - we have differentproblems, but I really feel like the way we grew is verysimilar to maybe what a medium sized program is andthe way we restructured things. I think in 2001 wecompletely overhauled the structure ofthe program inorder to grow with kind of a plan to grow and sohopefiilly some ofthat information for a mid-level teamor even a smaller hundred person team I think isrelevant to some ofthe ways that we grew.

Ad'm Dusenbury: My name is Ad'm Dusenbury withMission Viejo. Much like Nova of Virginia, we haveonly one site. Mission Viejo is actually celebrating its40* anniversary this year. With the rich tradition thatwe have had, not only from Mark Schubert in the pastand now Coach Rose having been there for 15 years, itis pretty impressive to see what has changed over thepast 40 years. We have a very systematic approach toour age group swimming. It is the foundation of oursenior swimming. We are basically trying to producethe futtire of our program.

We break otir divisions up based on age. We have an 8and under division, a 9-10 division, an 11-12 division, a13-14 division and a high school/senior division. Eachdivision has a director which is a full-time staffmember. We have roughly 10-12 full-time coaches onstaff and probably close to about 20-25 coachesaltogether from September to August each year. Thereare between 700-800 athletes that directly swim for thecompetitive program. We have between 3-5 tierswithin each division. Each division director isresponsible for mentoring assistant coaches. Theassistants either come up through the program or wereonce swimmers from local programs that would like tobe a part ofthe team. It is a very in-house structure andvery family oriented team. We really try to strive on toproducing not only just good swimmers, but goodpeople that will hopefully enjoy it and come back andhelp us out in the future.

Ricky Silva: 1 am Ricky Silva with Palo Alto StanfordAquatics out of Pacific Swimming. Otir team is a littlebit different than these other programs. We are a prettybig team with a little bit over 700 swimmers. We haveseven different sites that are all probably within a 7mile radius ofthe Stanford campus. We also have onesite that is a little bit farther out. It is one coach thatcoached at one of otir other sites and then went off and

started a new site. All ofthe sites are completelyindependent financially and with group structtiring. Forinstance, if you are at the Rinconada site, which is thesite that I coach at, the structure is based by age. Wehave an 8 and under group, a 9-10 group, an 11-12group, a 13-14 group and 15 and over group. If you goto one of our other sites it might be completelydifferent. It might be done by grade or even just byability if it is a smaller site.

We feel that that worked well for us and this is our 6*year in operation. We had merged multiple programsand most of them were country club sites. Currently,six ofthe seven sites are out of country clubs. My site.Rinconada, is a city program and is one ofthe largersites. The country club sites work well because youdeal with the members versus non-members ofthe club.We have two main head coaches who coach the twomain senior groups, Tony Batas and Scott Shay. Eachsite has a site director. The country club site directorsare also aquatic directors as well, and they are allflilltime employees of those particular clubs financially.Again, they are totally independent of each other. TonyBatas is basically a fulltime head coach at our site.

We operate out of a total often pools. We use theseven sites plus Stanford University, Sacred Heartwhich is a 50 meter high school pool, and another 16lane short course pool. We are pretty lucky to have thatmany pools in the area. Each ofthe country club siteshas a summer league team. Essentially, we have abuilt-in feeder to the program at each ofthe countryclub sites. Their summer league teams are probablybetween 150 and 250 swimmers that all feed into theprogram. Our biggest feeders are summer leagues anda big lessons program at the two main city pools.

Yuri Sugulyama: Good moming everybody. Myname is Yuri Sugulyama and I am here to representCurl-Burke Swim Club. My challenge today is to tryand give you all an overview of what we do based on ateam that is about 1,500 kids. We operate out of 9different training sites. While I can talk about what I doat my site, I also have the challenge of trying to sum upthe overall ideals that we try and do at every site. I willbe able to do that by speaking with some ofthe otherhead site coaches and coming up with some things thatwe feel are universal to our club team that have allowedus to be successful.

We have got three sites located in Maryland, one inD.C. and five in Northem Virginia. As you canprobably imagine, swimming in the D.C. area isextremely popular. The fact that it can support a teamour size, as well as Rockville Montgomery in the sameLSC, Potomac Valley is impressive. Potomac ValleyLSC is really the District of Columbia and fourstirrounding counties. We are fed by two really large

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summer swim leagues and a couple of different countryclub leagues.

At my site, which is located in Bethesda, Maryland, Ihave five different fraining groups. Three fraininggroups that make up our competitive side, which are a 8and under group, a 9-12 year old group and a 13 andover group. Then we have two groups which we callour non-competitive tract, which is a 12 and undergroup and a 13 and over group. We split it at the 13year old age and we have the luxury then of offering afull service site where kids that are ready and willing tocommit to the sport have that opportunity. But, we arealso able to include kids that maybe do not want toswim as much and this is pretty universal amongst mostof our sites.

We have enough pool time and enough space where wecan offer a competitive side of swimming throughoutour club team, but then also provide a service for thosekids that want to stay in shape for their high school orwant to stay in shape for their summer league. I wouldsay 8 of our 9 sites have a swim school or a strokeschool attached to it and that is a great feeder programfor us. It is something that we have started doing alittle bit more in the past ten years. It is something thatwe have really developed and really built into. Thehead coach and owner of our team. Rick Curl iscurrently in Sydney, Ausfralia, and he will be comingback next year. He has been working with the CarlisleSwim Club for the past four years now - ever sinceafter the 2004 games and he has been there trying toleam the swim school system. He hopes to bring itback and try and incorporate it in all of our sites asanother way to add to our overall population base andcontinue to grow the team. There are a couple of thingsthat I think that we do really well in terms of an overallstructure and I will speak to those a little bit later onduring the talk.

Tom Avischious: Great. Thank you. One of thethings that I think that Leigh mentioned that is reallyimportant. It just so happens that the "smallest club"represented here is 700 people. Most of you believethat is so out of your realm of thinking - a team thatlarge. Please kind try to focus on the concepts and theprinciples and the things that they are going torepresent, because most of them do run multiple sites.They really are dealing with probably a little bit closerto what most of you deal with on a day to day basis. Ijust want to get you to focus on the principles and theconcepts.

The first kind of questions that I threw out to the groupfrom the list, were about move-ups and maturity levels.The first question I will throw out to the panel, and wewill see who wants to answer it first is: "How do youdetermine when to move up a swimmer? Anyone wantto go for it?

Yuri: Sure. Our age group structure is very similar tosome of the descriptions I iieard here earlier. We dohave our 9-10 group, our 11-12 group and our 13 andup group. If they are pre-high school age they are stillpart of our age group program. As they age up, theymay move up to the next age group level, but it is stillinvolves some ability. We probably have similar groupnames to what you guys all have: the Gold, Silver, andBronze. There could be a Gold 11-12 group or therecould be a Gold 9-10 group, so as they age up they willmove up to the next age group or next age division Iguess, and then still be part ofthat Gold, Silver orBronze group. That is determined by time standardsand it is set by part of the local swim conferencestandards, whether it be the red, white and blue or theÀ, B, C. That is how we age ours up.^ j

Tom: Any other discussion?

WHO: What we try to do and try to get people touhderstand right when they come in the door, is that isnot just about how fast you are; As Yuri mentioned, wecome off a big summer league system and it is a verycompetitive. Of course, every 8 year old kid that goes20 seconds in a 25 meter freestyle thinks that they arethe fastest kid around. When they are the best kid ontheir summerl league team and they never have lost arace , we try to promote is that they understand that thebest time is not what it is really all about.

Even at our higher levels we move up really as amerging of three different categories. The first thing istheir attendance and willingness to commit to a certainnumber of days a week. The second category is theiraerobic progressions. We have very specific test setentry times that we have to do and they are notsomething that anybody can just jump in and do thefirst time that they get to the program. It really assurespeople of noti getting into a group that is over theirheads right when they get to the club. The last categoryis the mecharlics progression. We will not move aswimmer up to the next level if they have a gaping holein their mechanics and are going to be a little bit out ofpjace in that regard. It sounds like some of our bigclubs are these giant factories that of course produce allthese swimmers. But you know, 1 personally coach at asite with about 275 kids, wjiich is probably closer to alot of the nonrial levels if you will. We might travel toa meet with a; whole lot of kids. We might have thatmany kids registered. But as far as getting our agegroup progressions, we are talking about traininggroups that consist of somewhere between 20 and 40swimmers, depending on what level it is.

Like Ken said, the pre-high school age is our jump fromage group to senior level. 1 know a lot of people do itfrom 12 to 13. I just heard .from Mission Viejo thatthey have separate 11 & 12|'s, 13 & 14's and that is

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good too. We like to make sure that the really fast 13year old - the really fast 7* and 8* grader is notjumping into a 70,000 yard a week group that they can'tdo it no matter how fast they are. We talk about theattendance, the aerobic, the mechanics and having thewhole package. Working up in terms of progressionsthrough our levels.

Leigh: I think what is absolutely critical for us is thatyou don't put a kid in over his head anywhere. I thinkthat runs them out. I would say we lose more kidsbecause they are in too high of a level group thanmaybe the best in the lower level group. I think ourgroup structure is the end result of choices that we havemade. I think I could say now, 8 years intorestructuring our program, we have gold levels, wehave silver levels and we have bronze levels. We havesome general standards for those that include practicetimes, meet results, participation in practice, andpractice attendance with minimums and maximums byage group. We are able to break it out by age group,but I think that is the end result.

I think we re-evaluate our standards every year becausewe have a different group of kids that come in everyyear. At the beginning ofthat process, we are saying,"who are going to be our A and B relay boys?" Whoare my best 12 boys in March? And I want themtogether all year and I mean that 12'*' boy may be prettyawful, but you want to get them excited aboutswimming. We are not doing so much swimming thatyou can't teach them along the way, especially withkeeping boys. Get them together early. Get themexcited. Make them competitive because there is goingto end up being a path. We look a lot at seasonalgrowth, keeping them together by age group for aseason. Who are our fastest 12 girls going to be? Thefastest 16 girls? Make sure they are in similar groups,baring the novice developmental stage where we areteaching them - 100% teaching.

In our age group programs, we are really looking atkeeping the kids together long-term and keeping boyswith boys. It is so easy to take two or three talentedboys and throw them in a better group with a bunch ofgirls. They are going to be bored of those girls inmaybe two years. You are talking about 11 or 12 andthey are about done with that group of girls. You needa group of boys to go with them, so we are realcognizant ofthat. We evaluate within every group thesocial structure and the building of the team.

Ad'm: This has got to be probably one of the mostdreaded topics at Mission Viejo every year because wedo have the system in which the 9-10's separate fromthe 11-12's separate from the 13-14's. We have almostcreated a beast for ourselves to the point where everykid is with their peers. They are the same age groupthroughout the time they start when they are 8 year olds

- all the way up until they are 15, 16, 17 and 18. Yes,they are broken up by ability within their own division,but when we move the kids we have to be extremelypolitically correct when we do. They are moving over agroup, not moving up a group and not moving down agroup.

The way that we title our groups and the way that welabel the coaches in which group they are coaching istough. For the most part we are trying to be asconsistent as we possibly can to the point where theparents don't always have to come back at us and say,"why did little Johnny get moved down?" Well, hedidn't. The title of the group has changed, but t is theperception that the parents were having. It is theperception of the kids are having and it is also one ofthose cases where a lot of the kids just make biggerleaps and bounds when they are 11. They move up to adifferent group and their friends are left behind. It isone of those things that we are constantly challengedwith. We call it "re-deployment". We re-deploy ourkids every August and every springtime after ourchampionship season. The kids are moved up based onpower points. In the past it has always been soobjective to make it so much easier for us to defendourselves against the parents and against the kids. Arethe kids performing in the pool when it counts? Afterthat, we look at attendance and test up performance.We have a system, which we will probably get to herein a little bit. - a curriculum that is based on specific testsets that are designed to help us evaluate the kids. Eachseason we will go through a progress report and eachcoach will sit down with a kid and go througheverything. Everything that the kid is doing right,everything that the kid is doing wrong and make surethat the parents are aware of it. That way it protects usand all the hoopla after we re-deploy the kids.

Ricky: This is probably one of the toughest ones forour program, just given the way that we are structuredand that all of our sites are independent. It is a little bitdifferent at every site. This is one thing that has beensuccessful for our program, having these different siteswithin the close proximity. If one way doesn'tnecessarily work for a certain swimmer, they might beable to look at one of the other sites and maybe shiftover, especially as they get older. Our smaller program,the country club sites, typically group somewhat by ageand somewhat by ability. You will get kids that are like11 to 13 and you will see them in what they might calltheir senior group. Our two main sites have the bigsenior programs, but use complete different ways ofhow they move kids up. One of them is cross-site.They do somewhat by age on the younger end andwhen they get to middle school they do it by grade.Once they get to high school, then they go into thesenior program or they go into a senior developmentprogram.

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Basically, we have two different types of tracks.Always have a track for the more competitive kids thatmake X-amount of workouts and have some parametersset up. Then also have a track for the kids that are justdoing it more as an activity or maybe two to three timesa week. My site is purely done by age. For instance, Icoach the 13-14 group. I have two groups. I call themJunior Plus and Junior. In Junior Plus there are someparameters to be in the group. You have to make Xnumber of workouts. You have to be able to makecertain sets on certain times. Then 1 have a novicegroup. They overlap so 1 have got kids from OlympicTrials, all the way to a kid that is about 2 minutes in the100 freestyle - a pretty big variety.

One thing I know in our program that has beensuccessful, and I think being a bigger program helps, isthat we tend to hold the kids back in the groups. Forinstance, 1 have a kid that has an Olympic friáis cut.She still has a lot of things that she has to work on so itis not like she needs to be in that senior group justbecause she is that fast. There are other things that wefeel that she can develop other than just pure speed orjust times. It is a little bit hard to explain because weare multi-site and every site is a little bit different.

Yuri: Just to put a different twist on this, we movepeople up based on times and attendance and socialaspects. But one thing I think we think about is whento move them up in terms of on the calendar year. Ithink the best time to move kids up, from ourexperience, is after our spring break. You know, theschools are usually pretty light during that time and Ithink that we have all found throughout our club teamthat if we are going to move kids up that is usually agood time to do it. I think that is a really good time tophase kids into that upper level group. You know, theyare excited, they are getting a little bit more sunlight,you can kind of work them a little bit more and schoolis coming to an end. I think during the summer it ishard. Summer league swimming in the D.C. area isreally big and I think if you are moving kids up in thesummer they have got an increased workload. They areprobably really busy doing camps. I think it is reallyeasy for kids to get broken down over the course of thesummer. You think that just because they are not inschool they are not doing a whole lot, but it seems asthough they are doing even more stuff. There are allkinds of camps under the sun, right? And so, comeAugust I think you see a lot of kids that are draggingpretty hard and if you are phasing them up into a groupthat has a higher workload. I think you can really breakthem down. The same thing I think in the fall. We liketo let them get adjusted to the school. Academics isvery important for a lot of our families, which is a goodthing. I think if you are going to do it throughout thefall, then I think it should be a really slow progression.I think the Christmas break as well is a good time, butagain, they have a lot of things going on. They might

be out of to Yn or they might have a huge project goingon. In terms' of the calendar, I think the best time tomove kids up is following their spring break.

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Tom: Two follow-up questions. Ad'm, you mentionedtiiat coaches meet with each swimmer and their parents.Is there a set! thing that you follow or can you describehow that works?

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Ád'm: Sure. One of the things that we try to do,especially during August, is wee try to take advantageof this time to get to knowjthe kids that will be cominginto the division. Although I didn't mention thisbefore, we actually move our kids up based on whattheir age is for the age group champs for that season.So a 10 year ¡old can be in the 11-12 division, but thatllo year old will be 11 by the time the age groupchampionships come around. It really makes it easierfor that coach to put together relays, put together theteam, put together that division and get them ready fortiie age group champs. i

it is extremely important for us to meet with theparents. It is actually morel important 1 think for theparents to meet with us, rather than us meetirig with theparents. Just' so we can really put all of the pre-conceptions of what the parents have of the coach ofthat division.! The kids will' probably see on average, 7-8 coaches within their age group line of swimming. Wehave got to really sell ourselves. We have got to selleach coach below us in a division and above us in adivision. It is, one of those things where we have tomeet with thé parents before the season starts and priorto the kids moving over to a group or moving up intothe division, i We have got to make sure that the parentsi completely on board with what is going on.

Tjhe kids have got to be aware of what is expected ofthem in the next group. They have got to be obviouslya]ware of what they need to do to perform just as good,if not better, than what they just did in the previousseason. So nieeting with tlie parents and meeting withthe kids is extremely important in where we are comingfvpm and especially in such an affluent area of thecountry. Parents love the control. That is most of theirpositions within their jobs. They want to have control,but I think for the most part it really helps us out. Itreally helps the longevity of the kid to stay within ourgroup because with Nova right down the street and a lotof other great: clubs in the area, we get some kids thatare just disgruntled. It is not so much the kids, it is morethe parents that are disgruntled with the coach, not withthe program, not with the philosophy and not with howtheir kid swani. Just with tJie coach. If you can just tryto put that unider the carpet and let all the parents knowthat we are all good people, we are all good passionatecoaches and we are all doirig what is best for their kid.They just want to care about their own kid, not aboutthe team. Even though that is what we preach is team.

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team, team, and team. It is an ongoing battle, but forthe most part we are trying to alleviate it as much as wecan.

Tom: Dave, you mentioned test sets or entry times.Can you just describe a little bit about what that is orhow that would work?

Dave: Well I can also piggy-back that onto what I justheard there. We also have mandatory parentconferences. We actually do ours over that Christmasbreak time. The kids are in for holiday fraining and alot of what we discuss are the test set performances andthings like that. A lot of times when a kid isdisgruntled, it does happen at this move-up time that wetalk about. Well, how come Johnny got moved up, butI didn't? I beat him by half a second in the meet andthings like that. That always happens and what we tryto do at these conferences is really give an honest, Idon't want to say opinion, but opinion based on a lot offacts about what we think the swimmer has done andwhat they are going to do. We use the test sets to dothat quite a bit.

My group, the National Developmental Group, we dotest sets in freestyle and the best non-free sfroke and asecond best non-free sfroke, as well as IM. We do testsets probably once or twice a week all the way over thecourse of the year and we do them at every singledistance. Everybody in America does the hundred freetest set and so do we. I try to go about, you know - 7%of their weekly yardage X 100 on 1:25 or 1:30. Itusually winds up being somewhere being between 12and 28 lOO's between the course of the year. We dothat and we get their times and that is really our mainthing that says okay, this kid is really ready to move upto that next level of group.

We do the same thing for non-free and then we do thefreestyle at 200 yards and at 50 yards and we do a T-30.We do all these things and every single test set that wedo is quantified and written down. They record it.They are put on a spreadsheet and we got this littleconversion thing that franslates all the times at all thedifferent distances into a hundred yard repeat base. Wegive them this printout at these conferences and say,listen, this is exactly why I think your child is going tobe ready for the national fraining group as opposed tothe advanced senior group which is our one step downfrom that. That takes away a lot of the guess work in it.There can't be a whole lot of, "you just like that kidmore than you like me." I can say, hey listen, every kidthat we are accepting in this National fraining group hasthis kind of time in a freestyle set and this kind of timein a non-freestyle set and this kind of time in an IM setand there are other intangibles of course. I mean, somekids can swim fast in sets even though they come threedays a week and that obviously is a whole other story,but 1 think what we use the test sets for are: 1) to back

us up in terms of moving up levels and 2) we also usethem to help make meet goals.

I mentioned the spreadsheets and formulas, we actuallyhave formulas that franslate the test set times to meetgoals. I don't want to get too ahead of myself or talkfor a half hour as I want to do at times, but we also usethose test sets to kind of make a better purpose at eachpractice. The kids love the meets. They loved it insummer league and that is why they joined our clubs,but if they are only swimming meets once a month anda lot of times it can be dmdgery for them. They cansay, " oh here I am at practice another day." We reallyuse these test sets to say, hey listen, you have got agood purpose here for this practice. You can getcompetitive with your own times, with yourself, withthe times that you know you might need to make to getto that next group's standard. It is a reason to getfocused on this particular day in practice and I thinkthose kids need that. That is part of what keeps themcoming back day after day after day.

Tom: A couple of you kind of touched on this. Youmentioned that you basically have your divisions byage. What do you do with the talent? The "talented 10year old" who can frain with the 12 year olds or thetalented 12 year old in particular? A lot of times it is a12 year old girl that is faster and a better trainer thansome of the kids in your senior teams or senior groups.How do you deal with those?

Leigh: We leave them where they are. Let them leamto be the best. Let them leam. I think one of thehardest skills to teach a kid is how to win. You knowthat one in a hundred kids walks into our program thathate losing, know how to win and they race everything.When Bowman talks about Phelps not letting anybodybeat him, that is not natural. Your kids don't come inwith that. Most of them spend the majority of theirswimming career getting beat and when you have a kidthat is the best at 10, leave him in the group and teachhim how to win. Let him at 12, do the same thing.David has got a 12 year old group and they are ourhighest 12 year olds. Some of those girls are JuniorNational level. One of those boys is about 60 pounds.They are not at the same place at all, but those boys aresome of the best boys in the State for their age andthose girls are leaming how to put their hand on thewall first every time. They are not overwhelmed. Theyare not socially awkward in an environment with olderkids. We leave them where they are. That is ourphilosophy.

Q. From Floor: 1 am sorry to interrupt. I hear a lotabout advanced swimmers. It is refreshing to hear youtalk about your non-competitive frack. Could you tellus a little bit more about that and how they advance andthen how you encourage or discourage them to move

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from the non-competitive practice and into thecompetitive track?

Dave: Yeah. We are a little more loose in the way wedetermine that. For a lot of those kids, I don't want tosay that we are there to just provide them pool timebecause we do want to help the out. We do want tohelp them get better and some of them do go on. Theygo on to our competitive track and become players attheir high school level. But for a lot of them, the reasonwhy they have chosen to do that is because they havenot made swimming one of their primary extra-curricular activities. With otir competitive tract we aregoing to look at a lot of factors other than just age. Forinstance, we are going to look at times and socialaspects. That one is going to be more determined bytheir age. The minute a kid tums 13 or they are in the8* grade or the 9* grade, then they are going to moveup a little bit more. But at the same time, if they havegot a good group of friends we will certainly take thatinto consideration. For instance, we just had about fivefreshman boys move up into that group, three of themwere ready, two were not. This is something that Leighand I had spoken about a little bit earlier during thisclinic. I think you have to keep the boys together and Ithink you should probably err on the side of maybeletting someone move up that maybe shouldn't have. Ifit keeps them together and it keeps them with that groupthen who knows what could happen in terms of theirgrowth. It is not as structtired and it is just basicallydetermined by age and where they are in their grade.

Ken: Yeah, for the most part I agree with all the othercoaches. We tend to keep the swimmers in the sameage groups that their peers are in. At 10 years old and12 years old, we are not training them the same way weare training our senior swimmers. They are still doing alot of 25's and 5O's, mechanics and drills. They arestill leaming and they still want to be with their friends.We want to make sure they are in the sport and with theprogram for the long haul. We don't want to movethose kids up and put them in a socially awkwardposition, especially if they are going from the age groupprogram to the senior program. We do not want thetalented 12 year old training with some ofthe seniorlevel swimmers. They are away from their peers. Wetend to keep them there and I think one oftheadvantages some of us may have with the largeprograms is we tend to have swimmers that cancompete with them. They are not doing a lot of sets inswimming where they are going to just dominate theworkout. They are still doing workotits where they canstill be very accepted by the program and by the group.They fit in very well with the training environment weprovide for them. So we do not find a lot of need tomove them up.

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Tom: Did any of you evej- make any mistakes with anearly maturing athlete that you regret? Maybe they leftyour program? Or that you at least want to admit to?IAd'm? The challenge with my group is that it is agebased and I have got multiple levels. I would say thebiggest mistake is going probably to a higher level meetthan the kid might have been ready for. I know twoj^ears ago we went to Juniors in Irvine. I took oneswimmer and it probably \yas a mistake looking back atit. It was a 13 year old swimmer and she just reallywasn't ready. She had one cut, but probably could havewent to the zone team or did something else. Becauseofthe grouping, it was the direction that we wanted togo as a team ¡and go to Juniors. That was probably thebliggest one for me. It is just making sure that we go toappropriate meets and keep it in a group setting and notjust taking one swimmer to a meet that probably isn'treally ready to go to that meet.

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Question: Do you consider it a mistake taking her?

Ad'm: Just given her personality I think going to thezone meet probably would have been a little moreenjoyable for her. She didn't swim very well, whichwasn't really the goal. The goal was just to get theexperience, but socially it wasn't. It is never fun whenjust me and one swimmer go and our senior groupdidn't go that year.; It was ¡the year that Juniors was alittle bit later! Itjust wasn't right socially for her. 1don't think it really helped her development.

Question: How is she doing now?I

Answer: She is doing well now. No, it didn't kill her.I Ihaven't killed any swimrners yet. Whether my egowill allow me to admit I made a mistake or not, I wouldactually say I have the luxury (it is on tape -justremember) of my experience when I was a youngercoach in the program. I was coaching some ofthejunior levels before I worked my way up to the NationalDevelopmental Group. I saw some of those mistakesbeing made and it really kind of shaped what I wantedto do when 1 wound up getting to that higher level ofswimming. ]

We live in a very affiuent area and we have someparents that are known in my particular city and myparticular sité, to be a little competitive. They wanttlieir kids that are Nationally ranked at 10 to go up intothe National Developmental Group. We had situationsin the mid 9O's when we had a couple of 12 year oldgiants that were destroying'these National top 16 times.They got pushed up into the senior level groups earlyand it really shaped me because I saw what happened tothose kids, even the ones tliat kind of succeeded whenthey first got there. I had the luxury seeing them growup and develop over the first few years and I don'tknow if anybody has experienced this phenomenon. If

you are in the same group for even three or four years,that is about as much as you can get from that onelocation. I certainly can't speak for a BobBowman/Michael Phelps type of relationship.Obviously he has been with the same coach and there isnot too much higher in terms of a training group that hecan go. But in terms of the age group progression,when you have this talented 12 year old that is makingthree Junior National cuts and pushing a SeniorNational cut, of course they can frain with the highlevel groups.

When that actually happened in our club and I saw thisgirl never do a best time again after age 16. Thisparticular girl that I am thinking of still swims Division1, even today. She didn't totally wash-out, but therewas a lot of crying and there were a lot of worries in therecruitment process. She just never got faster as ajunior or senior in high school because she dideverything that there was to do in that program. 1 guessour only options would have been to up the yardage toan asfronomical high which we were not going to bewilling to do. There is just nowhere for them to go ifthey go up too early and the same thing goes with 10-12year olds. I do not want this little 10 year old doing thesame things as my best 13 year olds that are makingJunior Nationals, even if they are fast. They justshouldn't be with those guys.

Leaming how to win is good and leaming how to bewith their peers. I expected this to happen, but I amvery glad to hear again that all of us are kind of on thesame page. I am sure that it is the same with most ofyou guys, so I hope we are not boring you too muchwith that.

Question: I have a question with regard to that. If youhave some really fast 12 year old or 10 year old and youkeep him in that same age group, do you modify theirinterval training? I see that if your base intervaltraining is not necessarily at their level and they arebeyond that, they are going to be sitting on the wall.What do you do about that?

Answer: Well right now as we speak, there is aworkout going on where I have a 14 year old that is a2:10 long course meters backstroker and he isswimming with some 11 year olds that have just movedup into the group. So we are doing a set of 3OO's rightnow and he is not only doing a little bit extra distance,but he is also swimming backstroke while they aredoing freestyle. So, stuff like that can happen. Youknow, you can modify their strokes. You can add anexfra 50 to the interval. It is usually rare that thishappens because of the way our program is setup andeverybody is fairly the same in terms of those aerobicintervals that they can make. I have never had aproblem with any of the other kids getting mad thatsomebody is doing something different.

Tom: One of the things that we at USA Swimminghave been hearing with the Michael Phelps effect is thatclubs of 100 or 125 kids are getting 50 and 70 kidscoming out for try-outs. How do you deal with the new12 or 13 year old boy that skill wise, is on the level ofan 8 or 9 year old? Do you have a place for them?How do you deal with girls for the same thing?

Ad'm: We have a pre-competitive group. It isobviously our novice group, but it is such a large groupto the point where we can actually have it almostindependent from the competitive frack. Because of theOlympic bump and Michael Phelps, we are getting justtons of kids without really having to do anything. Theyare just walking in through the front door. We do havea fransition group or a bridge group based on ability, ontheir foundation, or on their background. We haveenough space to put those kids and times to put thosekids to make sure that they are cared for. They aretaken care of and we can hopefully stroke their egos toreally try to find that diamond in the rough. The lowertiers or the lower ability groups that we have, those arethe kids that we are trying so hard to keep in the sport.Like what Yuri was saying, one of the reasons whythose kids are in that ability is mostly becauseswimming isn't really their highest priorify. So becauseof the motivation and the inspiration that is going onduring this year, we are really trying to capitalize onthat and jump on the bandwagon. Hopeñilly we can tryto get these kids to pursue swimming as more of theirdominant extra-curricular activity.

Leigh: I think you find a place for them. I think youwork with them one on one. We will do privatelessons. You work with the kid to get them caught upto speed. I think that is one of the things 1 would justsuggest is constantly be willing to restructure yourselfwhen you have growth coming you know. Six yearsago, our weakest retention rate was in that 13 and overage group because I think it got so competitive that if akid wasn't a late bloomer, we just didn't have a place tokeep them excited about swimming. We started a newgroup for that 13 and over kid that just was really goingto not a very high level.

We created a group and gave them a coach. I think youhave got to give a low level kid a coach that ispassionate about them and what they are doing. 1 thinkthey know the difference in our program when youhave got six or seven passionate ftilltime coaches andthen you have a part-time guy that comes in and thenthey see somebody else the next day. You have got togive them somebody that cares about them and that hasa little bit of ownership of the group. I think it takesthree years. Anything we have ever seen grow, it lookslike it is not going to work the first year. Maybe itdoesn't work at all the first year. So, you tweak it. Thesecond year you begin to see some consistency. You

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see less complaining. The third year is when you see hegroup stmcture. We went from a group that first yearwe had less than six kids and now the group has gotalmost over 100 BB and below 13 and overs that lovethat group and are committed. You have to find a spacefor them, but I think you have got to be willing to trysomething and let it grow over a period of time. I couldsay that we got kids that turned out to be distanceswimmers that showed up out ofthat group at 16 and17 to move on to juniors and even on to seniors. Ithappened ust all of a sudden after two years with abullet-like affect by letting them grow at a place thatwasn't above their heads.

Ken: Tell you what Ad'm, If you guys ever fill upyour pool, you can give them our number. We are verylucky in the city of Irvine that it is a very plannedcommunity. Every community builds a swimming pooland every community's pool has a summer league swimteam. I went to their championship meet about a monthago and it was just a mad-house with little kids mnningall over the place. They all got very excited aboutswimming the championship meet and the Olympicswere going on. Michael Phelps was swimming and allof a sudden you are getting a fiood of phone calls. Weset up a booth there and we recruit from this pool ofswimmers. The one question we kept hearing or theone comment was, "we hear your team is verydemanding." We hear that you guys are relentless onthe kids and we had to kind of change that perception.We have that part of the program, but we also cater tojust about everybody. We have a spot for everybody.We are very interested in getting some of thesedevelopmental kids into the program. Obviously, weare business and we can use the revenue. We wentahead and created a two day a week program to bringthose people in. We created a term for that program sothey are not just paying month to month. Hopeñilly, ifthey can pay the term and keep them around untilNovember and December, they become committed tothe program. This is especially so when we change timeand we lose an hour of daylight. They are still prepaidand they still find that reason to be there every day. Bybeginning two days a week we start getting them intothe program. We still just do a lot of mechanics andteaching, trying to get them into the swim teamenvironment and get them used to it. Teach them thatwe are not the relentless program that they believe weare. Then hopefully after that term, we can developthem or integrate them back into the program again.We really have to change that perception of thecommunity that everything they read in the paper is theswimmers going to Olympic trials and the Nationalsand the Sectionals. They do not hear about all the littleprograms we have that cater to just about everybody.We try to have something available for everybody andit is really kind of a challenge to do that. We advertisein the newspaper and we send out fiyers to the schooldistricts, and we have that booth there to advertise at

the local swim conference |meet. There we talk topeople one on one. I think it has gone a long way, butit is still far away to really change the minds of thecommunity to let them know that we do havesomething for everybody, i

Tom: I want to ask a quick question before we take abreak. First, I have an observation which I don't knowif some of you have picked up on. It's interesting thatfrom the Top 10 age group teains we have Irvine Novamid Mission Viejo, who are definitely friendly rivalsright next to eacJi other. Most of the time 1 guess it isfriendly. Then weihave Rockville Montgomery andCurl-Burke in pretty muchlthe same area. You guys arealso close and it is kind of interesting how it hasworked out. Jhis may putisonie of you out of yourcomfort zone and Ricky, you may be the one best toanswer. 1 can just imagine^ some out in the audiencehave a 6 lane, 25 yard pool that they are working out of,or a 4 lane 25 yard pool that they have for 3 hours.They may have 25 new kids showing up to join theteam and some of them cannot really swim. What doyou do with them?

IRicky: Yeah, that is a tough one for us. With ourprogram we are actually finding that a little bit difficultwhen we getjsome of the novice kids in. Luckily withsome of those smaller pools that we have, we are ableto shift some, of thé kids or. refer them over to other siteswithin the program. We actually have an issue withthat at my pool because we only get like a 2-2 Vz hourblock in the pool. We do get a lot of kids that come inthat might not be ready forj either of the groups.' Wehave looked into it. I think Ken touched on it reallywell, forming a group that maybe goes two or threedays a week. 1 dori't think you have to have groups thatdo the traditional 5 days a week or they need to go topractice every day. I thinkjyou can look at differentideas. Actually, at one of the country club sites, wewould just mn pre-competitive groups on Sundays andthat was a good way to get some of the kids introducedto the program. i

Ijom: anyone else want to take a stab at that?

Dave: Speaking about getting the novice senior kid,the 13 and 14 year old novice, know that is how Istarted, with a group of three day a week swimrhers.They were brand new 13 year olds - they had neverdone winter swimniing before. We just grew togetherand developed together and it was really good for me tosee that. I was never really fast growing up and when Ifinally started swimming year around. That is how I gotinto it. I had that perspective from there. Even with thelimited pool time. I know you guys know that we are ahuge club, but like I said, with one site we have to dealwith 7 or 8 lanes total on a given day. We don't haveall of our groups meeting every day. We structure theschedule so the Junior 1 group, which is our novice for

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9, 10, 11 and 12 year olds, go these two days for anhour. They have the same coach those two hours andthey grow and they can either move up or they can staythere for the four years and then go to seniors. We givethem those options and just try to educate them, evenwith limited pool time. It might not be easy to makenew groups totally, but at the same time you can kind ofrestructure things so that each level of kid has a place togo. I am sure we can all answer the question prettymuch the same way.

Ricky: Just to add one more thing. A couple of our sitesdo have 12 and under groups that do meet only in themoming. It kind of takes a sell job at first, but I thinkwhen they get into a schedule and the parents and kidsget used to waking up, some of them actually prefer itbecause it frees up their aftemoon. If your aftemoonsare packed and you have got a little bit of time in themoming, even if it is just Monday/Wednesday/Fridayor Tuesday/Thursday, then it frees them up andsometimes they actually like it a little bit more. If youcan sell it and you can get them in the door and getthem moving it can work. It is not easy, but it can workif space and time is an issue.

Ken: I remember I went to a talk I believe a year agoand listened to Rick Dumont talking. One of his topicswas what do you do if you only get 15 minutes of watertime, but you want to train your swimmers. It wasmore directed to the age groupers and you have reallygot to be creative. He used a lot of his dry-landexamples and just some of the stuff that they do for dry-land to keep them fit and give them some workouts.Part ofthat was playing, especially if we are talkingwith the age groupers. You want to keep them excited.You want them having a ftin time so it is not just doingpush-ups and sit-up. It might be a game of soccer withthem running around, but he really defined whathappens when you don't have that much water time.Some of the coaches here, you gotta find water time outof the traditional hours before 8 o'clock in theaftemoon. Saturdays are great. Sundays are great.Moming workouts if you can get them there, but youhave got to find when the pool is not being utilized andput the kids in the water at that time. It is easy to sithere and say you gotta get creative, but I think we alldo. We are all forced to do that sometimes and we findways with this infiux of swimmers coming in afterevery Olympic year, especially this year. If you wantthem in your program, I think you are going to find theways to do it. You just gotta talk and listen to the othercoaches and they will inspire you and give you someideas and hopefully that will help you out.

Tom: Just a couple of people came in late. This isthree one hour sessions and we have gone over just acouple of minutes of our first hour. We are going totake about a 10 minute break to let people get up and

sfretch and then we will start back up and thanks forcoming.

Session 2:

Tom: Just a reminder here, that when Ken takes off in20 minutes, he is catching an airplane. It is not that hehas had enough of the panel. David and Leigh areswitching. Someone noted that these programs havebeen around for a long time and there is a lot offradition. One question that was asked to me at thebreak that I thought was kind of interesting was, "howdo you tell someone that we would like your child toswim 5 or 6 days a week, when the norm for youthsports in the community is 3 days a week?" How doyou sell that if you don't necessarily have that fraditionor culture in the community?"

Dave Kraft: I am not sure that I am qualified toanswer that because of our traditions. I got in at the sitethat I am coaching at in the second year of its operation.So even though Rockville Montgomery had the name,don't get me wrong, that certainly helped bring a lot ofpeople through the door, we had to establish that wehad a credible program and knew what we wereworking for. Most of the coaches had some experience.We have a very high rate of coaches that actually swamfor the club, so we knew what it was about. If you cangenerate the ability to communicate the goals to theparents and let them know its not about how manyJunior National Qualifiers we get. You can sell the factthat, this kid that was on your summer league teamstarted out doing zero days a week of winter swimmingand then they finally did two. Finally we convincedhim to go and that is what needs to be communicated tothose guys. I am sure I will speak on it later because Isee it on the list of these questions. That tradition doeshelp a ton, but at our specific site, which is probably alot like a lot of the small clubs, we didn't have thetradition. We had to make it ourselves and that is howevery single club starts at the beginning.

Dave Schreck: Yeah, I think he is right that we allstarted from nothing at some point. We had to build atradition. Over time you develop that and even rightnow as a tradition program we still find that need tohave the program where they come in two days a weekand three days a week. We don't expect them to jumpright into a program where there are five days a week orsix days a week, doubles and all ofthat. Like I said, wehave a place for everybody. Even though we have builtthat tradition and we built ourselves up where we canhave a high senior program and a high age groupprogram, we still recognize the fact that have to havethat developmental program. That is where you arebringing them in and for those teams that are juststarting out that might be the only program right now.Over time they are going to age up, they will progress,and they will get faster. As they start going to meets.

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they start seeing the progression, they see theirimprovement and they start getting more excited. Thenyou can start to develop them more into that fulltimeroutine, but right away I don't think you have to findthe need to do that.

You have to set the goals for the team right away.What are our immediate goals? What are our long-termgoals? What do we want to see developed in the yearcoming? Do we want to start building up the numbersand then start to really develop a swim team out of it?Even at our lower levels we recognize the fact that westill have to have that developmental program wherethey just come in two days a week. That is part of thetoughest sale because our own worst enemy is that wehave created this culture in the community that they allneed to be part of this monster program. We have tokeep trying to educate them that we have that, but wealso have something for everybody and that is the toughsale.

Question: The opposite problem is that there are somepeople coming in or some people within the club thatare much better off being offered a 2 or 3 day a weekprogram. They see the goals or how they got theregoing 5 or 6 days a week. They say, "well we wantthat," but they will still come only 2 or 3 days a week.They have that feeling that they need to be offered thesame as everybody else. 1 also lends itself into the pricestmcture of the groups. If somebody in the gold groupis getting an hour and 45 minutes, but we feel someonein the bronze group only needs an hour and 15 minutes,then the parent says, "I don't want to pay anywherenear what the gold group is paying." It is almost likewe are paying per minute in the water and that is adifficult thing to sell to the parents. We want what isbest for the swimmer and at the same time the parentswant it all, but aren't willing necessarily to do it all.

Ken: I think it is part of the discussion that we havealready had. You have really have to educate thefamilies, the parents and hopeflilly the swimmers. At10 years old you are not always going to educate theswimmers. In our program, we have it designed thatthe time standards/age requirements help thatprogression if they are in a 2 day a week program.They are looking to move into the 5 day a weekprogram, but they are still developmental, and we stillhave a place for them. They can still come in 5 days aweek and that might change the price stmcture. If theyare battling the cost of it, that takes place somewhereelse in the program. I don't hear a lot about that. Theydo not come to me telling me that we are paying thisand we should be getting this. We try to make adefined outline for how the group should be and part ofit is their commitment level too. If they only want tocome in 2 days a week, we have the 2 day a weekprogram for them. If they want to come in 5 days aweek they have the 5 day a week program for them. I

don't know if I answered your question correctly or ifthat was what you were looking for. Sometimes 1 don'talways have the answer either.

I . IDave: I came from a smaller program too. I was thehead coach of a small program in the same area andtiiere are just so many parents out there with miss-conceptions.¡ "We've got this fast 8 year old, but wedon't want to swim at 4:30 in the moming." You don'thave to. Where are you getting that information from?ijwant to swim 2 hours a day and there is a setprogression for our 8 and unders. They come twice aweek and some of them will come three times a week.

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We will allow that, but wej limit it and we let themknow right up front. Our 10 and under groups maysiwim four times a week. We also set that limitationthere. There is time to swim as they get older. Wewant them to be in it long-term and we let these parentsknow that. They get it. Our 11-12 year olds do notpractice more than 5 times a week and I think we havegot to be careful there in niaking sure that we are notoverdoing it.| I have an example, my sister was a juniornational level swimmer and 1 leamed from that.' Youhave got to leam from all of those experiences. Watchother coaches and how they are doing. I was able toleam from my sister because she, at age 12, was one ofthe best. She was winning Eastem Zone championshipsat age 10, Hi 12 and was also practicing 6 or 7 times aweek for 2 Vz hours. She ended up swimming in asenior group at that point and I do not think that is theright way to go about it. I Jike to bring that up with alot of the parents that are gung-ho about, "wanting littleJohnny to go ¡5 times a week for 2 hours" and he is 10.We are not going to do that. I don't think any programhere would do that either. ,Yuri: I was just going to say that 1 am like Dave in thatCurl Burke does have a really good fradition, but Istarted off as the head coach of a site. There had been alot of fransition in our head coaching ring so some ofthe norms and the fraditions weren't as established assome of our other sites where we have had headcoaches there for 25+ years. One thing I don'tunderestimate is communicating to the swimmer.Obviously, I think it is very important to talk to theparents and make sure theyi know the progression, but Ialso think it really behooves you to sit down with thekids and make sure that they know why. Certaingroups go this way and talk to them as a group. I thinkyou can avoid a lot of problems with parents if the kidsknow what is going on. That way, if a parent makes acomment in the car; for instance, "well I saw you overhere in this lane or that lane, or how come Johnny andBobby are up there?" If a kid can say, "you know,Johnny broke; 6 minutes in a 500 free today in practice."So I think you can avoid a lot of problems by doingthis. I think sometihies we forget that. As much as wewant to educate the parents I think you can avoid a lotof problems by talking to tlie kids a whole lot and

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making sure that they know the progression. Makingsure that they know where they are supposed to go.

Question: Going back to your 10 year old or your 8year old going 2 or 3 times a week. Is your restructurekind of based on yotir age group structure or is it basedon....

Dave: Its based on how many times do they come perweek. Actually only at the 8 and under level, ournovice groups, we have a 2 day a week fee and a 3 daya week fee. Then when they get to our age groupdevelopmental groups, our 9-10 groups basically, theycome 3 times a week and they have the option to come4. That is one rate. It gets to be a nightmare for ourbusiness manager when you have so many differentlevels. We did do that years ago when I first came intothe program and it was a nightmare. You have yotirsenior kids coming 6 times a week and they werepaying for the 6. If they wanted to go 7 they had to paymore and it got pretty hairy. We only do it at theyounger levels and when they move up a group. We setit as 3-4 times a week and no more. They can come anyof the 5 days. I think you have got to be fiexible. Thatis another change in our system. Before I came in, theywere set and you had to come certain days. If you werein the Tuesday/Thursday group, then this is what youpaid for and these were the days you had to come. Ithink this has helped a lot in otir area of recruitingbecause we are so competitive with the other sports.Soccer is huge in the Richmond, Virginia area. I don'tknow about the rest ofthe country, but it isunbelievable and they are set in their days. We can beflexible. "Well Johnny is practicing soccerTuesday/Thursday, can he come Monday/Friday toswimming?" Absolutely and we also have threedifferent tiers of times that they can choose from. Forinstance: 2:30-3:30 or 3:30-4:30 or 4:30-5:30. OnMonday they come 2:30-3:30 - on Thursday they cancome 4:30-5:30. They are going to get the same coachtoo, anytime they show up.

Question: Can't hear it.

Dave: That is a tough one because we are such a largeprogram. We probably have 150 8 and unders and sothey are spread out across the week. There will be daysthat you will see that a lot of kids are coming. Wemight have 40-45 8 and unders in one practice. Thenon another day there is 10-12. So we will communicateto the parents on that day that there are so many tocome that other day. Can you do that so we can kind ofeven it out? Also, if there are some more advancedlevel 8 year olds that are coming on specific days we dotry to streamline and get those faster kids together sothat they can work together. I think that is importanttoo. We talk a lot about the faster kids. Don't put toomuch emphasis on those faster kids. We want that to

trickle down to these entry level, the very novice levelkids.

Tom: I want to move on to the next topic area. Do youhave a progression plan for each of your groups? Arethere general progressions? Do you do any type ofseason planning for the whole age group program?

Yuri: I coach two groups at my site. I coach a seniorprep group that it is basically 13-15 years old and Icoach our intermediate group, which are 9-12 years old.We break that up into 9-10, 11 and 12, but they all trainat the same time. Keeping it simple, what we do is lookat otir big meets ofthe season and then back it out thatfrom there. Early on in the season we try andcommunicate to otir athletes what are the biggest meets.What I like to do with my coaches, when our wholestaff from all sites gets together (we kind of call it "themeeting other 9 families"), is we identify the big meetsand we work back from there. Where do we want to bein December? Where do we want to be in March? Andwhy do we want to be there? If we want to rest a littlebit and swim fast in December, then what do we need todo in November? And what do we need to do inOctober? This ties up with my September. That isreally a simple way that we like to look at it.

Ad'm: At Mission, this is probably one of our biggestnot only challenges, but one of our things that we reallytake pride in. We take a lot of time working together tomake sure that there is continuity and the consistencyfrom the 8 and unders all the way up to the nationalgroup. We all connect and we all are on the same page.The curriculum that we have devised from the 8 andunders to 9-10's to the 11-12'sto 13-14's-it is allsmooth. The amount of time that they are in the wateras an 8 year old, forthe 9-10's it is an extra 15 minutes.Dry-land is a little more intense. The intensity oftheworkout is a little more intense and as they progress allthe way through. It all starts from the top down.Whatever Coach Rose is doing, that is what the 1 as the13-14 coach must do to get them prepared. Whatever 1am doing, the 11-12's have got to get themselves readyfor my division. That consistency is probably one ofour biggest challenges, but like I said it is one of otu"great accomplishments. I think it is one ofthe reasonswhy we are so, not just diverse, but why we are sodeep. Yes we have numbers. Yes we have talentedcoaches. Yes we have talented athletes, but I think it isthe competition within our team that helps drive thatcompetition to a higher level. Of course havingcompetition across the street and down the road is great,and that is what drives and fuels us to make sure thatwe are competitive at JO's. We are competitivethroughout the whole entire age group program, but likeI said before, we are driven to help our kids succeedwhen they are older - when they are in the seniordivision. We want to be competitive at Sectionals,Nationals, Olympic Trials and hopefully put one or

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more person on the Olympic Team. That fraditioncarries and filters all the way down throughout thewhole system, all the way through the novice program.It is one of our biggest marketing aspects as well. Theysee when they walk on the pool deck, and I was blownaway when I first got hired, just how everything waslike clock-work. At 3:30 this happens. At 4:00 thishappens. You got dry-land over here with 8 andunders. You got 9 & lO's starting their workouts. It isamazing. We witness and we gain experience fromseeing other great programs and other programs do itjust as good, if not better.

Ricky: We are similar to Curl-Burke. When we do ourseason planning we base it on the major meets that weare going to. It ends up working out to December,April and then the end of summer meets. For our sitethat works particularly well because we do it by age.You will actually get kids that move up during the year.They might be in my group for three or four monthsand then move up to the senior group, similar with theyounger kids. I know one thing that has been prettysuccessftil and we have been kind of doing it more andmore is taking the seasons and truly making them aseason like a soccer season - like a baseball season. Iknow when we finish our April meet then we give thekids a week off, especially the competitive kids and tellthem to get away from the pool. Go do something else.I think the younger kids get overwhelmed by feelinglike they are in the pool for 11 months out of the year. Ithink having those seasons where they can take a littlebreak or feel like they can start something and endsomething. If they had a bad season, they get to startover again. That has worked pretty well for us.

Ad'm: The season plan question is two different thingsfor us. We are talking at one point about, days a week,number of workouts and amount of yards at eachworkout. That is one thing, but the other thing that wetry to do in our season plan is know where we want tobe at the big meets. We want to try to get them everykind of experience during the season. The more thatyou get into it the program the more experiences thatyou have available to you. What I mean by that is youwant to always you plan for your LSC championshipand all the way back. We try to get a travel meet inthere somewhere and we try to get a meet on November1 & 2. We are having this National age group meet thatCurl-Burke is going to be at. Nova of Virginia is goingto be there. We try to get them to experience all theseother teams swimming at a high level. It is almost likea summer league mentality, but with these big clubs.We do a little retreat over the course of the year andhave them get there for a weekend with some guestspeakers and some classroom sessions. All kinds ofsocial outings as well as the pool. We want to make theseason a full thing for them. To have a lot of things tolook forward to, not just this meet and that meet, but allthese other experiences because that is what everybody

remembers. The National team kids and there arepeople are saying, "I am going to go to Nationals andmy goal is to win Nationals." But a lot of people justlike to go on the trip, you know? And you can get someof the younger age groups! to go, even your novicegroup. You'can take them to a meet one LSC over andthey are swiinming against new people at a new pool.You make itia big deal for them. We are going to atravel meet and if you can get experiences like that in^our season plan it gives them another thing to lookforward to. They really enjoy that.

Tom: Some of the things ithat we, as USA swimmingstaff, have observed is that sometime coaches do a greatjob evaluatitig individual swimmers and how they areprogressing. I But, how do ¡you evaluate success orfailure of the season itself? Do you have any formalevaluation process of the season or the year?

I IYuri: One thing we do, and Dave talked about earlier,is that I like to sit down with all my athletes and theirparents at the beginning of the fall and in thespringtime. It is really time consuming and you know itis not an easy thing to do trying to carve time out of myschedule and their schedule. I think those meetings areinvaluable and if you don't sit down with an athlete andtheir parent in a one on one setting, then you are kind ofmissing out on a lot of things. You are able to talk tothem on a more personal level and answer any ,questions. I think those meetings are really goodbecause it allows us to set time standards and basicgoals. I have the kids write those down on index cardsànà they have to bring them to the meetings. We talkabout them and we talk about what they need to do to

I ' Iachieve those goals. What I like to do is, 1 keep thoseindex cards throughout the season. I try and look atthem every 2-3 weeks and just make sure that we aredoing things in workout that are leading towards havingthat swimmer achieve the goals? Just after the end ofthe season, I like to pull ou't those index cards and givethem back to the kids. 1 say you know did well, youachieved this. You don't want to forget about the goalsand you don't want your swimmers to make goals andforget about them. Put them in their face and make surethey know them. Provide them with that constahtfeedback. That is one thing that 1 use. I got that fromone of our other age group coaches and it is just a reallysimple way to look at your season on a numbers basisand provide the kid with immediate feedback after yourbig meet. . \

Question: Do you find that, particularly 9 and 10 yearoids are making realistic goals?

Yuri: I should have said that I do that with the upperlevel 12 and overs. With our 9-10's, what we do is seta number for a kid to qualify for a meet. They mighthave individual goals, but I| don't have them write thosedown. !

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Ad'm: I am kind of piggy-backing onto what Yuri wastalking about. I think across the board within ourdivisions we really try to take a lot of time meeting withthe parents before and after the seasons to evaluate thekids before they are coming to the next season. We areestablishing what their goals are, but I think for themost part, since we are a pretty big contender withinour LSC and that Nova is definitely a big rival to us andthat is something that we can always use as fuel andmotivation. There are probably a solid 7 teams that arein our LSC that are always consistently in the top 10 atthe end of the age group champs. Looking at how wedid overall, that is obviously a good motivator for thekids. Not just within each division, but throughout thewhole team to use as fuel throughout the season. Wealso then break it apart. How did the 10 and under boysdo? How did the 10 and under girls do? And then twoyears from then, let's evaluate them again. How welldid they do? Did they get 4* when they were 10 andnow 3"* as 12 year olds? That is a set of progressionthat we try to use as we go up through the ranks. Asthey get older, that competition gets tougher and a lot ofthose kids that were B swimmers are now A swimmers.A lot of those A swimmers are now double A or tripleA. We are using that as more of an evaluation period.That is also more of an objective way of selling it to theparents, and especially the kids, that you are makingprogress. You are helping the team. We try to instillfrom the very beginning.

Dave: We have those same meetings and push thisstuff on the parents too. Sometimes we actually havevotes on things like whether we are going to travelmeets. In terms of judging the season successfully, it isa lot of times an individual thing. Yuri was talkingabout numbers. One of the things that I always tried todo is after the championship meets I am known forsending these page long emails at the end of the year.Then I bring it to the next meeting. I always mentionthings like, "this year we actually had six girls go under5 minutes in 400 meter freestyle in the developmentalgroup." "We have never actually had that before andthis is something that you guys can all be very proud of,whether you did that or that you were one of those sixor whether you were the ones who were training next tothem and helping them" I try to give them a sense ofthe group. Yuri mentioned, "1 want to have this manykids qualify for the Championship meet." This wasactually the first year that every single one of my kidsthat actually finaled at an age group Championshipmeet this summer. I tried to sell them for months andmonths beforehand that I thought that this couldhappen. Whether it is, I want to have 5 kids break 2minutes in the 100 freestyle or whether I want to have 5kids break 1 minute in the 100 freestyle, depending onyour level. You can always say "I think we can have,"even if 20 of the kids can't do it. I can have 5 kids dothis and we have never had that before. You all are

going to be a part of it and that is how we can evaluatethe season progress as a group. We can say this manykids make this cut or do this time. This many kidsrepeat under 1 :]0 in our 100 free test set. It doesn'teven have to be from meets. This many kids made anaverage of 5 practices a week. You can use those thingsand it really helps to get the group to go together. Youknow when the day that one of those five girls doesn'tfeel good in practice the other one will give them anudge and say, hey listen, "we can make this goaltogether so lets go ahead and do that. "

Ricky: We are a fairly new program. This is only our6* year. So for us, it has worked well that we are stillbuilding toward certain things that we want to do withthe program. One of the things I think with the athletesand with the parents is that we have really tried topromote the overall team goals. When we first startedit was to win zone championships. Then we went fromour little zone championships on to the LSCChampionships and Far Westems. This past summerwe won Junior Nationals. When I think of theindividual goals, we want to be careful with those. Youmight do it individually as a coach, but 1 think you wantto be careñil about promoting too much too soon withthe younger swimmers. It is a long-term sport. Waretrying to promote that top end and you know it is greatto win Junior Nationals, but at the same time, I think wehad 14 swimmers there, most of the team doesn't seethat. They don't know really what Junior Nationals are.So we are trying to sell that higher end of the program.Let the younger kids know the success that they willhave as they go through the program and sell the goalsas the overall team goals.

Tom: This is going to be the first question that isnot on the list. How do you personally get evaluatedat the end of the year?

Answer Dave Schreck: Our head coach Geoff Brownhas this 4 page self evaluation that he will give to us.We evaluate ourselves. This doesn't happen everyyear. Drew, I don't think you have seen one of thesejust yet so just wait. He is one of our young guyscoming up. I am married and have 3 kids and there hasgot to be a balance there too. There is some ofthat inthere as well. How am 1 handling my personal life withmy family and am I giving enough time to them andbalancing it with the swimming? It covers strengthsand weaknesses. It is very important that we are able topoint out what we are not very good at. There isdefinitely some things that I can do better and we arealways still leaming. I think that is important to pointout your weaknesses. It is easy to say, "I am a hell of abreaststroke coach." But there are some other areas ofconcem and we will go over with the head coach andwith the entire staff together. How we can help eachother? That is how we evaluate ourselves.

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Dave Kraft: I actually have the kids write stuff. I askthem questions about how they think the year went andtheir feedback is really amazing because that is what itis all about. Whether they like it? Whether they wantto come back or not? Do you think Coach Dave wastoo mean this year? Anything that would help us knowwhat we did best. I ask them what kind of workoutsthey like. What kind of sets they like? What kind offrips they like? The parents are paying the bills, but thekids are what we do this for. I think they should havethe biggest say. The county program that I coach at, wedon't have a head coach at all so we have these sitesupervisors that may not know exactly what a goodcoach actually is or does. They may only havequantifiable aspects and you can always sell anybodynumbers. But, if you get good feedback from the kidsor if you get bad feedback, and then are willing tocorrect it, that is what I use to evaluate myself.

Ad'm: I have Coach Rose sitting here so I have got towatch my words. It is probably more informal sinceeach Division Director has a main responsibility. Wehave got to do our part in getting our kids ready for thenext level. That is the ultimate goal for each division,getting them ready for the next level. Now of course,our egos come into it. We want to win so much. Andwe want to win our own division too. I want to havethe best 13-14 kids in Southem Califomia. That is thegoal for me intemally and so that is how I evaluatemyself That is probably I believe how Coach Roseallows all of us, as Division Directors, to evaluateourselves as coaches. We don't have an actual writtenevaluation. We don't have anything so formal to thepoint where we know where our weaknesses are. Novalets us know every year where our weaknesses are. ButI think for the most part, we all get together. We worktogether. We talk it out together. We have so manystaff meetings and it is not so much they are scheduled.It is because we want to talk about it. We want to talkabout what we can do to improve our weaknesses andbuild on our strengths. We are so passionate about ourjobs. We are hard on ourselves and we know that weare dropping the ball or we are not doing what we aresupposed to. One of us or more of us will get togetherand talk about it and help each other out and hopefullytry to help that coach fill the gaps.

Ricky: We are similar. We don't do a formalevaluation process, just because of the way our programis sfructured and the multi-sites. They all have theirown autonomy. It would be a nightmare to try to haveone of the two head coaches of the overall program tryto do evaluations with everybody. I think coaches, forthe most part, are probably harder on themselves thanmost people, except for maybe the parents that are up inthe stands. We do not do a formal evaluation. We sitdown and we talk things out. There isa lot ofcommunication back and forth, but there is not formalevaluation or anything like that.

Yuri: My boss is in Sydney, Ausfralia right now so hedoesn't really know what is going on. We do a lot ofself-evaluation and a staff meeting at the end of theyear. We sit! down and take a real hard look at thenumbers. One thing I like to do at my site is add up allthe points that we scored at each age group. I thinkDave talked about this. How did the 9-10 girls do?How did the 9-10 boys do? How did the 11-12 girlsdo? I think that really paints a pretty big picture as towhere you are at. That givjes me feedback into what wecan work on next season. Our 11-12 girls only scored34 points at the championship meet. What can we do tomake that different? That is something that is probablygoing to change when Rick comes back from hisjoumey down under, but for right now it is just a lot ofself evaluation. i

Dave: We aj-e a parent owned club, but a Iot of peoplewould think that Geoff Brown owns our program. Hehas a lot of power and 1 hate to say, what he says, theparents listen^ and do. We still have our issues with theparents and there have been moments where we havefried to conjure up,a way between staff to maybe buyour program and own it together. But 1 think we havebeen quite successful with a parent owned program.

Dave: I thank my lucky stars every day that I have noone to answer to. We are a not for profit county ownedprogram. As long as the numbers do not dip down toornuch, the higher ups have no idea what a JuniorNational time is or what an' age group championshipmeet is. What he was saying about Geoff, if you are acoach that has been there a] while, 1 have been there 13years now, you put in the work then you get the respectof people like that. I know, that it used to be that 5-6years into the job I would get a thousand complaints.Then the next year it became 500. When you startedgetting some progress there and now I get almost nonejust because you got the routine going. You knowpeople understand that you' might not do everythingperfectly, but you run a good program and you got thekid's interest at heart. You have the results to show forit now. !

j IDave: I do want to interject. One thing about Geoff isthat he does riot make a decision without checking withthe entire staff. We get together and make the decisiontogether. He'is the head coach, but he shareseverything with us, which is a huge part of our success.

Ad'm: We are a board run club. But from myperception, seeing how coach Rose runs the program,being the CEO of the whole program, he has probablyinore control,' more influence ad more of the ability tomake the decisions, that we need for the club than justthe board. The board is there to help in areas thatsometimes, as coaches, we do riot really need to takecare of We are going through à lot of changes right

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now in terms of trying to upgrade our pool and trying tobuy the pool from the city. Of course Coach Rose,being such a huge influence and obviously with hisaccolades from the past and that kind of fradition, theboard really doesn't have to do that much in terms ofmarketing. Coach Rose is the man and what he says isgolden. What he believes is golden. And we all believeit. The Board believes it. The Board completelysupports it. In fact this is probably one of the teams Ihave been a part of where the Board is almost too muchof a yes sir type board. It is ahnost scary sometimes,but I think for the most part. Coach Rose has completeconfrol. Those are my lucky stars, working for CoachRose.

Ricky: Ours situation is kind of a fricky one. Weactually swim under what we call the umbrella of PaloAlto Stanford Aquatics. It is basically coach directed,however, each individual site is still separatefinancially. For instance, our site is Board mn andoperated. The SCRA site is more of a coach mn team.They are actually part of Stanford University. Thecountry club sites are all basically owned and overseenby swim committees of those individual country clubsites. Most of the time we just make decisions based onour coaches. When we are at coach's meetings and thecoaches are able to make those decisions as a staff If itis anything major, especially if it is something financial,then we have to take the information and go back to ourBoard or to the swim committees, their club managersor Stanford. That is a fricky situation for us.

Question: A lot of us probably are in cost mnprograms. We have to provide enough numbers tojustify the workouts we offer. You were talking aboutoffering multiple practices to give them the choice. Iwould never be able to sell a program that had 4 kidsshow up for the Monday worJcout, 2 for Tuesday, 112on Wednesday, 6 on Thursday and nobody on Friday,and still pay the coach because the coach has to be thereregardless of the numbers that walk in the door. Thenon the second phase ofthat, I find a parent comes to meand goes, "how come you never work on breastsfroke?"Well, we do every week. Your child is never therebecause you pick and choose which workouts you aregoing to come to so you are going to miss that. Can'tyou go back and make it up? I can do that but whatabout all the kids who came that day? So we areworking in some complexities here. I understand whatyou are offering, but I think a lot of us probably have tooffer a program that your workout is Monday,Wednesday, Friday. Then the parent says well, I can'tmake Wednesday, can they come Thursday? No youcan't switch to another group. How do you deal withsome of this stuff?

Dave: When I came into the program we had one pool.It was 10 lanes and about 250-300 kids. We had tostmcture where you are practicing Monday,

Wednesday, Friday and at what times. You had to staywith that schedule. You had a set schedule and as wegrew with that one pool to 500 swimmers, we had toreally get a grasp and people would have to pick andstay on that day. We couldn't have the fiexibility wehave now and it worked. Now with that fiexibility it isnot as bad. We don't have two swimmers show up. Ifwe did have two show up, we would go for a couple ofweeks and if it continued we would say we are donewith that practice. That is where we have tocommunicate with the parents and say look, there are45 or 50 over here. Not everybody is going to movefrom their day that they are going to practice, but therewill be enough to make that other practice with just afew kids viable. We have one coach coaching everypractice so they are going to get constant repetition inour age group program. Eevery day they are going toget almost the same thing in some areas that we workedon just the day before. Geoff, our head coach, coachesour novice groups and he does the exact same practiceevery day in the novice group every week. Thatpractice he does Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,Thursday and Friday. They are only coming twice aweek and some might come three times. They aredoing the same practice. You have got to get thatrepetition. That is how they are going to leam. Thenthe next week he will build off of what they did thatweek before. They are going to show up and they aregoing to get that breastsfroke that they may have missedout per your example. That is the way we are doing it.I think you do have to be stmctured and I know it isharder for the smaller programs. 1 think some of youguys have different sites. You have 100 kids or 150kids at a site, how do you do that, you know?

Dave: I got this question asked to me the hard way. Iwas actually at the pool already. I was maybe 45minutes into practice and somebody tells me I got aphone call. So I go into the pool office. 1 havesomebody else look at the group for a second, figuringit is an emergency with my family or something. I pickup the phone and what I hear is, "I am not paying youto mn a sfroke clinic". I didn't even know who it was,he just starts coming into me with: you don't do this,you don't do that. When I finally figured out who it wasthen I had to address it. Well, we did do that on thisday and this would be your kid never comes. I foundmyself thrust into that exact problem. I said to myself,we have got to figure out a way to do this. There aretwo ways that I came up with and, by the way, this waswhen I was still coaching a younger, more novicegroup. So this applies I guess to everybody. There aretwo ways that you can do it. If you have a practice likea Tuesday/Thursday and you are trying to get someaerobic stuff done and mechanic stuff done byaltemating. You altemate which day you do what, so ifthe kid only comes on Tuesdays then maybe they getsomething the one Tuesday and then something else onthe next Tuesday. The other way to deal with it, this is

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actually what I still do now with the NationalDevelopmental Group, is one week we do breaststrokedrills. Breaststroke comes into otir aerobic stuff. Wejust do a lot of things with the one stroke and then wemove on to it the next week. That way, if they onlycome two or three practices, they are going to get theirbreaststroke that week and then the next week they aregoing to get their fiy. Then the next week they aregoing to get their back. Over the course of a seasonyou can say, no mater what day ofthe week you came,you are getting everything. You are getting a little bitof something. We are going to try to get youeverything and that is the best way for everybody.

Ad'm: Each division has a curriculum and althoughthis ctirriculum isn't published for the parents, it iscertainly explained and described to all the parentsbefore the season starts to inform the kids whether theyare choosing to come once a week, twice a week, threetimes a week or even all six days. If we are running aprogram that goes six day or even seven practices forsome of otir 12 & 13 year olds, the parents are informedfirst to let them know that if they do choose to miss aday for some specific reason, that they are ñillyinformed ofthe fact that they are going to be missing agood fraction of whatever the coach is trying toachieve. Based on the curriculum we go througheverything: pulling, drilling, kicking, breaststroke, fiy,back - everything. If a kid misses a specific dayroutinely each week, they are going to miss that specifickind ofthing. It is up to us coaches to cycle throughand make stire all the kids, especially those that alwaysmiss those Wednesdays or those Fridays, are gettingwhat they are supposed to. It is all aboutcommunication to the parents to inform them beforethey come. You can only do so much with parents whochoose not to even come to the information meetings.That is half the battle right there.

Tom: This question may be one that may take alittle bit longer to answer. If you could go throughfor your typical age groups and talk about practicelength or number of sessions that they are supposedto attend? Is there is kind of a main focus? Also, ifyou wouldn't mind sharing, what does it cost to bein that group? And finally, do you know the cost forall your groups?

Question from the floor: Since you asked such a bigquestion can we make it even bigger and ask how manyswimmers per group, per coach?

Dave Schreck: We have a very structtired progression.We have 12 practice groups. By the way, some of youmay not have been in the first session, we practice outof one facility. We own it and we have two 10 lanepools, so we have a pretty ideal situation. We have ourproblems because we do have a lot of numbers in thelanes and per coach. That can be a challenge. We have

a novice bronze, a 7 and under group. It is mostly 6and 7's.. It is part of otir lesson program actually, butthey can conipete and they only practice twice a weekfor an hour. All of pur novice groups only practice anhour. They are basically 8 and unders. We have arlovice bronze, a novice silver which is 7 & 8 year oldsand twice a week for an hour, and then novice gold isactually probably more of an 8-10 year old group. A lotofthe 9-10's| might be first year kids. We haveprobably 150 new kids in our program this year thanksto the Olympic bump. A lot of 9-10 year olds fall intoour novice, twice a week for an hour. They do have anoption to practice 3 times a week in our novice silverand novice gold. Then they progress from novice to anage group development group. There is a head coachfor each group and remember we have a lot of practicesoffered throtighout the week. The groups that mn foran hour have; anywhere from 20 to 35 swimmers and wewill have two coaches. So roughly 1:15. Some of youmight go, what? We have ja cap and we will allow up to10 per lane. ¡It is a lot of 25's, so they are getting out ofthe pool each time; It probably averages about 6-7 perlane, okay? Our head coach, our senior coach, coachesthe novice gold program and he is on salary. Is thatwhat you said? Yup and we actually have otherfalltime coaches that will help assist him as well. We .have got a lot of experience behind him as well helpingout. They aré salaried. We do have hourly coaches aswell that will help out in other areas of our program.Otir novice is anywhere from 5-$600 for the year (for 9months) or $90 a month. '

Then we go to age group development program. Wehave an age group developrnent silver and an age groupdevelopmentigold track. Our age group developmentsilver are 9-10 year olds and I have about 110 in thatgroup. They do not practice every day. They practicetwo times a week for an hour and 15 minutes. I haveprobably about 50% ofthat group. They practice 3times a week'. I encourage 3 to get that extra day ofrepetition. You are not going to train a 9-10 year oldnecessarily, but just get that extra skill work in there sothey and learii a lot quicker. 1 do have some 8 year oldsin that group as well that are getting ready to tum 9.They are a little more advanced, but it is still mostlyskills and drills and a lot of racing. They love it andyou have to do that with the age groupers. Leighcoaches the age group development gold program.That group is otir advanced 9-10 year olds. Theypractice three times a week for an hotir and a half.From there the next group is age group. We have threetiers of our 11-12 year old program. These are roughfigtires. Our age group development part of ourprogram is about $ 1100 to '$ 1200 for the year. That isan 11 month program. Our novice program is only a 9month. They go from September through basicallywhen school lets out in June. It's about $110 a monthand they can pay monthly; they can pay every threernonths or a lump sum, which we prefer. Both age

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group development silver and age group developmentgold are about the same in cost.

In the age group program we have three tiers in 11-12.We have the luxury of keeping abilify levels and theage groups together. We have an age group bronzewhich consists of 11-12 year olds that are novice.They are entry level kids and they practice for an hourand a half 2-4 times a week. That is also probablyabout $120 a month. The age group silver consists of amore experienced 1 l-12s. If you use the timestandards, they are BB kids. There might be some Akids in there as well, but they have still have a lot ofsfroke development and physical maturify that theyneed to go through. They practice for an hour and 45minutes and probably about $1,500 for the 11 months.Age group gold is our elite level 11-12 year olds. Theypractice 4-5 times a week for an hour and 45 minutes.The cost is probably about $ 1,700 a year or $ 140-$ 150a month.

From there it is my job to prepare them, because those12 year olds are moving on to our senior developmentprogram. We have three tiers there and this has alsobeen a new part of our program in some areas to helpcater to those kind of novice level 13 year olds wetalked a little bit about. We have senior developmentsilver and they practice 3-6 times a week. They canchoose as we are very fiexible there. A lot of thosekids are dual sports kids. They are 13 and over novicetype level kids up to pretty respectable almost statesenior champ type of kids. That cost is probably morealong the lines of age group gold - $150 a month. Thensenior development gold, there are two levels ofthat.13-14 senior development gois 5-7 times a week andthat is when they are really starting to get into somefraining. You are going to get a lot of our national level13-14's in that group and they are probably close to$200 a month in cost. It is all 11 months.

Then our senior program, we have two tiers there:senior silver and senior gold. Basically, it is based oncommitment level. Those are mostly 14 and older andnational level kids pretfy much across the board. Theypractice anywhere from 7-10 time a week for 2 hours.Their main practice is actually in the moming from4:30 to 6:30. They do get their doubles done in theaftemoon also. Cost on that one, 1 would imagine it isprobably about $250 a month for those kids. You cansee that progression we go through and we add a littlebit of time of course for each group. It is simple, but yeta little complex.

Question: Is this all on your website?

Answer: Yes, except for the cost. We do not publishthat. Descriptions of the groups I can answer that quic.I have actually been asked this question before.

Dave from Nova, VA: We have 8 levels and the rangein cost is from $600 for the mini level and that goes allthe way up to $1200 or $1300 for the National TrainingGroup. For all of these< we are talking about fromSeptember to April. For the summer group we offer alittle spring session, which is basically the same type offee for about 6 weeks based on a pro-rated version ofthose fees that I just mentioned. Only our advancedjuniors and national developmental and nationalfraining groups and advanced seniors get to have thesummer session. We do not offer all of the groupsduring the summer session because those kids aremainly summer league kids. Every group that we havehas a maximum number of workouts that are offeredand a recommended number of workouts that you cancome to. We start with the 8 and unders with 2 daysrecommended and 3 days offered. Practices are 1 hour.The junior ones, which is the novice 9-12's, is the samething: 3 days offered and 2 days recommended.Practices are 1 hour. Junior 2's, which is 4 stroke 9-12year olds. We offer 4 practices and 3 are recommended.Those are also one hour practices. The advancedjuniors are offered 5 times a week and we recommend4. Those are either 1 hour or 1 hour and a half practices.My group, the national developmental group, is kind ofa bridge between junior and senior. It is mostly 11-14year olds. We have 3 two hour practices and two 1hour and a half practices. There are 5 offered and 4required. That is actually where we have therequirements. Then in the senior level we have theregular senior group, which is a high school supplementor novice senior level for 13 and ups. There we have 4offered and we recommended 3. But, you can go less.Advanced seniors are 7 offered including 2 momingsand 5 recommended. The National training group weoffer 9 practices including a couple of momings and 6are required as a freshman and 7 are required as you goup.

Dave from Rockville Montgomery: Coach toswimmer ratio for the mini group we have about 40kids with 3 coaches. There will not be 40 kids there ona given day. There are 40 kids in that group, so I wouldimagine somewhere in the range ofthat actually showup on a given day. Junior 1 is the same with 3 coachesand about 40 kids. Junior 2 is usually a little biggerwith 40-50 kids and 2-3 coaches depending on the dayand the time. Each group has a managing coach, butthe assistants within the group are kind of placed byneed depending on how many kids actually enroll inthat type of group. Believe me, the county does notwant us to have any wasted hours. We are all paid bythe hour which is why I have to have a teaching jobalso. The advanced junior group there are 2 coaches inthat and about 40 kids in that. My group, nationaldevelopmental, is 24 kids and 1 am the only coachthere. Once in a while I will get some help, but notoften. Senior group, there are 2 coaches and about 40kids. Advanced senior group there are about 40 kids

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also. We have one coach that is there every time andsometimes assistance depending on what is going on.The National training group has one head coach andtwo assistants that come a couple of times a week, ofwhich I am one and they usually have somewhere in the20 range in that group.

Tom: Dave, your fees are basically also set by theCounty, correct?

Dave: Correct. The coaches determine what goes on inthe water, but everything else we have pretty much nosay on. We can recommend some things

Tom: Who pays the pool rental?

Dave: The county pools do not pay pool rental whichis the huge advantage. That is why our costs arerelatively low where all the private clubs have to paythe pools.

Ad'm: Okay, I will start from the bottom and work myway up to the top. Starting with the novice, we have 4tiers along with a transition group. The 4 tiers ofnovice are: novice 1, novice 2, novice 3, and novice 4.The first two are 9 and unders and the other two tiersare 10 and ups. Now of course there is a bubble basedon ability and we try to make sure that the kids are withtheir peers. It is one of those cases where we just try tokeep the kids within their peer group as much as wecan, especially as they make that jump from novice tohopeftilly the competitive side. Those 4 tiers, theypractice in the water for 30 minutes and have 15minutes of dry-land, whether it is constructive dry-landin terms of running or push ups, or just a team meetingdoing videos or talking about meets coming up. Theytrain 3 times a week. The first two groups trainMonday, Wednesday, and Friday. The other twogroups train Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. I thinknow with the transition group and having an infiux ofathletes coming in because of the Olympic bump; weare still tweaking that aspect, trying to figure water timeand available coaches. The 8 and unders, the 9-10's,the 11-12's and the 13-14's that are not in high school,those 4 main divisions are broken up by either 3 or 4different tiers. The top tier, the gold group, of all thosedivisions are roughly 20 athletes for that coach. Theblue group which is actually the second tier is roughlyaround 30 athletes. The silver group which is the thirdtier is roughly around 40 athletes. Now the averagedaily attendance is roughly around 20 athletes per day.The coach to swimmer ratio is about 20:1. Of coursebased on the size of the kid, based on the ADA andbased on their ability, that kind of helps us allocatewhat time their practices are. As far as the costs areconcemed, novice is roughly around 55 to $65.00 amonth. 8 and unders, I believe are between 65 and$85.00. 9-10's the cost is I believe between 95. and$115. 11-12's between 115 and $135. The 13-14's that

are not in high school,to $155.

their cost is roughly around $145

The age group program is structured all based oncurriculum. The 8 and under gold group, when theymove up to the division they move to the 10 and underblue. Of course there are talented athletes that areready for more training and they go directly up to the10 and under gold. Pool time: the 8 and unders train inthe water for an hour 6 da^s a week and I am talkingstrictly for the gold levels here. An hour in the waterand 30 minutes of dryland! Its very much like what theriovice program does. It is not a hard core dry-land. Itis just motor skill leamingidry-land, team meeting dry-land and getting them ready for the 9-10's. The 9-10's:that is wherelthings start to pick up just a little bit more.Coach Brian who is probably a master at puttingtogether not only the fun in dry-land, but reallyencouraging the kids to get together to be a part of moreof the team aspect' And Coach Sega who is our 8 andunder division director, those two are probably ourbiggest assets of the whole| entire team because that isliterally layirig the foundation for what the 11-12's haveto do. As fai| as dry-land is concemed, it is a major partof our curriculum. We do 40 minutes for every groupafter the 8 and under gold. The 8 and under blue, thesecond tier, they are roughly between 15 and 30minutes. It could toggle between each days or evenbetween the beginning and end of season. It is all basedon the ability and based on how many kids we have inthat bubble. The 9-10 gold group goes for an hour andal half in the water and 30 minutes of dry-land, 6 days aweek. The 11-12's train for an hour and 45 miriutes inthe water, 30 minutes of dry-land 7 times a week. Theygo every afteinoon and then a Wednesday moming.That Wednesday moming is strictly for getting themprepared forthe 13-14's. I

The 13-14 group will go 8 'days a week and go 2 hoursin the water in the aftemoon and 30 minutes of dry-landin the aftemoon, along with 1 '/Î hours in the moming.Now traditionally in the summertime I usually use thathour and a half in the moming for water time. Duringthe winter tirne I use it for dry-land. There is anextensive amount of dry-land time that 1 really try toallocate for these athletes before 1 give them to CoachRose's groups or the senior level. That is what most ofthose kids are moving up into. It is that small windowof opportunity to really beat the heck out of them andreally, really give them a taste of what swimming isgoing to be like once they jump into that senior,division. The senior division and this is almost acompletely different beast from what we do with theage group division. We have three tiers: Nationalgroup. Senior 1 and Senior 2. The national group Ibelieve the cost is $185 month. The Senior 1 is around$'175 and the Senior 2 around $165. That is all based onthe number of kids that traditionally come to thepractice and obviously water time too. The senior 2

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program, which is the transition from a novice, frainsevery day in the aftemoon for 2 hours in the water and30 minutes of dry-land. For senior 1 they train 9 timesa week. They go 3 momings and every aftemoon,including Saturday momings. That is also 2 hours inthe water and 30 minutes of dry-land. For the Nationalprogram I believe Coach Rose has his kids swim 10times a week. They go every aftemoon and everymoming except Wednesday. In the summertime, theyactually take Wednesday añemoon off and go in themoming so it is still 10 times a week. Yardage is allbased on the set progression that we have, buildingfrom a good 3-4,000 meters a day. I don't want you toquote me on these numbers as they are sfrictly theguidelines that we try to use to make sure the kidsaren't going from 2,000 meters to 8,000 meters whenthey move up to a different division. Traditionally 8and unders are between 2-3,000 per practice. The 9-lO's, I am talking about the gold level, traditionally dobetween 3500-4500 meters per day. The 11-12's dobetween 4500-5500, with a little bit more of anendurance test in the momings, trying to bump underthat 6,000 range. The 13-14's, I beat the snot out ofthem. I get them probably close to 7-8,000 meters.That is not every day, but probably about 2-3 times aweek they will do some quality work where we just getup and go swims and do between 5,000 and 6,000 sowe are hitting close to 40,000 meters per week with 8practices. Once you get in the senior division it getsmore specialized. Again, based on whether you are asprinter, distance or sfroke specialist. It is more or lesswhat group you fit best in and that range can bebetween 5,000 to 10,000 meters per practice.

Ricky: I will try to keep this short. I know we areprobably going way overtime and I will just speak toour site specifically at Palo Alto. I think it ends upbeing 10 different groups at our site. We have got three8 and under groups. One goes two days a week and onegoes 3 days a week, both for a half an hour. The thirdgroup swims 5 workouts a week for an hour. I don'tthink there are any kids or very few kids that wouldeven make all five. We have two 9-10 groups. Onegoes an hour and one goes an hour and 15 minutes. Wehave got two 11-12 groups. One goes an hour and ahalf, one goes an hour and 15 minutes. Two 13-14groups, one that goes an hour and a half and it kind offluctuates as we build it through the season from anhour and a half and it goes up to about an hour and 45as we get closer to high school season. The secondgroup goes 2 'A hours. One group has 6 workouts aweek, the other we offer 7 workouts. I try to get thekids to go to 6. We do one moming a week during theschool year. We bump it up in the summer time. Withthe kids that do the moming in the school year, theytake the aftemoon off so they go to one or the other.Then the senior group we offer 10 workouts a week, 4momings if you count Saturday, and 5 aftemoons.They are 2 'A to 3 hours per practice. We do our team

regisfration fee at the beginning of the season and it is$175. That includes T-shirt, USA regisfration, and thenfees that go to help with relays, team travel, and thingslike that. The dues range from $65 up to about $150 forour senior group. I would encourage you guys to gointo the websites and get some of the information.Somebody mentioned that. You could also email thecoaches. I am sure that anybody would be happy to getyou information.

Yuri: At my site I am just going to go over thecompetitive track. Our 8 & unders, we offer 3workouts a week. They are each an hour, keep in mindthat I pay about $125 an hour for 6 lanes so that isabout $1500 for the year. All of our programs arecompetitive programs. They are a flat rate. USASwimming regisfration included. Entry fees areincluded. It is a flat rate. They pay 1 think 40% byNovember 1. They pay 60 or 75% by January 1 andthen the final dues are due in March. SO our 8 andunders pay $1,600 a year. Our 9-10's, we offer 7workouts to them and I expect them to be at 3-4. Somecome 4-5 and those are all for about an hour and 30minutes. Those guys are paying a little bit over $2,000.for an 11 month program. Our 11-12's, the sameamount of practices a week, 7. Some of my upper levelguys I expect them to be there 4-5 times a week. Theyare all swimming for an hour and a half to an hour and45 minutes. They are the same price as our 9-10's, sothey are just a little bit over $2,000 for the year. Our13-14's, we offer 7 workouts and I expect them at 5,bare minimum. Those guys swim an liour and a half inthe momings and 2 hours in the evenings and they areclose to about $3,000 for 11 month. Then our seniorprogram trains 7+ workouts a week. They are all at aminimum of 2 hours at a time and those guys are Iwould say around $3400-$3500 for the 11 monthprogram.

Tom: Okay, just to do a kind of a quick reintroduction,this is the third part of our age group panel and just soeveryone knows who the panelists are I will just havethem go through real quickly and mention their clubthat they are with and what group they are coaching. Iam Dave Kraft I coach the National DevelopmentalGroup which is 11-14 year olds at RockvilleMontgomery Swim Club in Montgomery County,Maryland. Leigh Robbins: I coach Nova VirginiaAquatics in Richmond Virginia and I coach the SeniorDevelopment level of 14-18 year olds and the State andNational level 9-10 year olds. Ad'm Dusenbury: Iwork for Mission Viejo Nadadores. I am the 13-14Division Director. Ricky Silva: I coach at Palo AltoStanford Aquatics. 1 coach two 13-14 groups. YuriSugulyama: I am with the Curl-Burke Swim Clubwhich is located in the D.C. Metro area. 1 am the headcoach of the Holton Arms site which is in Bethesda,Maryland and I coach two groups: I coach a 12-15 yearold group and a 9-12 year old group.

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Tom: USA Swimming research shows that kids quitbecause swimming isn't flin and we could probablyspend the entire you know - couple days talking aboutwhat makes swimming fun, but if you can maybe giveone thing that you think that you or your kids think isfun. ?

Yuri: I think social events. The more you do them themore you schedule them — they are so much ñin. I havea lot of ñm as a coach. I know my kids have fun. Myparents have fun. We do a really big Halloweencelebration every year where everyone gets dressed up.A couple years we have done pool activity. That canget a little messy with the hair dye in the water -

really doesn't like that and we have also usedthe gym and that is a lot of ñin. Holiday parties - Iencourage all of my coaches to host holiday parties orhave or find a parent that hosts a holiday party. MovieDays: Celebrate birthdays. Find out when your kid'sbirthdays are and celebrate them and man - the kids getpumped for that. You know, have someone bringbrownies in on a regular basis. You know, I think asweet every once in a while is not a bad thing, but youknow - celebrating birthdays is a really fun thing and itgets the group together. You know, we have gonetubing before. We have played paintball. Miniaturegolf is a lot of fun because the kids get reallycompetitive. If you have mini golf near your pool takethem there - divide them into teams - make them keepscore and man - it gets intense - to the point where youknow there are some moral lines being crossed in termsof the way they are playing the game at the end, butanything you can do to get the kids together outside ofthe pool 1 don't think as coaches we do it enough and Ithink one thing at Curl-Burke that we have done a goodjob of is doing that - emphasizing it and I really try and1 really try and encourage all of my coaches that coachmy groups to organize that stuff and one thing that Ilike to do at the beginning of the year is — whenever —you know - I send out my insfructor email or anewsletter 1 always just ask for two parent volunteersper each group and the parents are more than happy tovolunteer. Some parents will take it upon themselves toorganize it so that every Saturday moming someonebrings a different - like someone brings 2 dozen bagels.You know - the kids love that - it is a lot of fun so getthe parents involved and social activities - a lot of fun.

Panelist: Yeah, I would agree. The social activitiesseem to be one of the big things that draws the kids tothe pool - whether it is in the water or outside thewater. We have done all kinds of things like moviedays. We have done breakfasts after practice. Some ofthe sites have done sleep-overs at the country club sites,but those seem to really draw the kids. As they get alittle bit older I know the kids really enjoy dry-land anddoing something out of the norm rather than justswimming for just 2-3 hours a day is doing some type

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of dry-land - mixing it up like doing med balls or corework as well as just doing basketball or ultimateFrisbee.

Leigh Robbins: I agree with all of those things and 1think that probably you know - at any size - any level -you can do those and you know organize them by groupand create that social environment, but you know 1tliink we really fry to sell that racing is fun andcompeting is fun and the ¡work in the practice and funnew ways. I mean, I love tihe idea board because I thinka lot of people have found ways to make practiceexciting and competitive. If it feels like racing - that iswhat they like. They like going to meets. It is more ofthat summer; league environment so you know - morediving in sets. More sets where they are going head tohead girls versus boys. You know, we do things calledMystery Meets where you know - you have to get upon the block and then figure out what event you areSjwimming and you know -j- we all do all kinds of things.I think another thing too -jwe do inner squad meets or ared versus blue meet where we try to mix it up. One ofthe single best things we did last year was those relaysthat we did - those relays that we did - theand and us had a Tri-meet - the Nationalage group meet in Noveriiber - what was that relaycalled? The; crescendo relays you know - where onekid from each age group - all boys - could swimagainst our best 7 boys age 9-14 swam their best 7 boysahd swam their best 7 boys and you would have thoughtwe were at the Olympics) It was - I mean - 1 havenever seen - I mean - we had kids that didn't go thatfast the rest of the year -I they were so scared - but Imean it was — the place was going crazy. We try to getour older kids and our younger kids together a lot. Wetry to get ouri older kids in the water — have them comein 15 minutes early and work on tums with the youngerkids at the end. Little kids love seeing the big kids. Iniean - that is real special for them so we try to, connectour older levels to our younger levels and we try to getour younger level kids out cheering for our older levelkids at senior type meets so I think we try to focus thefiin around the competitive! exciting part ofthat too.

Panelist: Exactly what she just said. That is probablyone of the pinnacle parts of making Programssuccessful is trying to combine a formula where we canhave our little guys swimming with our big guys. Wehave relays - we have clinics - we have team clinicsonce a month and we will have a division director - afulltime staff member - basically directed, but we willhave some of the national team swimmers run it anddemonstrate it and those little guys get so charged up -so pumped up to be able to be in the same lane with therelays at the end of the clinic — we will have bagels, wewill have oraiige juice - Saturday momings - again - itis just a blast. We will go down to the beach. We arefortunate to liave the beach a good 15 minutes away.We will go down - have an open water swim - do a

bunch of dry-land afterwards and then we will just havea picnic with the whole team down there and again - itis those social interactivities that we have within theteam that makes everything so much more enjoyableand I think it also kind of reinforces the fact that theteam is - we need each other and although we areindividually segregated from each other so muchthroughout the week - those Saturday momings whenwe can all just come together and have fiin is a blast.

Panelist: Again, same, same, same, same, same - wehave done all that stuff - laser tag - the getting racinginvolved. We have two things; on Halloween we havea great pumpkin thing where they pick sets out of thegreat pumpkin, but then the day after Halloween wehave what we call the sprint championship and the kidsin the higher level groups - we have them race in 25'sof each stroke and so you can't believe that you know —at the October meet - your kid going 9:30 in thethousand and this other kid is going 10:30 and then the10:30 kid beats him in a 25 free and he is fired up. So,that is what we like to do with the racing and stuffand Iwill say that the #1 attraction there that doesn't have todo with regular practice is our age group retreat wherewe have kids from my group and from the group belowus - we basically lock ourselves into the pool for 27hours and we do team meals there. We got guestspeakers come in. We do do a btinch of waterworkouts. We do video taping. We do all kinds ofclassroom sessions and things like that. We do games,dry-land - everything and they are scared to death to goto it, but once they go to it and then after they finish it -that is almost always what I look back on - when I getthose evaluations at the end - they think that is thehighlight of it and you know — again, it is not just aboutthe workouts - it is all the other stuff and just beingwith each other and things like that.

Tom: Our National statistics are approximately 60%girls - 40% boys and it is like inching up by a tenth of apercent every year to boys, you know - coming back alittle bit more and obviously again - the Michael Phelpsaffect - is there anything that your clubs do specificallyto keep boys?

Panelist: we have dry-land with balls and literally - interms of you know — we will play dodge ball — we willplay any type of game that we can actually have thekids - whether it be guys and girls -just have some sortof team activity that plays with a ball or a Frisbee orsomething to give them that kind of interactivity and Ithink it is one of the biggest elements that swimming ismissing that loses a lot of the kids to soccer andbaseball and basketball at the 9-10 and 11-12 range andespecially in Southem Califomia where water polo issuch a big infiuence as well - when you have a poolevery 5 square miles in South Orange County - we areconstantly losing our top swimmers to water polo justbecause of that kind of case so we try to develop that

kind of structure to the point where the boys do havethat kind of team atmosphere where it is not justchasing that black line, but I think a lot of the kids -especially the kids that I coach - the 13-14 year olds - alot of their motivation is swimming with girls in swimsuits, so again - we can always use that as a motivatorsome how or another.

Leigh: I think that we have worked really hard to try tostay about 50/50 and chart that progression and areconstantly talking about how we are doing with that andI do think a half hour of wall ball you know, beforeevery practice, is pretty critical for the boys. Youknow, I think one of the things this sport battles themost is that at 13-14 they like the girls, but at 12 andunder you cannot allow those boys to have to becompared to those girls. I mean - it is an unbalancedsituation and if they are constantly not measuring up tothe girls in your program and they are being comparedto them — both in how well they listen — both in howwell they behave - how you know - coachable they are12 and under - much less how fast they are. 1 mean Ithink if you are making a comparison between the boysto the boys about between them and the girls - they aregoing to get a message of inferiority. I mean - they aregoing to be looking for a place where they can shine.And girls are much more verbal in general so girls arertinning the show anyway you know and so I think youhave got to let them train together — even if they aredifferent speeds. You know, occasionally we spreadthem out, but 1 think other than that - I think the otherthing we do is we try to find very competitive meetenvironments. We do not go to the same old meets sothey can swim the same old people. You know, we killourselves - I say we probably do more than anything toconstantly evaluate whether that was a good meet to goto or whether we need to find a better meet or make abetter meet that they want to go to - that they getcharged up by going to. You know, we will travel withthem. You know, we will put them on a bus just to goto Raleigh for 24 hours because they are going to getexcited about racing RSA much more than they aregoing to get excited about racing each other and theguys down the street. So, I think guys love racing soyou have to find good races for them. If they are onlyracing in a really exciting environment when they aretapered or once or twice a year - 1 think that is too longof a span is what we found - at the younger agesespecially.

Panelist: you know, I think with the boys it issometimes kind of easy to figure out, but I know youwere talking about balls - you see them out there afterpractice every day - I mean - the 9-10 year old kids -as soon as they are done with practice the first thingthey do is they go in the team room and grab a ball andthey are playing kick ball or they are playing probablytackle football or I don't know what else - it is mostlyTricia's kids out there mnning around buck wild. You

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know, the boys are a little bit wilder than the girls andkind of, I think, like that freedom to be able to do alittle bit more. I think - in my experience - the boys donot like to be over-coached and have somebody kind ofdoing this to them. They kind of like that freedom tobounce around. I made the mistake of somewhatexplaining what being was to some of my kids - a taggame that some people have played - I am sure youguys have seen it on fio swimming so the boys do thatalmost every day in warm-up and they just bounce offeach other and kind of almost wrestle in the water andyou know - it is not the best warm-up, but at the sametime you give them that flexibility. And we are luckyenough - we do have a lot of good coaches - youngercoaches that understand the difference of the boys andthe girls and work well with the boys so he have had apretty good balance of boys and girls in the program.

Panelist: one thing - if your kids are just hangingaround on the deck talking - that is not necessarily abad thing I think. I schedule 20 minutes into mypractice so I will have them get there for 20 minutesand we call it sfretching. Sometimes I use it to talkabout like the drill that we are going to do that day, butsometimes you know - if they are just hanging outlaughing and having a good time and talking - youknow - sometimes I just kind of let them go and that iskind of hard because you know - I don't like to wastetime because we don't have a lot of time, but I thinkthere is real value in letting your kids grow and hangout and be together. You know, they get that elementin school right? You know I think their relationshipswith their school friends are very different than theirswimming friends so 1 think if they can bring a little bitmore of that social ness into the practice group youknow - they are going to want to come more. Youknow, they are going to want to improve with theirfriends and you know - 1 think the more that you canget your kids to view themselves as part of the team andto bui91d that communify aspect - not only amongstyour swimmers, but your parents as well and amongstyour coaching staff— you know - then you are going tokeep kids in the program. You know, whether or notthey are having fun or not - I think kids quit the sport -I think we lose boys if they don't recognize or they donot identify themselves with their respective team soyou know - anything that you can do outside of thepool which is to create situations where you know -they are thinking to themselves - I swim for Nova - Iswim for Curl-Burke you know? Then that is a goodthing, you know. But, you know, also having the waterand the training is also good too, but 1 think you have tobe fiexible and you have to be willing to let them - youknow - let them waste time - you know and let themhang out a little bit.

Panelist: It is a totally different question with the 12and under boy and the 13-14 year old boy also. Withthe 12 and unders you have the racing stuff, the playing

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games - if you can tag or beaver or whatever at the endof a practice - we actually let them play water polo andyou guys are different - nobody plays water polo in theWashington, D.C. area - nobody - so when we play it -it is like a special thing. They are really into it. Withthe older boys - to me and again - this is indicativemore of the D.C. area - these kids and I hate to stare at

swimmers - the long-legged, you knowmaybe a little clumsy on lland - they are not going torhake their basketball teams - they are not going torhake their football teams ¡and they are not going to bestars on theni even if they can, but 1 think there is moreopportunify for these guys - whether we are talkingabout college scholarships, recognition within thecommunify - getting your name in the newspaper orbeing a stud at your high school. There is a lot more ofthat available in swimming than there is in basketball orfootball and when they get old enough to understand -when they get to be 7 or 8* graders - they aré playingtheir other sports. A lot of my kids still play anothersport, but it is at the point where okay - look what youare doing. You just made the top 16 in Washington,D.C. area in the hundred fly. Are you one of the top 16bjasketball players in the Washington, D.C. area? Nochance. I mean - not even one of the top 16 in yourschool probably so that is the kind ofthing that I like tosell to older boys and they ¡kind of again - get a sense ofidentify as a: swimmer - whether it is for a club or ahigh school or whatever, but just - 1 am a swimmer andthat is good you know and I am going to be a swimmerfor the rest of my career! We push college stuff onthem really young. Like - you can be a college athleteis you stay in this pool. I tiiink one of the things that Iain most proud of is that my National Developmentalgroup which iends at 14, but so far of all the kids that 1have had, that have come ¡through my group that havegraduated high school - 70% of them are swimming incollege right now and that is something that I don'tthink would have happenejd if I had not pushed it fromback when they were 11 & 12 - well, you can do thisfor a long time - I did - 1| loved it - you know, if youreally start loving the sport; then you will do that too.

TOM: This next question|l somewhat hesitate to ask interms of how long it could take to answer so if youcould put in maybe two or three sentences - what iskind of your general overall philosophy of yourprogram. I do not want the - show my age here - theencyclopedia Britannica answer - you know - couldypu please in a couple of sentences talk about thephilosophy of your program?

Panelist: 1 will be quick. Family developing fastswimmers, but more importantly good people - goodcitizens and pride. j

Leigh: I think our biggest success comes and I thinkyou can do this at any size - an extremely competitiveenvironment. I mean - everything about walking in the

door at Nova is competitive - everything. It is anenvironment where we encourage it in everything theydo all the time. I think it is a collaborative coachingenvironment. I think one of the greatest advantages Ihave got is I got 6 wildly successful - wildlyexperienced coaches to go to when I run out of ideasand if you are in a small program - you know - 1 meanthis is the place to be, but like get the phone numbers -get the emails - 1 mean - you have got to find people toask questions of As a young coach 10 or 12 years ago- that is exactly what I did out of a smaller program isfind people - ask a million questions. Tradition ofsuccess - build a tradition within your own program -we have and every time somebody gets successful - sellthat success. It is going to make the next door easy towalk through and I think that we have leamed - notgive in to the joumey of the. urgent which is whatparents want you to do. I think we are willing to standtogether as a staff and let our ideas take root and bepatient. Again - three years is the minimum. I mean -you want to see something really happen - reallychange - plan on it taking 3 years. That is what we do.

Panelist: One of the things we really push is trying tohave a team environment which is kind of tricky giventhe multiple sites and different pools that we are at, butit stems from the senior level and when you get to thesenior level you really see the team environment andpushing the team over the individual and trying to letthat trickle down to the younger kids. You know —whether it be joint workouts - coming together at meets— things like that.

Yuri: One of favorite quotes that we talk a lot - ForbesCarlisle - who is a great coach in Australia said, "youknow, our goal wasn't necessarily to train champions,but to create an environment where champions areinevitable" and I think that is a great summation ofwhat all of us want to do. You know, we want to createan environment like we talked about where people arewalking in the door and you know - great things aregoing to happen. You know, if you sit around and Ihave heard so many coaches say you know - if you sitaround waiting for the next Ian Thorpe to walk intoyour door or for Michael Phelps to walk in your door -you know - you are going to be really disappointed.You know you have to create an environment wherethat is inevitable and I think that is something team-wide that we have been able to do, but family as well.You know the Curl-Burke family is something that wetalk a whole lot about. I made a joke earlier that wefeel like the mafia or The Firm - people call us TheFirm sometimes, but I like that idea that you know - weare all part of the big family and you know - thisemblem right here which you know - some of thoseguys are probably tired of seeing - you know - we liketo try and put that everywhere. If you have got a teamemblem put it on everything and get it out there - get iton T-shirts - get it on bumper stickers - get it on towels

you know, create that sense. Get it out in thecommunity - create a community out of your team andtry to get that "family feel".

Dave Kraft: When I first met my wife and we movedin together - she said, "how many RMSC T-shirts doyou have? Oh I don't know - a hundred? But that is abig one and I think overall the philosophy that we haveand maybe coming from a county program where thepolitically correct can rule, but having a place foreveryone. We have talked a lot about not just worryingabout the higher level swimmers, but having a place foreveryone from the two day a week to the 11 day a weekor whatever - not daily - 11 workouts a week.Progressionary development - all those kids from 2-11- you know - they have got to be able to work theirway up through the program and education in terms offinding out - teaching them what they actually need todo to get to that next level. We really go out of our wayto try to teach everybody about what being a swimmeris all about and I had a modest swimming careergrowing up and everything - I didn't know anythingabout what a swimming career should have been allabout until I really started coaching and getting in withthis club and getting in with the program - getting themto love it. I told the kids - I mean - I told you guysabout college, but I tell the kids all the time aboutcollege experience and just trying to say, you can be inthis forever and even when you are done with college -I mean - look at me - I am a lifer you know and that iswhat I would love for everyone of my kids to be able toexperience just trying to sell them on the sport that weall love that is so great and educate them about why it isso great and why you can be a swimmer for life.

TOM: What is your most satisfying moment as an agegroup coach?

Panelist: I think one thing that I really find satisfyingis watching your kids do something that they didn'tthink they could do - if it is a hard set or a great swim.I think all of us as coaches - you know - they show thatdoubt at first, but if you can just get them over thathump - that initial hump of disbelief and get thembelieving and get them to do something that they didn'tthink that they could do whether it was a really hard setor you know - a big break-through in time — personallyfor me - that is what I love to see.

Panelist: For me it is seeing one of the athletes that hascome through the program do well at the senior leveland have that success at the senior level — whether it issomeone that won Junior Nationals or you know - onesectional - things like that. With our site - most of thekids if they have come through the program they havehad all of the 5 coaches at our program so it is nice tosee everybody had a hand in that success of the athleteand seeing them at that top level at the senior level.

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Panelist: I totally concur, but I think one of the mostsatisfying moments that I have had as an age groupcoach is beating Nova. I mean - like I said - that is thehuge rivalry that we have and we use that as much aswe can to rile the kids up, but beating Nova in theSpring 2006 JO's by 4 points - it came down to the lastrelay - 13-14 800 free relay - it was just phenomenal,but I think also it really helped us to find who we areand what we have been trying to do and like what Davehas been saying and all of us up here have been saying- seeing the kids go through the ranks. Seeing them gothrough so much and so much blood, sweat and tearsand seeing what they should be getting and if it is notnow - they are going to get it - whether it be in highschool - college or post-college so again - that isprobably the most satisfying thing that I think a lot ofus can try to attribute to is just seeing these kidsdevelop themselves as not only good swimmers, butjust good people in sociefy.

Panelist: Yes, yes, yes, yes 1 mean - that is it. Thedoing things that they didn't think that they could do. Ifyou are looking at a singular moment - that is definitelya great one like I very frequently at the very beginningof a kid's time, we have a little incoming parents andkids meeting - the kid's time when my group starts andwe have this meeting and I say well - you know - 1don't know if you knew this, but you are going to makeJO's in six events this year and they are like what??But I have never made it before - but you are going to -tmst me. Now, you are going to be able to find thisyear you have never made a final before and then whenit actually happens at the end of the year they just feel100 feet tall and it is great and then also - what Ad'mwas saying about the stuff and the virtual clubchampionship might not be a big deal to a lot of people,but I think - especially around our community andaround our area - now that RMSC has won it a coupleof times - it really feels like a lot of justification for alot of things we do just because we don't have themeans to really market ourselves like some of the otherclubs do and you know - we are a private club and thatis what it is. It is not even about that, but the peoplethat have been in there and there are a lot of lifers -Curl is the same way - there are a lot of people in likeYuri who came up through Curl and now is coachingand giving back - it is the same thing with us and theteam pride that we talked about. You just - you know -we feel very proud and a sense of accomplishment thatwe are doing all this stuff at the National level. We aresending this many kids to Juniors or win the age groupchamps - the team pride is a really big thing and if yourkids start to believe in that then they really will work alot harder you know with each other and they will wantto achieve those goals together.

Leigh: 1 think if you are waiting for the big win youdon't do this for your life you know? It is not themoney. 1 think every time you tell a kid - 1 think it

takes a lot of guts as a coach to tell the slow BB - youknow - BC level kid what they could be and sell it andthen watch them be willing to spend 6 months,, 1 year, 2years, 3 years to fearlessíy go after the ideas that youplanted in their head and j ou know - 1 know a bunch ofthe senior level coaches here have talked about it fortheir Olympic level athletes, but it starts at the agegroup level — is you are selling vision. You are castingvision for these kids and so you have got to see theirpotential and then you have got to help them followthrough on it and so every time that least likely kid - itmakes it worth it - it keeps you going to coach and then

like - also too - 1 like winning the big stuff becauseII think what you see is it is not about having one greatteam - it is about watching young kids grow intoleadership roles. I would say that the times that wehave done best at nationals or won spring junior or beentop 3 - there^has been a point over a 5 day meet where akid - where'they have taken confrol of the leadershipand there is nothing that I like more than when thecoaches do not have to say a word and when we areable to stand up there and we have raced kids to bethere for three or four years that have been raised undergood kids who understand the value of leadershipwhich is critical and they tum around to theirteammates and go - we have got to win this - you havegot to step up. You have got to do this. Here is what Ia'm willing to do, you kn'ow? We have been able todevelop leadership. I think that is hard to do in thisculture.

Tom: Dave, you kind of mentioned that you are ateacher also and my guess' is like a lot of coaches, youteach to support your coaching habit. (Dave: I haveused that exact line) To the group — How do youbalance your lifestyle with the job that can be allconsuming? !

Dave: Now it is harder. ¡ I have a daughter now — Ihâve a baby daughter so it is even worse you know -just budgeting the time and things like that, but I don'tknow. I do teach to support my coaching habit. 1 am ina good position in that - I am a calculus teacher so thatdoesn't change. 1 do the same year after year. I got mynotebook and I don't havejto do a whole lot of prep sowhat am I doing in my planning periods? Well, I amlooking up swim times and writing workouts and thingslike that so tiiat is a luxury| for me to be able to do that,but I think the main thing is 1 love to coach swimmingand I really enjoy being with all the families and thingslike that and I have heard the word "family" come out a

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lot of times. 1 don't even see that. Like my wife is like-¡Oh my God — you just worked 85 hours this week andit| wasn't even a meet weekend and I am like - well - itis not even work. It is not; even work to me and then Icome home and I am on the computer - I am writingmore times. She goes - why are you still doing work?It is not work - it is just what I enjoy doing and I knowyou can't just say okay - you are going to love it that

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much, but I am sure that a lot of people in this room arein the same boat and if you just kind of keep thatperspective that yeah, you are spending a lot of time. Imean - my wife — when she first got into it and she isnot a swimmer - never has been - she starts coming tothe meets and she gets into it. Now, my daughter -juststarted to walk - she is running around the deck youknow - she is there - she is at all of the meets and thekids love her and everything and your family becomespart ofthat. It becomes a bigger family so that is what Ihave done personally to cope with an excessive amountof hours and drink a lot of Mountain Dew so you don'thave to sleep.

Yuri: I think one thing that - you know - being one ofthe younger coaches on the staff of Curl Burke - a lotof the older coaches at some point you know - they willsee me on the deck because I coach a lot of differentage groups so I will be in an open meet from 6 in themoming until you know 7 in the evening — I think atsome point all of them have said to me you know -pace yourself and you know - I think we are all prettydriven people and we all want to do well and we allwant to be on deck and we all want to be you know —outworking the next person, buy you know - one thing1 leamed from Rick pretty early on - you know RickCurl was never - you know - one night a week hedidn't coach our workout - even when Tom Dolan wasgetting ready for 2000 games — Rick was at home withhis 5 kids and his wife, sitting down to eat dinner andso I think it is okay to be selfish every once in a whileand take an aftemoon for yourself because you know -I guess the idea is that even though in the short termyou might be missing that set and I know

, but I would think that the long termbenefit of having that time to you know - to take careof life stuff you know? Like after a 4 day meet youknow laundry - you pay your bills - all that stuff thatjust kind of gets in the way of coaching so I think it isokay to be selfish every once in a while and take anevening you know? I mean - for how many of us youknow do the hours of between 5 and 7 exist? Youknow? I don't know so I think that it is good that forevery once in a while for them to do.

Panelist: yeah that is a fricky one. I know personally -me - like everyone - work a lot of hours and I basicallyleave the house about 5 or 5:30 every day and get homeabout 7:30 or 8 at night so it is a pretty long day.Luckily I don't have kids - 1 do not have a family that Ihave to - you know - that would be really fricky - 1 amnot sure how that would be balanced. One of the thingsthat 1 try to do - no offense to the coaches because 1 dohang out with the coaches a lot, but also I try to hangout with people that know nothing - do nothing withswimming - a lot of friends outside of the swimmingworld (? Do those people really exist?) yeah and youknow it is nice to step away and just get away fromswimming - you know - go up to San Francisco - get

out of town and have nothing to do with anybody that isinvolved with swimming — again — no offense to any ofour coaches.

Leigh: I am not going to lie - 1 think that you know - 1remember the first year 2002 when I took over theSenior Development part of the program I knew that 1had one season to come in and make an impression andget it right and if you don't get it right that first seasonthat you are working with National level kids - they arenot going to tmst what you are going to do with them inthe second season and I will probably spend a yearkilling myself And that is not the first time I have paidthat price and I think many of you have done it and Iguarantee everybody up here - that is what we do isyou know - you find a way and you put it first and youget results so you know, but I can't - to stay in it youcan't keep doing that and I don't think that I could workfor somebody that expected that of me and the fortunatething is Geoff has 30 years of experience and forces usto take weekends off and we assign them well ahead oftime and we have got enough staff to cover it and evenif we didn't - we have to talk each other into cancelingpractices in order to do it - it is like group therapy.You have got to do it and I wouldn't even stay at theRiviera. I have got to separate. I have got to have awhole other set of things going on in my life in orderstay and give it 100% when I am in the middle - it isnot easy.

Ad'm: This is probably one of my weaknesses. Ireally do not know how to take time for myself CoachRose has to force me out of the office sometimes. Hehas to tell me that I have to go surfing with Brian. Hehas to tell me just to go home and ironically enough -the past six months - which is kind of funny - the kidskind of got charged up about it, but it was actually moreof a goal for myself I don't know if you guys ever goto this show, "American Gladiators", but pretty cheesy,pretty funny show, but I thought you know - I grew upwatching that - I am going to go for it — why not - whynot? So, I live about 6 miles away from home — bikeroad — ride my bike every day to and from practice. Itgave me an excuse to eat at the office and not go outand just get junk foot - dropped like 15-20 pounds -got pretty sfrong. Forgot that I got denied, but hey - Ifried. I fried and it was cool because it almost kind ofgame me the outlet of not always sfressed about howmy kids are going to do this weekend - not sfressedabout what workout we are going to do that day andbecause I don't have a social life - because 1 don't havea wife or kids or anything - that is - 1 really try toconnect with and now that I have a little bit more of anunderstanding of what I can do to set goals for myselfthat is what I have to do. Just get out and do somethingdifferent for myself Like what all these other coacheshave been saying - be selfish you know? Spend sometime with non-swimmer friends and do something for

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yourself. (If you get married then somebody will takecare ofthat for you.)

Tom: Kind of as we start to wind down - is there anyadditional I don't know if it is "piece of advice" orsomething that you would like to share you know - thatwe didn't ask you - I definitely have like 35 morequestions to go - you know - we could spend all week,but is there anything else that you know - maybe youwould like to share that you know - you didn't get thechance to?

Leigh: the only thing I say and I want to answerya'all's questions too because I think I want to do that,but the thing I like best about sitting up here with theseguys is it is being able to think outside the box. I mean- you cannot run the same program season in andseason out on the same formula with the same meetschedule. You are not going to get a result. I don'tcare what what size you are. You have got toconstantly challenge your own ideas - find somebodyelse to do that. I think we do that constantly and I meanI think no where greater than in the meet schedule. Imean - I know - you know -just Ytiri and Dave and Ihave spent a huge amount of time talking about otirmeet schedule for the next season. We will beintimately involved in creating meets you know - Imean - creating meets that we want to have that arecompletely outside the box - age group wise - youknow - trials and finals - long course - short course -you know - what times of the year and we will do thatat the age group level and not just the senior level - atthe age group level to create and innovate. I think youhave got to - for what you need you can make it moreexciting. You can make it better so 1 find that to behuge for us.

David Kraft: You can make it better is such a greatthing to say because again - when I was coming upswimming - I mean - 1 wasn't good - these people thatare doing things in my group - I mean - I have neverbeen faster than them you know - my whole life andthe kids that are making Junior Nationals now that I amcoaching and stuff like that when I never sniffed thatpersonally and even when I first came to RMSC and Iwas coaching the novice groups 1 never thought that Iwould be sitting here talking to other people that I havenever met before about my coaching experiences andeverything and it is just little by little if you work hardyou can do it - 1 know that sounds so cheesy - I amrunning for President, right? But you know — do not setlimitations for yourself or for what yotir group can do.1 had already somebody come and ask me a questionduring the break about what could they do with thisgroup - they only have 20 kids in their whole programand you know - I started telling her about some thingsthat I used to do when 1 had 20 kids in my little seniorgroup and things like that and that is what happens.You start building it up and if you are willing to put the

work in and take time to ¡do it, little by little you willstart having these huge goals because you know - whenone person in yotu" program does it - then two peoplewant to do it; and the next thing you know you got yourwhole group going for something or your whole clubgoing for soihething. j

Panelist: Treat every athlete the same. I cannot stressenough how' much I have leamed in the years that Ihave tried to become and develop as a better coach.Y ou treat every kid - the slowest - the fastest - thetallest - the shortest - treat every kid the same with thecompassion - the love I - the respect and moreimportantly - the honor. I mean - feel honored that youare their coach because I can definitely guarantee youguys - it will be reciprocated. Those kids feel and thinkthat you literally walk on water - all the knowledge thatyou spill on them every day - everything that you share^ whether it be swimming' related or not. I have morekids coming back to me n'ow that I have actually beenin this game long enough as a coach - they are comingback and they are just making me feel like - 1 reallyknew something when I was 22 or 23 years old - when

really, really didn't, but more importantly - it hadmore of an affect on what and how I expressed myselfto the kids I am ctirrently coaching and what kind ofaffect it is going to have in the next 10 or 20 years -especially if I am going tolcontinue to do this as what 1am doing now which I hope I am, but again - that isprobably one; of the things that I can always share withyounger coaches. • My assistant coach who is thisawesome - he is 19 or 20 years old - so energetic -reminds me of who I was when I was that age, but Ialways try to Just remind them —just treat every kid thesame because everything cpmes back around so again -uke that if you could. |

Panelist: 1 think one ofthe things - just - you know itis okay to really think outside the box -1 guess - to usekmd of a cliché term - you know otir whole program iskind of built that way. It is not a traditional mergerwhere it is just everyone came together and it is underone pool or everyone ;. As into one program - it isai lot of individually sites that do a lot of individualthings - overall for the betterment ofthe program.

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Panelist: Establish prettyjearly on with the parent andthe swimmer who the coach is. I got myself iri trouble...... not really, but with a 12 year old girl this year. Igave her too much rope at the beginning of the seasonand she tried to pull a fast one on me at ourchampionship meet this past year and when I look backoh how things were - you know - I made the mistake ofnot laying the grotmd rules early enough to this athleteahd that is sohiething that I think - you know - don't beafraid of them, but let people know that you are thecoach and you know what you are talking about andthat you have a plan. |

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Leigh: Just to build onto that. I mean - you have gotto be willing to - if you want to build a program - firstof all I think you need to know where you want to be in5 years. I think that is the minimum number. I think ifyou dot have any idea where you think you can be in 5years you are going to have frouble building - goinganywhere in one year. You have got to have aminimum of a 5 year plan. That I think is the minimumand I think if you get - I think the staff needs to be onboard with that plan and I think that you have got to bewilling to lose kids. You have got to be willing to letthem walk out the door. You know, and that is whereDavid - David is the guy - you know - we could sitthere for an hour and if one kid is threatening to quit ifthey don't get what they want and he is going to makeevery argument for that kid and I am going to makeevery argument for the program and the value ofholding the standards and the minute we compromisethat standard we are compromising this group and youknow — so and one of us doesn't always win because Ithink you have got to have standards that you arewilling to lose kids for the protection of what you arebuilding. That doesn't mean you want to lose kids. Itdoesn't mean you freat you know - every problem thesame way - you know - in or out, but I think you don'tcompromise your plan and your structure at the whimof the parent - it is going to be hard though.

Question from the fioor - inaudible -Panelist: But that never happens - no. Just kidding.Yeah and you know - we also have other things to dealwith like you know - size of club or in my case - youknow — being the public mn club you know - we can'tmake a career as coaches so it happens with coaches too- they go from place to place and what Leigh was justsaying about keeping the integrify of your program -the people that are going to leave are the ones to me -that are going to be disgmntled almost anywhere theygo. I mean - I hate to say that is never the program'sfault because I am sure that sometimes it is, but for themost part if you are consistent and set up that programthe way it needs to be - the people will you know - bestructured there people that need more attention thanother people. There are people that you know - don'tget along with a certain group of kids that are in thegroup and they are always - there is always the risk ofleaving, but you know - we are competitive - I mean -Curl-Burke - ?????? - we are just two out of an LSC ofwhat? 25 teams that are really close together in termsof proximify. So there is always that chance and I hateto say it but yeah - you do have to be okay withsomebody leaving if it is not the right fit for them - youdo not want to have to make them uncomfortable andnecessarily make them conform to you either and again- I very much sympathize because my club has enoughpeople that if somebody leaves it is not going to breakus financially or anything like that and so I cannotrelate to some of your problems, but if you find the

integrify of the club to be consistent then the peoplewill stay that you want to stay.

Leigh: Yeah, you want to be one of the best in thecountry or the best in the area or the best in your region,but you can't spend too much time looking at whatother people are doing. Coach the kids that walk inyour door you know? Folks will know you are makingthem better. I mean - you will make yourself crazy andyou will hurt your own program by constantly worryingabout that you know? I think it is just constantly tryingto surround yourself with people that are on board withthe same goals and the same vision - you know - thatcoach that coach that wants to you know - get as manykids as he can together and go - I mean - I guess ithappens, but I think more often it just happens that kidsare program shopping so it is not necessarily a coachthat does that - it is more the parents and the kids thatare kind of looking around. You know, somebody goesfast one year - the age of their child so maybe that iswhere they need to be so you go more and more - Imean - I think everybody deals here with programshopping as opposed to coaches doing that.

Panelist: The nature of the business is such that youknow - a coach would have to be able to take like a lotof kids to justify a pool rental someplace else and poolsare not growing on trees either so you know - it is afine line to go so it is more individual Iwould say.

TOM: I want - a heartfelt thanks to the panel and toDave for being part of the panel also because - I knowthat I have leamed a lot and I have been to a few ASCAClinics over the years and it is just you know - thankyou so much for your time and your knowledge andyour willingness to share your expertise with the groupand I guess the other thing I would also mention to thegroup and to people is that I know that John Leonard istrying to find you know - different things and we triedthis for the first time so that if you think it was goodand valuable please let John know that you would liketo see something like this continue and you know -maybe next year we do something where you know -we don't have - you know - for some of you whatwould seem like Mega club coaches appear, but I thinka lot of the principles and the concepts were the sameso again - please let John know what you liked - whatyou didn't like or let myself know and I can pass italong and again - also - if you have additionalquestions I know the panelists would be more thanhappy to answer them afterwards, wouldn't you? Soagain - thank you very much to the panel - you guyswere awesome.

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