This is the short speech I had with young swimmers and their parents after all pre-regional swim meets, to hopefully influence positively the content of the drive home.
In 2016, I was coaching at a pre-regional swim meet where our new and young swimmers, who had yet to swim under 4 minutes in the 200 IM were competing.
To spice things up, to make it more exciting for the kids and to teach them the importance of standing out, the coaches and I created the Skittle cup award. Coaches selected a boy and a girl swimmers who had stood out to them with their performances (best times were not considered for something that stands out) or with any other positive behavior that caught their attention. The winners got a cheap $2 plastic trophy from Dollorama with a big bag of skittles in it. The Skittle cup. Other swimmers who had stood out for the coaches, but not enough to win the cup, were named as the notable mentions.
At the end of the meet, the coaches gathered all the swimmers and their parents to announce who the Skittle cup winners were. They started by explaining the meaning of standing out and giving examples of how it can be done for the benefit of both the parents and their swimmers. While the coaches were announcing the notable mentions, it was easy to see that some swimmers didn’t agree with their choices.
In that moment, I started wondering what these swimmers and their parents would talk about in the car on their way home. I felt I needed to address the situation to insure the ride home conversation would be empowering and not just a long justification of why the coaches were wrong to not name this swimmer as a notable mention.
After announcing the last recipients, I spoke to the group: “I can see in some of your faces that not all of you agree with the coaches on who deserves the cup or the notable mentions. It’s OK to not agree because the coaches did not choose the winners with very objective criteria. Our choices are very subjective because it’s about how what you do makes us feel. So we may have very well totally missed out the moment where you feel you were standing out too. ”
Parents and swimmers alike were paying attention amidst the chaos ensuing a swim meet with little ones.
“I’m looking at some of you and I almost can hear what you’re thinking.”
Pretending to be a swimmer thinking I changed my voice and said: “Coaches are stupid, they didn’t see me, I was standing out more than so and so. It’s not fair.”
Some kids were nodding their heads in agreement.
Going back to my normal voice I continued, “It’s OK to think like this, but it’s not going to help you stand out at the next meet. Instead of using your anger to make the coaches and the whole world wrong, you could see it this way.”
Changing again to my swimmer voice: “coaches can make mistakes too, maybe they really didn’t notice me when I was standing out. Next meet, I’m going to show them by standing out even more that they made a huge mistake today. I will make it impossible for them not to notice me.”
The light in many of the parents eyes lit up as they heard me say this.
“If you want to make it impossible for us to not notice you, you can practice standing out in workouts! For example, Jack got a notable mention today because his 4 streamlines in his 100 free were super tight, like that of pros! If in workouts you practice making your streamlines super tight, it might be easier at the next meet to make us notice how you stand out.”
I could see the anger, disappointment disappearing from the face of the swimmers who had prompted this talk with the group.
“So when you are in the car in a few minutes, talk about what you will do at the next meet and how you will do it to make us notice you. No need to waste time complaining about the coaches and the mistake we made with you. Understand?”
Parents understood and now had an opportunity to make the ride home with their athlete very constructive.
This little talk became part of the process of naming the Skittle cup winners after each of these pre-regional meets as the coaches felt it made a difference.
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