It Finally Boiled Over

The Viking is gonna be typing a little slower than usual for a while...

I have hardly blogged all summer. I have just been too busy. Renovations, teaching, high school swim, summer league, USA coaching, swim lessons... in a small town the swim program can often seem like a one horse show. I have tried a few times to write about it all, but have abandoned the post every time. The frustrations I have are aimed in too many directions, and none of it is really anyone's fault. It just all adds up to being more than one person can handle.


I put in at least four weeks of over 100 hours on the clock this summer. Physically, that isn't so bad. For a large chunk of my life that has been the norm. That is the coaching life. I chose this over commercial fishing. At age 15, the first job I ever had took me away from home for a week where I worked shifts as long as 41 hours, and I was sea sick for most of it. I can handle the grind, but now that I have two little girls at home I struggle with missing them. I cried when I missed their first jumps from the diving board because I had a Sunday night meeting. I can deal with being tired and watching my body slowly fall apart, but this is new.

My classes started today. My renovations aren't done. I am not ready at all. Not ready for class. Not ready for high school swim season. We are hosting a meet this Thursday and I can't find our stopwatches and back-up buttons. I can't secure an official. We still have no seating of any kind and we have about 90 lockers on the deck that were supposed to be installed over a week ago. The new filtration and chemical systems aren't adjusted and automated yet. I don't have time to do the things needed to get the pool ready. We are using it and can actually swim, but when kids are in the water, my hands are tied regarding getting anything else done. What in the hell kind of a job can you work from 5:30am to 8:30pm six or seven days a week and still have work to do when you get home? No one would ever guess a swim coach could claim that. The other teachers laugh and give me a funny look when I talk about how stressed I get. Especially in the summer.

Tonight is also the first practice for the club. Since we could not find a coach, I am back in the game. I love doing it. The club is my baby, but it is a huge sacrifice for family and my stress level. I am not handling it well and the season hasn't even started yet. I had my main assistant back out on me, which means that since I have so many conflicting high school meets the club won't have any coach at all on deck for about half of the meets on the schedule. Another part of the stress is simply that I am in a state where high school coaches can't coach their high school swimmers outside of the season, which means that when I have to coach the USA program, my school gets screwed. I am making all of the other schools better and am forced to exclude my swimmers from the elite groups. They are swimming (if I find an assistant,) but they must swim with the novice groups because they cannot be directly coached by me. There is no way around it. Once again, small town kids get screwed. The cities have multiple clubs to swim at; the small towns don't. My club serves multiple small towns and with it being so hard to find coaches, it puts my swimmers at a disadvantage. I heard once that coaches in Michigan won a lawsuit to force their state to drop those restrictions, but I don't have the time or money to pursue that. I would if I could. Every year we search for coaches, and there just aren't any. The rules are supposed to be about making things equal. Right now they are keeping my athletes from getting the same opportunity as everybody else.

Either way, it doesn't matter. The only other option would be to shut down the club. I am not okay with that. It would doom me to never having a chance to have success for the remainder of my career, and more importantly swimming in our area would go back to the dark ages where swim moms didn't understand why their swimmer who wins all the time in the summer league isn't being offered full rides and Olympic team spots. Before my club got here, no one knew about the great big world of swimming out there. The kids who live here deserve the chance to truly pursue excellence. That is why I built it and I was fully aware of the high school restrictions when I did.

The problem is, I am starting to crack. This life-consuming job is fundamentally changing who I am. I have developed anger issues. Today I got angry about the stupid pool vacuum. I punched the wall. I have three fractures in my wrist. I am an idiot. I haven't always been an idiot. I promise.

My wife told me "please don't punch anything else today."

My response: "You don't have to worry, baby. I look like a dork when I throw a punch with my left hand. I don't want to look that stupid."

I have already started telling the kids I got attacked by ninjas. I don't think they're buying it.

Nighttime Snack: The Athlete Coach Relationship

I seem to be the new go-to for stupid swim related *&%# on the internet.  Yay!  Keep it coming, people!

****WARNING*******Use of the "F" word at the end of the clip.******WARNING*******

Magic in Water

 I'm dreading the end of the outdoor pool season.  Indoor pool season just isn't the same.  Where I live indoor pool season means it's gray, cold and dreary outside.  Everything dies;  leaves on trees, grass, flowers, and especially my happiness.  My happiness is inextricably tied to my daughter's happiness.  That happens when you become a parent.  The fact that I have 3 daughters and they're all 8 years old and one is on the autism spectrum means someone (at any given point) is not happy.  Therefore my happiness quotient is usually leveled as well.  But something happens in the summer...something magic.....especially for my daughter, Kate.  You see, there is no "cure" for autism.  But in my house, for Kate especially, there is a magic in water.

Autism is a developmental disorder that affects a person's ability to communicate and be social.  Most people with autism have issues with their sensory system;  things are often too loud, too crowded and generally "too much" to handle. They may not know exactly where their body is in space which is disorienting.  There's a "spectrum" so some people with autism are "high functioning,"  they may seem unusual or quirky.  Some people are "low functioning" so they may not speak at all and have distruptive behaviors.  Kate is somewhere in the middle, I guess.  She speaks but she's not really conversational.  Simple back and forth is about it.  She's learning to play with others and she's giving us much more eye contact.  Things are improving but like the saying goes, it's a marathon not a sprint. 

During the summer, in the sunshine, in the reflection of a clear blue pool, Kate comes alive.  She lives at the pool, she cannot get enough.  It's incredible to see the transformation.  It very much is like a caterpillar emerging from it's cocoon and blossoming into a butterfly.  In the water Kate is much more talkative.  She uses more words to form sentences and she describes things in much more detail.  She looks right at us and she's also extremely playful.  Instead of keeping to herself she commands our attention;  ring around the rosie, jumping into our arms, dunking games and singing songs together....it goes on for hours.  She's connected to us, she's with us, she is a part of us.  

Kate has also learned to swim this summer.  Missy Franklin she's not but she's able to be safe in all depths of water and she can easily swim to the side of the pool.  Her favorite thing to do is float...the poor lifeguards...she floats facing downward and can hold her breath for a really long period of time.  It looks scary if you don't know what she's doing.  She can do that forever.  She taught herself a breaststroke kick this summer.  I don't know how-she must have seen her sisters do it since they were working on it all summer.  Drowning is the number one cause of accidents/death for children with autism so her safety was paramount.  I don't care if she doesn't know who George Washington is...the kid's gonna swim. 

There's something about the warm sun on her face and the water.  As fall approaches I'll take her to the indoor pool and even have her splash around in the tub (which has always been calming for her) but it's not the same.  Over the next few years we're looking at moving somewhere warm again.  As beautiful as it is to watch her emerge during the spring and summer it's heart breaking to watch her fade away in the fall and winter.  We get used to "having her around" not just in body but in spirit.   It's the greatest gift.  I treasure every moment.  I take hundreds of pictures and probably hours of video of her "alive," happy, connected, laughing, looking right at us, asking us to play, giggling with glee and precious moments.  Because there's magic in water.

Nighttime Snack: Man Steals Swimming Pool

Yup, that's where the fun used to be

 Some guy in Massachusetts stole a family's 24 ft diameter/52 inch deep above-ground swimming pool and sold it for scrap metal.  It took him 3.5 hours to disassemble it while the family was at work.  

Steal a kid's pool?  Why don't you just run over their puppy?  That's just mean.  My kids would need years and years of therapy to recover from this.  They caught the guy;  charged him with trespassing, larceny and being a grade A schmuck.                                                                                  

Yet Another Unreasonable Firing! Sue Everyone!

Maybe he has a chance as a beach lifeguard. Or a contractor.

It's ridiculous! Somebody call the lawyers! Burger King didn't just fire their King... according to Yahoo! News they decapitated him!


In my opinion the King was the only thing they had going for them. This makes no sense. What is wrong with people in this country!? Our beloved King probably did something small like refuse to wear a speedo to work or had on a t-shirt with the wrong mascot. The CEO of Burger King probably went to Oklahoma State. This sucks!

And to make it worse, in the comments of the Yahoo! article there are people making unsubstantiated accusations, calling him a child molester and accusing him of being caught eating at McDonalds as though he is some kind of burger traitor. How dare they! I hope the Burger Queen takes them for everything they have-- every damn one of those dirty SOB's!

Long Live the King!


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No Morning Workouts

What if my alarm clock is stuck?

So I realize I posted yesterday and promised grand blogs to come. This is not one of the blogs I promised. Instead, I am posting right off the top of my head in a stream of consciousness like I usually do. My thoughts are consumed with the coming season. The campus is flush with incoming freshmen. I'm trying something different this year, not without trepidation. Depending on how you look at it, I'm either catching the wave of the future, already way behind or destroying our future. I'll let you decide

This year I am ditching double workouts. No morning practice. Throughout my entire coaching career I have been locked into the same schedule (even back to my own swimming days. This will be the first year in ten that I do not have morning practice at 6 am sharp on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I've ditched them entirely.

I've made adjustments that I think will mean more work and not less. I've lengthened all my afternoon workouts from 2 hours to 2.5. Saturday practices may be longer as well. Without replicating warmup and warmdown twice a day, I think I actually gain time to do work. Most of my afternoon practices were bursting at the seems of the 2 hour mark last year, mostly because I became maniacal about warmdown, often forcing swimmers into warmdown sets that were 15-20 minutes in duration. Now I'll have some breathing room in the afternoon. 

Psychologically, I think it may also benefit the swimmers to come once a day. Everybody knows the wear that a swim season puts on swimmers psyches. While you may have the perspective that morning practice is all about becoming "mentally tough", there is no benefit if that isn't the actual result.

Physiologically, I am looking at a group of athletes somewhere between a traditional "middle distance" group and a "sprint". These are not high recovery swimmers, and I found often that I couldn't to get them to do my high intensity sets twice in one day. I am hoping that the schedule allows them to maximize their recovery a bit more so that I can in actuality make each practice harder.

I didn't pull this idea from thin air. I have known that Sean Hutchison was a notable coach who wasn't running doubles. But I would give primary credit in leading me to this conclusion to Joel Shinofield, head coach of Washington and Lee. Besides being boyishly handsome, Joel is also a mentor of mine and an extremely successful swim coach. I ended up stalking him down because I was really impressed for his propensity for taking mediocre high school sprinters and making them really fast. In my conversations, he presented pretty compelling evidence for once a day only, some of which I have put forth above.

Rationally, I have no doubts about the strategy. In my heart, I still have a part of me that just feels wrong not running morning workout. Maybe I'll just wake up anyway, drink some coffee and walk around the pool deck a bit. At least for the first couple weeks. 

Another Lawsuit-- This Guy was Fired Over a Swim Brief!

If Roy Lester worked for this website he would be fired.  Even Lisa has to wear a brief on the job with us.

 
I know people are scared to wear the brief.  You have to be pretty comfortable with your manhood.  I get it.  I swam with my high school kids during practice yesterday at a rival team pool (because we are still in renovations) and I wore my brief; big old belly hanging over it and all.  Awkward.  Intimidating.  Creepy.  Whatever.  I am being true to myself.


The cool part about yesterday is that the son of one of our high school principals is trying swim team for the first time this year, and I got to send an email to his mom that said "You had no idea how good I am at this coaching thing.  I got him wearing a speedo in less than two weeks."  He didn't try out last year because he didn't want to wear one and all he had worn so far this year was board shorts.  Ha!

I love the brief, and as you can probably tell by the comments on the "Rivalry Gone Too Far" post that I don't like to see people fired from a job over unreasonable circumstances.  The OU t-shirt thing set me off... so you can imagine how conflicted I was over this link on Adolph Kiefer's facebook page, with the story of a 61 year-old beach lifeguard who was fired after 40 years for refusing to wear a brief on the job!

From an article in the NY Daily News:

Lester sued the state, claiming age discrimination, arguing the Speedo is for the washboard stomach set, not aging dads like him.
"I wore a Speedo when I was in my 20s," Lester said. "But come on. There should be a law prohibiting anyone over the age of 50 from wearing a Speedo."
Lester believes the Speedo edict was an attempt to rid Jones Beach of its aging lifeguards. The former lifeguard union head estimates that more than 80% of Jones Beach lifeguards are older than 40.
"This was not right," said Lester, a bankruptcy lawyer who is representing himself in the age discrimination claim. "They were just trying to get rid of the older guys. To me the whole key to being a good lifeguard is experience. An older guy sees a save before anyone else. You know the water."

On the one hand I am thinking "I don't care how old or out of shape I am I can wear a damn brief if I want to."  On the other hand I am thinking, "Stick it to the man, Roy!  They fired you on unreasonable grounds!  Don't give up the fight!"

Adolph Kiefer seems to feel the same way as on facebook he posted "Cut the guy a break!" and "But I think it's okay to still wear the brief past 50.  And I do!" Of course you do Adolph.  Because you are awesome.

According to the poll on the article, it seems like 88% think Roy Lester shouldn't be forced to wear the speedo on the job if it doesn't interfere with his performance.  Apparently, the guards have to test out by swimming 100 yards under 1:15 and Lester said he could do it in Dungarees.  The article points out that he is an accomplished triathlete.  Judging from the picture, I am pretty sure I would hire him even if he wanted to wear a bikini.  The kids at our pool just behave better when at least one of the lifeguards is older than them and could beat them in a race.

I am anxious to see how this one pans out.

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