F.A.Q.

We have recently received a variety of questions regarding the team and felt that sharing our responses would be valuable for everyone. 

  
I thank you in advance for your participation on the team and your continued interest in developing an improved product for your swimmers, yourselves, Asphalt Green, and the AGUA coaches.
 

COMMUNICATIONS WITH PARENTS

Swimmer/Coach/Parent communications

 

We have set up a parent-swimmer-coach conference week January 14-18 so that parents and swimmers can meet with their coach for 10 minutes to ask questions and get a quick evaluation of where they are in the season. Please sign up for a meeting on the second floor bulletin board.
 
Parent volunteering
 
The website sign-up for meet volunteering is still in the works.  In the meantime we are posting sign up sheets on the second floor for volunteering, emailing appeals for volunteers, and taking email responses and manually putting them on the sign up lists.

Formal Parent representatives
 
We have gone through the entire team roster and selected parents as candidates for various roles (Head AGUA Parents, Head Team Parents, etc). We will be contacting parents who have been identified and ask them to serve in these roles. From there the first job of these representatives will be to recruit other parents for other jobs which have been identified. 
 
Regular parent communications

 

A complete contact list broken down by teams has been created and distributed by email. Hard copies are available in the AGUA swim team offices on the third floor.  

TEAM STRUCTURE
 
Senior Team

 

I understand the concern that the group size may seem too big and that the jump from Green to Senior may seem difficult. Both of these issues were considered when the team was changed to this format in the 2006 season. However, what I have seen is a more cohesive group of teenagers than in prior seasons. Swimmers are also given the same type/caliber of workout which is appropriate for the time of season and which is designed with their long-term development in mind. 
 
There is also a critical mass that is necessary to have a successful workout. The structure we have now creates more of a team atmosphere because everyone is basically doing the same thing. Even if their peers are in a different lane going on a different interval, they have all experienced the same sets and can provide encouragement and leadership from any lane.   I also believe this is especially important for the boys who, because they are fewer in number, naturally want to feel they are part of a larger group instead of isolated individuals. 
 
Within in the current structure all teenage swimmers have the ability to own their sport. By this I mean that we place swimmers in lanes which are appropriate for their speed and skill and allow them to “promote” themselves whenever they wish, as long as they can keep up with the faster lane. 

 
Creating an arena where an individual must become more responsible for his/her advancement is very powerful and very suitable for the maturing athlete. Over time it teaches them this lesson: “With sufficient motivation almost anything is possible.”

Team Coordination at Away Meets
 
At Buffalo we had two excellent team meals organized by parents. I believe this issue is adequately resolving itself. Every year the team changes and new traditions have begun and will continue to take hold with active parents continuing to take such unprecedented initiative.

Team Size

The 2007-2008 team is presently at 213 swimmers. Some are more active than others, so the numbers fluctuate greatly on a day-to-day basis at practice. This makes it difficult to manage our lane space—some days/groups there are too many, some days too few. The team was at 180 annually when I became the head coach and has hovered around 225 every year since. At its peak the team had 275 registered members, but participation levels (i.e. practices and meet attendance) have not changed much at all during my tenure. 
 

I believe our retention rate is actually better than the national average for USA Swimming teams which have a 30% dropout rate. Swimming is a difficult sport which requires an incremental commitment as the athlete ages. A practice schedule which is “do-able” from a swimmer/parent perspective and produces acceptable results at 12 years of age is much different than the schedule which a swimmer needs to adhere to at 16 years of age to maximize their potential (or sometimes to even continue improving). 
 
After 30+ years of involvement with the sport I have come to believe that the reason swimmers stop swimming is simple—it is because they stop improving. They may stop improving for many reasons, but the two main ones are:

  • Improper Training—It is a fact that short, fast, sprint-oriented training will decrease the length and ultimate success of a swimmer’s career. The intensity of such training reaps short-term benefits and wreaks long-term havoc because it does not develop the muscular capacity properly (aerobically) at the proper time (in the years just prior to and after puberty). 
  • Well-trained muscles develop more capillaries. These give the body more capacity to deliver oxygen to the muscle and remove byproducts such as CO2 and lactic acid.  It is vital to a swimmer’s long-term career to give them the type of work which will help their muscles develop properly during this maturing phase so that their potential will not be lost. 
  • Ever wonder why swimmers stop doing 50’s after the age of 12 and start doing 200’s? It is because you have to train to do the longer events. It was set up this way so that swimmers and coaches would automatically have to do the kind of training that would assist in their development.    
  • Mother Nature—Not everyone’s body develops the same way or at the same rate. Some gain superior strength, others excellent kinesthetic awareness, some gain inordinate amounts of both attributes. Some swimmers simply become less hydrodynamic in the water as they age, others keep their same shape but are outpaced by faster, larger-growing competitors. All of these potential limitations can be de-motivating to athletes. In order to counteract and balance the effects of all of these variables in the best way, swimmers and parents must understand the basic principles of training which are: consistency, adaptation, and progression.
  • Consistency—There is no substitute for “doing the miles” necessary for proper development of the circulatory, musculature, and psychological systems of an athlete. Katie Hoff and Michael Phelps’ club team, North Baltimore, has its athletes swimming every day—no days off, year-round. After Phelps’ first Olympics (where he was 15) he spoke at my prior team’s banquet and said that he had missed 5 days of swimming in the 7 years leading up to that Olympic Games.
  • Adaptation—Training is simply inducing evolution into a person’s physiology. The body responds to whatever it is exposed to. Stress induces strength. Rest induces recovery, to a point, but then if not quickly followed by more stress, rest induces atrophy. A stress-rest-stress cycle which tests the body again before it has completely recovered (which means returning to it previous/pre-stress state) produces a positive adaptation. This is why over a long 3-4 day meet you can actually see a swimmer improve. A stress-rest-recovery cycle produces stasis—no adaptation occurs and more likely than not an athlete’s results will begin to suffer.
  • Progression—A training level which produces satisfactory results one year is unlikely to produce better results the next year and may not even produce the same results again. Maintaining the same training level over several years leads to an athlete’s stagnation, at best, or their inability to reproduce results from the past. This is why we ask more from the athletes each year—they must add something to what they have done previously. A rule of thumb which I have been developing lately in order to insure an athlete’s progression is: During the teenage years, the recommended number of hours a swimmer should be training per week should at least match (or preferably slightly exceed) the age of the swimmer.                   

AGUA/ASPHALT GREEN CAPACITY/ECONOMICS

Economics

By the method of accounting used to determine the expense of operating the team--which divides the cost of operating the facility by the number of days and hours per year and then by the number of lanes available at each hour to determine a “per-lane-per-hour cost” for each lane and assigning it to a user the swim team--is the second largest loser of money. Fees would have to be raised drastically to compensate for that when the team is viewed as a separate entity.

Lane Space

A quick glance at the pool on a weekday during the month of November-March will tell you all you need to know about the constraints we are working with. Before 5:30 pm AGUA will usually have double (or more) the number of swimmers per lane compared to the other user groups during this part of the year. This significantly affects the number of younger swimmers we can reasonably fit into the program and therefore impacts both the budget and the base of younger swimmers which we can draw from.      

Coaching Staff
 
As you know we are pleased to have brought Eric Brandom on as a new hire. Once he settles in this should lessen the load on the rest of the staff.   We are also adding one of the swim school instructors, Richard Griffin, one day per week to help out and help spurn enrollment on the swim team from the swimming lessons programs.  

Parent Booster Club

The booster budget is currently managed by Head Coach Brian Brown and Asphalt Green Aquatics Director Karlee Darby. Below is Asphalt Green’s description of it.


AGUA Parent Booster Club—Statement of Purpose
 
The AGUA Parent Booster Club is organized to support the AGUA swim team and enhance the experience of its members.  By raising and allocating funds generated by dues, contributions, reimbursements and other fundraising activities, the AGUA Parent Booster Club will work to improve each swimmer’s experience and contribute to the long-term success of the team as a whole. 

AGUA Parent Booster Club—Areas of Involvement
 
The AGUA Booster Club will prepare an annual budget which, once approved, will support the purchase of additional team equipment and related items and provide financial support for authorized travel expenses and other teambuilding social activities.    
 
The various purposes of the booster club so far this year are:
 
  • Meet Hospitality—$3,000
    • T shirts for NYC Open participants and AGUA volunteers
    • Food for visiting coaches and volunteers
  • Caps, T-shirts, and Suits—$5,000
    • Two monogrammed caps for all team members
    • T-shirts for Buffalo and USAS-recognized Championships
    • Championship suits are provided for Sectional+ level athletes
  • Team Social Events—$1,000
    • This year we saved money on the picnic by having parents do the organizing.
    • Color War/Holiday pizza party was a great success 
  • AGUA Banquet—$ 6,000
    • All swimmers, coaches, and invitees attend event for free
    • Yearbook is provided for free
  • Senior Team Training Trip—$4,000
    • Each year there is a subsidy of approximately $100-$200 per swimmer to keep the trip cost around $1,000 for the week. 
    • Coach Brown’s family, Assistant Coach(s), and a portion of the chaperones’ costs are also paid for as possible.
  • Supplemental Equipment—$8,000
    • We have just purchased six new digital pace clocks with monies carried over from last year (we waited to use this until the renovations were finished.)
Fundraising

The parents are encouraged to pursue all fund-raising avenues such as 50/50 raffles at meets, selling ads in the heat sheets, running food concessions, selling event sponsorships in the meet programs (i.e. a note such as “Swim Fast Susan! From the Evans Family” in the program just beneath the event name). Other ideas are welcome.

Training

The physiological ideas behind the way we train at AGUA have been discussed above, but can be summed up in Coach Brown’s simple motto, “Work Works.”   By this it is meant that swimmers must work on their Technique, Training, Talent, and Toughness everyday in every way. Below are some thoughts to consider regarding the preparation we do at AGUA.  

 
·        Technique vs. Training—This is a false dichotomy. You must do both to be successful. At the same time you must also maximize your personal Talent and develop the Toughness necessary to become your best.  
 
·        The younger the swimmer is the more time they will spend on technique, however, everyone involved (parents, swimmers, and coaches) must all understand that we are still engaged in a competitive sport. Ultimately it is the swimmers sense of accomplishment—which is objectively measured in time—that will determine a swimmer’s long-term interest in the sport. I have seen many kids lose their love of the sport through trying to become “perfect” (usually at the instigation of a parent). A wiser long-term method is to get them to enjoy the processes of racing/competing, practicing/training, and setting/reaching goals.    
 
·        9 times out of 10 a swimmer with modest skills (which is, after all most of us) and an excellent training background will beat the person with excellent skills and insufficient training (except perhaps in a 50 yard event).
 
·        As a staff we look to the average swimmers in each group. If the majority of those who attend practice regularly and are following the program are improving then the system is working. 
 
·        No swimmer has a “perfect” stroke. Furthermore, not only do swimmers and their stroke change, the strokes themselves evolve over time as well. 
 
·        A person’s stroke once they reach maturation is a product of their personality as much as anything, like one’s signature. Study this carefully during practices and meets and you will see it is true.         
 
·        A “perfect” stroke depends on the person’s age as much as on his/her body.
 
·        The only stroke paradigm worth shooting for is this: Make the stroke match the swimmer; however, the basics of good strokes are:
 
o    Streamlining all the time (see presentation)
 
o    Shoulder adduction
 
o    High elbows
 
o    Core stability
 
o    Constant kicking

 
The object before our youngsters is to compete with others and grow as athletes and people in the process. AGUA is involved in a competitive sport.  We want to excel and we do.  You should not judge a team’s success solely by the performance of its superstars; however, the national average for USAS clubs is 1 Senior National Qualifier per 100 swimmers and AGUA currently has 4 Senior National Qualifiers with just over 200 swimmers. We are beating the national average because we work hard to do so. And we are proud of this level of accomplishment. 
 

Thanks for your time and consideration. See you at the pool.
 
 
Brian Brown

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