After my first night with the Bronze group, ranging in age from 6 to 9 years of age, I was in awe. I was in the presence of the master. Coach Eroh had those kids busy for the entire hour and a half. Variation was his key to success.
At one point, he had the kids doing doggie paddle with the only rule being that they could not bark. Naturally, there were 22 kids barking the entire length of the pool.
All fun aside, I was left with a few questions after my experience with the Bronze group. How long should practice be for this age group? What is the appropriate coach to swimmer ratio for this age group? Are we short-changing some swimmers because of our arbitrary three level skill groupings of Bronze, Silver, and Gold? My experience has shown me that there are as many skill levels as there are lanes in the pool. I would be interested in what you think. Leave me a comment.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
Glad to hear that you had fun! Your questions are great and at the same time almost impossible to answer. This is where a coaches personal philosophy begins to develop. Age group swimming deals with both child psychology and physiology, an education awaits any and all that undertake coaching at the age group level. Ideal practice length for one kid may be 15 -20 minutes another may be smiling and splashing after 2 hours. I am not sure that even 8 lanes would be adequate to divide up a group of 40 youngsters into ideal practice groups. Here is the test of your mettle as a coach, you have 1 maybe 2 assistants and 40 kids and 90 minutes of pool time...... watcha gonna do? There are as many answers as there are teams and coaches. You will certainly find that the kids will teach you more about coaching than you could ever hope to teach them about swimming.
Post a Comment