Hello and welcome to the swim brief. I am Chris DeSantis, and I am privileged to be joined today by national champion coach, the head coach of Kenyan swimming and diving, Jess Book. Jess, how are you?
SPEAKER_00I'm great, Chris. Good to be here with you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I this is a big get. You know, I I wanted to introduce this to you. Part of what I'm doing right now is I hear from the listeners of this podcast, they they want to hear more interviews with coaches. So I I put the bat signal out to the listeners. I said, like, okay, you want some more interviews. Who do you want to hear from? At the top of the list of college swim coaches was you. So we got to give the people what they want.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. I don't believe that, but thank you. That's right. Why don't you believe? Oh no, I'm in Gambier, Ohio. This is a small place. I feel like we're very off the radar, if you will. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, you are you are off the radar. I have been to Gambier, Ohio a couple times. It is it is its own place. It is it is quite a special place, and we're gonna get into some of that here as we go. You and I had the chance, uh, we were actually just talking a few months ago. I wrote you out of the blue because I wanted to talk to you about something, and that's actually kind of what I want to use as a launching point for the conversation because a lot of people that listen to this, and of course, in my line of work, a lot of people that I work with are club swimming coaches. And one of the most frequent complaints, and I remember this back to my own days, I hear from club swimming coaches is like they want more outreach from college coaches that are recruiting. Now, you you admitted to me, hey, I'm not perfect, I don't do this every time, but I saw an example of you doing that outreach. So I wonder if you could speak to a little bit of where you sit philosophically in terms of the question of that outreach.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we talked about this. It's often a reflection of the cycle that we're in with recruiting and where we are in the particular season. Like any coach, there are better times in the year to talk and there are worse times in the year to talk. And so it kind of got us at the right time. But if you want to think about if the question is more about where do we sit philosophically when it comes to the recruiting process and how our coach is a part of that, I think the best answer I can give to that is, and I do really mean this very genuinely, that for us, for me at Kenyon, the most important thing really is fit. Uh just this is a special place, this is a special environment. What it takes to be successful at Kenyon is different than it might be at other places. And so I'm most interested in finding people who will really love this place and really become a part of our community. And coaches are a good way to discover that, uh, especially if those coaches have some familiarity with either Kenyon or Division III at large. And so I think that's the best utilization of a club coach for me in the recruiting process. I think my basic questions would still be: is this a student that you like working with? Do you trust them? Are they hard workers? Are they good teammates? Those are the basic questions I will always ask. But then beyond that, I'm trying to figure out is this a type of person who will appreciate our community and really enjoy the type of swimming we create at Kenyan.
SPEAKER_03And you referenced that. So what do you think is different about what it takes to be successful at Kenyon? Well, what have you noticed in your time there?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think the the subjective answer is I really look for people who find this place to be magical. Uh, and I really do mean that word, and I really did experience that word as a student athlete here myself. I remember stepping on campus as a recruit, looking around and really being captivated, feeling like this place is magical. It's very medieval, it very much it speaks to my subconscious as much as it does to my logical mind. And so I look for people who visit that get that kind of sparkle in their eye, and that's a great indicator to me that they're gonna really love this place. But if you want to break it out into sort of criteria, I'm looking for people who are very passionate about swimming, people who have an inherent love of the sport, people for whom the water is a place they find joy and comfort and challenge all at once. I look for people who are super team-driven or a very team-driven team, so that's important to me. I look for people who are very sort of diverse in their appreciation of team, who come from different backgrounds, different perspectives. Uh, I like people who like to race. So there are more objective criteria we look for too, but the subjective is as much as as any of it what I'm looking for in the process.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I I mean I find myself nodding in agreement. I'm aware that I had a podcast recently where somebody said, like, uh Chris, you were you were you were too much in agreement with the guests, so you didn't ask too many follow-up questions. So I'm gonna make sure that I do enough of delving deep on this, but I I find myself agreeing with you in the respect of my you know, my college experience was primarily at uh Georgia Tech. And I I remember it took me a couple years to get the hang of it, but I quickly realized that the point of recruiting there was not to find the best, fastest swimmers that would go to Georgia Tech. It's to find the the fastest swimmers or the swimmers with the most potential that loved Georgia Tech.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03Right. Because it had synergy with everything that you were trying to accomplish as a coach. It just it just made things work better, right? So if you recruit a kid who, as you say, subjectively thinks that the place is magical, well, that's somebody who maybe when they go through some adversity in their time there, that's that kind of backstops them so that they're having this thought, like, hey, I'm in the right place. I'm doing the right thing. I even go back to one of the bedrocks. My my background is in positive psychology. One of the bedrocks of positive psychology is the concept of optimism. Okay, and optimism, if you break it out structurally, is really just about what do you predict in the future based on how you look back at your own history? And there's three categories. And one of those categories is essentially environmental. Like, what story are you telling yourself about where you are? Are you saying, like, hey, I'm in the right place, I'm surrounded by the right people, I'm doing the right things, I'm in the right culture. And if you have that, it goes a very, very long way. Do you do you see that reflected in the type of athletes you've you've had on the team since you started coaching?
SPEAKER_00Oh, for sure. And and this is a little bit of an exaggeration, but there's there's a great deal of truth to it too. If I look at our record board out on the pool deck, the better predictor of who's on there is how much they loved Kenyon versus how fast they were coming to Kenyon. Yeah. And again, there's a bit of an exaggeration to that, but the point is still true. It's the people who really love Kenyon that that buy in at the highest level. And not into not just into the program, but ultimately into themselves. And I think that's this positive synergy that you've got going on is when someone really believes in the program, then they allow themselves to really push themselves to the highest level. And my goal here to be really subtle about this, my goal here is to really push people because they want to be pushed, not because I want to push them. And I know I don't know how to make that that understood to people. Like the analogy that I've used in the past, and this is borrowed from the former head coach here, Coach Steen, but I really see my role as a coach as much more of a caddy than anything else. I'm the one that walks with you. I'm the one that gives you advice. I tell you the distance from the T-Box to the green, I tell you which club I think you should swing. But at the end of the day, it's all up to you in terms of what you do. And so I work really well with people who are who are curious and collaborative, who are thinking and who want to be pushed. If you're looking for a coach that's going to yell and scream and demand that you do it again, demand that you do it better, that's that's not who I am. And so this goes back to the recruiting process as well. As we try to talk about this in the recruiting process very clearly, so those students who are choosing Kenyon do so knowing what kind of coach they're getting and knowing that it's probably the right kind of fit for them as well. So, yes, the short point here is those who are, I say this too, those who are the happiest are oftentimes the most successful. And so we're really trying to help you find happiness, not just find the best program for you.
SPEAKER_03Again, I find myself in agreement. You you say like you want people to essentially ask to be pushed. I couldn't agree more, but how do you handle that sort of struggle you have as a coach, right? You have all this experience, you have a very, you must be confident in what you think you know an athlete should do next to keep progressing, what action they should take. And how how do you deal with having the patience, right, to go, they're gonna do it whenever they're going to do it. It's it's not on my schedule. And by the way, we'll be competitive even if I don't sort of force it to happen right now.
SPEAKER_00I'm a super patient person. That's one of my You seem like it. It's it's both a great strength and a and sort of a weakness too. Like I also operate in a very narrow emotional range, and so you're very rarely going to see me down, but you're also very rarely gonna see me super high, too. So the patience is not not a problem to me. And when it comes to working with an athlete, so I think what you're also implying is what do you do when you see someone who needs to step it up, who needs to go to the next level, who needs some of that that push. For me, it's more of a just a conversation. Sit them down and say, This is what I'm seeing, this is what I'm experiencing, but it's still not me telling telling them they have to do it. It's more I I think you've got I think you've got another level. I think you can do more here. I think that if you want to step it up, you certainly can, but still not forcing them to do it. And I also want to make another point, Chris. This is fun, but um, I I have also learned to do a really good job listening to the athletes. Uh there have been many, many times where someone has come in and presented something to me that was antithetical to what I was expecting or would have done on my own. And most of the time I will go with what they think is best for them, and most of the time it ends up being what's right for them. And that's something I've gotten better at over time. And there are still times where someone will sit down and say, I think I need to do X, and I'll say, I hear what you're saying, I understand why you're saying that, but this is one of those rare times that I actually believe the opposite. Yeah. And as we both know, if I can't get them to agree with it, it really doesn't matter anyway. And so if I can't get them to agree with it, it's probably easier for me to just change my viewpoint and agree with them. So this is the dancing, the dancing that is coaching, but I I am again very open to listening and collaborating and even modifying my own views to align with their views.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think I think what you're speaking to is that the fastest way to get somebody from point A to point B in if you just isolate that is probably to intimidate or force them to do it.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_03But that makes your motivational system more fragile over time. People eventually want to have some autonomy in their lives and don't like just being told what to do all the time, especially college kids, the older that they get, the more they step into their adulthood and you know, autonomy in their lives, like they're they're not going to just enjoy having everything dictated to them. And so uh, you know, yeah, it can feel like in the moment, oh God, can I just make them do it so we get from point A to point B, but in the large scale, it doesn't actually move things.
SPEAKER_00Well, absolutely, completely agree. And I think you can use fear or intimidation to get some really positive performances or really successful performances, but at great cost. At great cost to the individual, at great cost to the program, at great cost to their long-term success as well. I think these are flash-in-a-pan type moments, or you really can damage someone's psyche down the road. Um, so yeah, if you want to make someone fast, you can you can scream it into them, but it's gonna be very costly to everyone down the road.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I want to reference something and go back to you you referenced uh Jim Steen, a legendary coach. I think he he's gotta be in all the Hall of Fames. If he's not, it's a crime. And I guess what I want to ask you is one of the things that I work on with teams that I I consult is trying to build up institutional knowledge. The idea that, you know, if you're gonna try to make a cultural shift, again, you may not see very much immediate payoff to a cultural shift, but those things are they're they have compounding interest. When you change something and you you stick to it, 30 years down the line, it becomes just what's normal on your team. Could you speak to some of the stuff, the legacy of Jim Steen, some of the stuff that's just institutional knowledge at Kenyon at this point?
SPEAKER_00I hear what you're asking, but I I'm not sure how to answer it. I think a huge part of who I am has been shaped by this place. And so I am a product of that.
SPEAKER_03And in what you may have a blind spot to your own institutional knowledge.
SPEAKER_00Right. I I I can't even begin to talk about that. I've been here, I lose track of this. I think 13 years as head coach, I had not all continuous here, but I had 13 years as head coach, I had four years as an assistant coach, I had four years as a student. So I've been through Kenyon in in many different ways at this point. So I know this place, I know the people here, I know the environment. A lot of the systems that we use, how I think about swimming was deeply informed by swimming here and then being an assistant coach here, how I track data, how I organize a season. Like we are very data-driven at Kenyon, and that's largely because that's how Coach Steen coached me and then eventually taught me as an assistant coach. I've been shaped by other factors too, but all these things are very deeply baked into the program. And I do want, I also want to be, I want to be a team that is moving in a direction, but also flexible enough to change direction too. And so over time, as we bring in new assistant coaches or we have new new teams, we are going to continue to evolve in slightly different directions. I don't want to be so rigid that we can't grow in the moment with someone new as well. But um I don't even know where to begin to answer your question. I I think that part of this is also the recruiting. It's recruiting people who believe in the power of team, believe in the idea that we can be competitive, that we can be a team that's competing at the highest level. And so we're trying to self-select people up front that are predisposed to that, to that vision as well. And then when they get here, then we start to surround them with the systems that we've used in the past. But I don't want to be so tied to those that we can't modify them for the future as well. So I don't have a good answer to your question. I think I am very much a repository for institutional knowledge, but in a way where I can't even really see it any longer.
SPEAKER_03But you must you must talk to swim coaches from other places and you hear what it's like somewhere else. I mean, do you ever have a conversation with that and you go, hmm, that's strange that they don't do this because we've always done this? You must have examples like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think the the the most basic one that jumps to my mind is I this is me speaking in a biased kind of way, but I I don't know how you can organize a season without without having a season training plan. I don't I don't know how you can see where you're going if you don't have a map to get there. And and I for me, I've got my 13 years plus 30 years of Coach Steen's uh trail maps. I've got all these trail maps. And if I if I want to look back on 2015 was a really good distance year for us, I can go back to 2015 and I can look at what we did in 2015 and say, all right, are those ideas relevant for where we are now? But I need to ask the question, are they relevant for where we are now? Because in 2015, we may have had some very specific athletes at that time for whom that worked, whereas it wouldn't work for this group of athletes at this time. So anyway, that's something that I do think about at times is I feel like sometimes coaching is coaching is both an art and a science, but I think that sometimes I really have to ground myself in the science before I can get to the art. And I sometimes wonder if there's enough grounding in the trail map when we begin to.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, somebody needed to get give that message to a college uh coaching, Chris DeSantis, because I had no season plans. And I think I I looked out there in the environment, and first of all, this is I'm about to share my one of my most innermost arrogant thoughts, right? But like I listened to an Eddie Reese talk and he was like, Oh, I make up practice when I got there. And I go, Oh yeah, well, I could do that too. You know, but what I didn't realize was how much planning went into winging practice when you got there, right? Like it wasn't as if he was just like, oh, what kind of mood am I in today? He had ideas for what he was going to do, and then he was actually organized enough to be able to tune into the practice and watch what was happening and then react to that and execute one of those plans. But there was still a plan beneath it, and I don't think I quite understood that when I started coaching.
SPEAKER_00I think when we all start, we don't really we don't really know what we're doing. Uh you have to be arrogant enough to think you know what you're doing, but you don't really, and then hopefully over time you start to accumulate experience. And in my in my position, hopefully you start to take notes as well. So then you can replicate the things that work, change the things that don't work, and keep getting better as you go.
SPEAKER_03Well, for many coaches, that's reality. Being a coach means everyone has an opinion on what you're doing. It takes work to filter out the noise and make the best decisions. You need to be able to think through plans, ideas, and problems proactively. At Chris DeSantis Coaching, I fill that gap for coaches. I'll help you turn every rocky moment into a slingshot and provide the support you need to be at your best. You deserve to have someone in your corner, and everyone on your team will benefit. If you want an expert to have your back in your coaching career, go to Chris Dcoach.com right now and fill out a contact form. You'll get an hour of my time at no cost to you. You don't have to go it alone any longer. Back to the podcast. You referenced um that uh, you know, of course, you're I'm interviewing you, you're the head coach, but you've got a team of coaches there. I've had Danny Corman on this podcast, actually. I wonder if you could speak to for a moment. Danny, in my opinion, is somebody who could most definitely be a head coach anywhere in the country, right? So how do you make best use of somebody like in your in your program? Because I don't think that's obvious to everybody.
SPEAKER_00We have a phenomenal staff. This is probably the the most accomplished staff I've ever had. Uh, we've got three swimming coaches, a diving coach, all of us have coached at the division one level, uh, even at the highest end of division one as well. But we've all chosen to come back to Division III for kind of the humanistic opportunities it creates. But to answer your question, I think that just as I would with a with a student athlete, it's about understanding what for Danny, what are you excited about? What are you passionate about? How do you want to grow as a coach? What do you want to take ownership of? What would be fun for you? What keeps you engaged and really enjoying your coaching? And in this particular iteration of our program, she's working a lot with the middle distance group and designing the program entirely for that group. And again, in our current iteration, I'm working with more endurance-based, I am-based swimmers, Danny's working with more of the distance-based swimmers, Koska Kojima is working more with the sprint-based swimmers. And so because we are such a staff right now, we are a little bit more I'm gonna use the word, I don't like the word, isolated in our in our organization.
SPEAKER_03Siloed almost.
SPEAKER_00But that's what we want to, yes, but yes. Okay, these people are as coaches are so qualified that they they deserve that. They they are more than capable of that. And if they're not taking charge of that, then we're not really doing good service to them. And as a program, we're not taking the best advantage of them. But at the same time, and this is one of the things we want to do a little bit better this year, is we want to move around as coaches. And so even if if Danny is organizing all the middle distance work, um, I still want to work with that group once or twice a week and Kosuke once a week. And so moving around, so as coaches, we have contact with everyone out there too. But to again, go back to your point, I really want to be partners with the people I work with, and that's student athletes and that's coaches. And so when we sit down to talk, it's it's a straight up partnership. It's what do you think? What are you feeling? What do you what do you believe? And I am not, I at the end of the day, I have to make some of the decisions, but I am very comfortable choosing something that wasn't my original opinion. If Danny strongly believes we should do X, great, let's do it. Kosuke strongly believes we should do Y, great, let's do it. I'm I'm all in on that kind of stuff. And so I I really I think Kenyon creates an opportunity for people to swim at a very high level, for coaches to coach at a very high level, but in a way that feels a lot more, I don't know, simple compared to something. Which I think is what's attractive to Danny and Kosuke. And Danny absolutely could be coaching anywhere. And Kosuke could be coaching anywhere too.
SPEAKER_03I want to move on, but I there was one more thing in that that just caught my ear, and I really want to ask you more about it. You reference, you know, you've got three coaches that have coached at the highest level, but you're at Kenyan for something more humanistic. Tell me more about that, because I'm really interested in what you meant there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I'll I'll give you an honest answer, but I I want to make sure to not paint with one brush with the understanding that different programs are going to have different flavors to them. But I think that there is this is not an absolute, but there's a tendency at the highest point of Division I athletics, not just saying swimming, but division one athletics, to be extremely outcome focused. That it's all about performance. And if you and it's like again, it's baked into the system. Coaches are hired and fired based on winning and losing. And so you are predisposed to build a program that's built on winning and losing. And if that is your mindset, then you're going to make decisions that feed winning. And if you again, if winning is the goal, then that might encourage you to coach in a particular way or to work with an athlete in a particular way. And sometimes those ways are not in the best interest of the athlete. They're in the best interest of winning, but not in the best interest of the athlete. And so I think that what I have found at Kenyon in a way that works wonderfully for me, and I think Danny has too, and Kosuke has too, is we get to coach them to do amazing things, but we still get to treat them like human beings and people that have passions and curiosities and investments that are uh outside the water and outside the pool, and they give space and time for those and still give them a chance to swim super fast. And so that's the that's the matrix that we're looking for out there. And again, I just I really this is a subtle sub point we can get into as well. I want to be a program that strives to win, but I don't want to be defined by winning. And so there's a nuance there that we try to work through all the time is we do care about winning that is important to us, but it's not the only thing that matters to us.
SPEAKER_03Well, you provided a perfect segue for my next topic, which is something that you and I discussed back in the spring as well, talking about goal setting, right? And I mean, you coach a team that one of your teams won a national championship here in this past season, the other team was was second. Do I have that correct? Okay, so you're competing in both cases for a national championship. And I had been out to colleges in the fall, and one of the things I had noticed in my time doing that is that a lot of athletes were reticent to set outcome-based goals. And I think that there is something valid in there where they have an idea that what I'm doing, it's not all about the outcome, right? I don't want this, I don't want to give too much prominence to winning or losing. They they share that value that you just shared. At the same time, I mean, I was a little bit uncomfortable. I said, but you do want to acknowledge like what you're striving for, right? On the other end of it. Speak to me a little bit about how the conversation has been formed on your team around the tension between between goals, outcome focus, and sticking to your values.
SPEAKER_00These are conversations we continually have to have. I don't think we will ever be at a place where this is sort of foundational bedrock. I think every time we have a new team, we have to revisit the conversation. So we've got new leaders, we've got new freshmen. Uh we're in a different place each year in the NCAA in terms of our competitiveness. And so we can't be, we can't be one, we can't have one message that always works for this. But what we're trying to do is we're trying to talk about winning all the time in a way that both creates it as a as a destination, but not as the end-all be-all of our of our year. And I've already talked about this too, but we talked about in the recruiting. These are things I talk about in the recruiting process. I want people who care about team and care about winning and trying to win, and I try to be clear with our recruits, but it's not how we're not defining the season based on that. This is the other beauty of swimming. Like if we get to NCAAs and we swim lights out, 100% lifetime best, 100%. We're gonna be super happy whatever place we get. If that's first, second, third, fourth, fifth, whatever. We swim lights out, we're gonna be really happy and really proud of what we've done. And so I want to be a team that's aiming for that, most importantly. Sometimes we're gonna have teams that are aiming for that, and it gives us the opportunity to actually win as well. And so we want to be able to talk about that. And in my early time here, I had a lot of teams that were very scared about talking about winning. And so we had to get over that fear. And the way we got over that fear was by talking about winning and making sure that it's also couched in the fact that it's not, I have to be kind of careful how I say this. Like, I don't care if we win. I care that we try to win, but I don't care that we win. And I can only impress that upon them if we talk about it a lot. And so I will say things like that. Like, I don't care that we win, but I do care that we try to win. I don't care that you win, but I do care that you try to win. And so I think that if I say it enough times, it takes some of the edge off in a way that allows them to find their set point, whatever it is. And uh, we get it more right some years and we get it less right other years. We are certainly not perfect in this regard. But looking back on last year, both the women's team and the men's team, I'm really happy with how we competed. We we were as close to our best as we probably could be. And one reflection of that is if you look at how we competed in finals, especially towards the end of the meet, uh, both the conference meet and the national championships, we just kept moving up. We just kept moving up, we just kept moving up. And so we weren't we weren't afraid of winning. We were excited about the opportunity to compete. And again, Chris, this is a really important question that I don't have an easy answer to. It starts by talking about it in recruiting, it starts by talking about it with the seniors. Um, but it also takes listening too. I will tell a slightly different story.
SPEAKER_03I'm taking over here, but no, do it, do it, go.
SPEAKER_00Three years ago, three-ish years ago, I was sitting down with our seniors, and this is coming right out of COVID. And coming out of COVID was a weird time. Yes, coming right out of COVID, and I'm asking our seniors, and it was it was a really big group. We had some um people in the group that were that had taken a gap year. So we kind of had two classes merging together. What would have been our seniors and what would have been the previous year seniors? So I had 25 in the room, had 25 seniors, and I'm asking this group of seniors, how do you think this team will respond well to talking about winning? And so of the 25 in that particular year, and this is not an exaggeration, I only had one who said yes. The other 24 said no. And so knowing that's what that group felt at that time, it meant that some of our that our messaging that year wasn't as strongly about winning. But the year afterwards, I had a lot of people who want to talk about winning. The year afterwards, I had a lot of people want to talk about winning. So I only really know I can only get a sense of this by by asking them to. So I do ask them where they think the team is, and like I do with other things, I listen to them based on what they say.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but I I so a couple things that I was thinking about as you were were were saying all that. One of them is I see in the difference between, you know, I don't care if you win, I care if you try to win. You can't control outcomes, right? So why would you, you know, put your put your judgment on something that's completely random, not completely random, but more or less out of your control, right? Versus, okay, what did you do to try to win? That is a little bit more something you can wrap your arms around and say, you know what, I did everything I could, or you went, you know, looking back, I wish I would have done this as well. And uh and you learn from that experience, right, that that that's a conversation, that's a conversation that's certainly worth having. You know, you mentioned your time as a student athlete at Kenyon as well. So if I if I know my history, you you must have been there right smack dab in the middle of just an unprecedented and probably never to be achieved again run of national championships. Was that tension there at the time when you were a student athlete? Did you feel like, oh gosh, I'm a little uncomfortable talking about what we're trying to, you know, whether we're gonna try to win a national championship at the end of the year, or did you have teammates like that? Do you think that's always been there? Or do you think that it's sort of a more recent phenomenon that that athletes are are just in a different and uh I think it's more recent, and I was gonna ask you this question too, but I'm curious to hear your questions.
SPEAKER_00You're gonna ask me questions.
SPEAKER_03I'm doing the questions here, Jess.
SPEAKER_00I'm curious and I'll I'll answer but asked. But I'm curious how you feel like the the set the emotional set point, the psychological set point uh from student athletes is evolving over time. You know, are we evolving to a place where we're more reticent to talk about winning? Are we more fearful of that? So I'm gonna ask you that, or like you did give me your thoughts on that too. I'll be thinking as you answer. Yeah. Uh yeah, I was here competing at a time where Kenyon was super dominant. We won four national championships while I was here as a swimmer. Uh, I I think I think at the time this is a little bit too brash, but the question, the question wasn't if we were gonna win, the question was how much we were gonna win by. And and I don't really mean it quite that way. And so what Coach Steen did a really good job of, he did a really, really good job of this, was creating challenge and opportunity in every season. And so even if we were gonna go in and probably win by a whole lot, he was super excited about and genuinely excited about uh were we gonna break national records in the relays? Could we get four people in the finals of the Fournered IM? Uh, could we have a hundred percent improvement on C times? And so, how do we find the game inside the game in a way that isn't isn't looking just at the end point and the outcome? And so we're competing to earn spots in finals because it leads to points, but we're we're playing the game of how many final spots can we get out there? And so it still keeps it engaging. And so I don't think we thought a lot about winning because it was probably gonna happen, but I think that's also what created great strength too, and a ton of confidence. We knew that we were gonna probably win, and so you could just lean on your teammates and know that you were gonna win. What has changed, and this is it was changing, but has changed is division three has gotten way more competitive. Way more competitive. It's fast, and division one is crazy fast. Like, don't get me wrong, it's crazy fast. I mean, what it what did I don't know what did it take to qualify in the 100 free for men last year in division one? 41?
SPEAKER_03It may have taken a 42-0, but it might have been a 41 high.
SPEAKER_00That's out to like 30 some odd people, right? You know, that's yeah, drawing deep. That's crazy fast. Division three, it probably took uh I don't know, 44 mid to qualify. Uh winning times are in the 43 lows. Like those are not slow, those are fast. But still, there's a huge gap between that and a 41 out there, too. Uh anyway, I don't I think the psychology has changed over time, partly because division three has gotten better, partly because our circumstances at Kenyan have gotten different, but also I think the student athletes themselves have changed. And so I'm curious what you think. You know, how do you think, if at all, but how do you think student athletes are changing in sort of their set point of their psychology?
SPEAKER_03Great question. Probably this is one of the things I spend more time thinking about than anything else. So hopefully I have a good answer for it. I think that there's something developmentally missing, and nobody intentionally took it out of the system, right? There's there's not like one central decision maker that said like developmentally writ large in general with athletes. We're just gonna skip this part. But what I do think is, and it speaks to some of what we've been talking about earlier, in terms of motivation and point A to point B, performance focus, you have a lot more athletes that are competing at a much higher level at a much younger age, right? And that has added up to a higher level of performance at every level, like swimming. You just like, you know, I look back at my college days and I go, it's a different universe, right, than it is now. And that's it's been 20 years, right? So human beings don't evolve to be like that much better at performing in in one generation, right? That's not that's not how biology works. So what I think has happened is there's this constant push and push and push, and we know how to squeeze more performance out of athletes at a younger age, but we're missing the developmental step that that having some patience actually sets them up better for long-term success. That there's not really that same focus. I mean, I even saw an amazing post with regards to Leon Marchand, who's the best male swimmer in the world right now. We've just had the Olympics, that from a developmental coaching level, okay, there was a decision made that of course he could have by far the best junior swimmer. He could have dominated it more than he did at a younger level. Right. But they thought, okay, but we're not trying to make him as fast as possible right now. We're thinking about five, six, seven, eight, maybe ten years from now, having him still in the sport, having him still enjoy doing the sport, have him still enjoy training hard and progressing and doing all those things. And so um, I have a lot of empathy for kids that are coming up through the system because uh and and for coaches, because I think everybody's struggling with this a lot right now. And it's going to take, it's going to take, I would say, pretty dramatic revolution in how we develop mentally. Okay. We actually have to think proactively with this stuff. Right now, as I I look at athlete mental health, I think we are overwhelmingly reactive. Let's wait till there's a big problem and then we'll try to fix it. That's not what we do as coaches, right? That's not why you come up with a season plan. You don't go, let's get to the first meet, and then we'll figure out what we're gonna do the rest of the year to correct the flaws that I saw in the first meet. No, you have a proactive approach. You're training people. And what I see that's missing, I get, I guess, in developmental systems is there isn't organization and planning around the mental health of athletes, around building them and giving them them skills to go along with this amazing level of performance that many of them are going to achieve at a at a very young age.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00And I think there's a bigger question of why. You know, what's the what's the antecedent to that as well? Have you uh shoot, I'm just lost track of the book in my head. Have you read The Ancient Anxious Generation?
SPEAKER_03I have not. I I I'm I plan on reading it this summer, but Jonathan Heid, I'm a huge fan of his work, and he was somebody that was at the forefront of positive psychology. He was actually a lecturer in my master's program, and I was captivated by that guy. So I'm very excited to read the book. I know the general premise of the book. I think that he's really dead on in describing a lot of the things and understanding uh what's going on. So I'm I'm really excited and and I've recommended it to people on this podcast blind without having read the book, just just based off his reputation and my experience with it.
SPEAKER_00So I think there might be some answers in there. There also might not be, but I I I listened to it as a podcast as well or as a audio book. It was free on Spotify if you've got Spotify. Yeah. Um I listened to it for two reasons. One, I've got young daughters, a 13-year-old and a nine-year-old, and so we were on the precipice of having to make some decisions about technology and smartphones, and we have chosen to be very um slow to adopt those things. But I also listen to it because I coach students who have been brought up this way. And so I won't have the ability to go back and change their development, but I need to think about how they have been developed in order to think about how to work with them as well. Yeah. And so there's things in there that I've been thinking about recently. Um, there's also, I think there's a book here, but I haven't read it. Um, something to the effect of the idea is that we are we are too comfortable. And I think there's something inside of that idea as well. And so because we are so comfortable being comfortable, we're very, very uncomfortable being uncomfortable at all. And I think that part of coaching is making people uncomfortable, hopefully in appropriate ways. But I think that's part of what's missing too is the ability to be uncomfortable and know that it's going to be okay. It's okay to be uncomfortable. And I don't just mean there are there are limits to all this, but uncomfortable, emotionally uncomfortable, socially uncomfortable, academically uncomfortable. Yeah, there's such a thing as too much of all those things. I get that. But we should at least be capable of being uncomfortable. And this is this is one of the real values, in my opinion, of sports. This is one of the great things that we get to give kids in this case is the ability to be uncomfortable. But I find that maybe that's one of the things that we are less good at now than we were at five, 10, 20 years ago. Better at other things, though, but we're not as good at that.
SPEAKER_03The Swim Brief Podcast is brought to you by Chris DeSantis Coaching. Are you tired of not competing at your best? I've worked with countless athletes who felt that their mind was limiting them on race day. As a pioneer in the field of positive psychology, I have a unique approach. Instead of fixing what's wrong, I help athletes build an entirely new framework from the ground up. And I do it in as little as 12 weeks. I teach them how to make their active mind something that helps them. The work that I do stays with athletes long after we finish. Those that work with me get permanent results that go beyond their sports career. They not only bust through their current plateau, but learn what to do when the next one comes. If you know an athlete that could benefit from a complete rebuild of their approach, fill out a contact form at Chrisdcoach.com. Let's find out what they're truly capable of. Back to the podcast. I'm gonna ask you in a second, because I've I've also had this internal discussion about technology. I have a 10-year-old and a six-year-old, um, and we we've implemented some stuff here and just in the last few months. So I I want to ask you more specifically what you did there, but I want to respond to um what you said first, which is in regards to in regards to this uh overarching concept about uh being uncomfortable. The fundamentally, I think that most of us are natural pessimists. We we we evolved from pessimists, but the people that were naturally optimistic, a lot of them died off because life life was really life or death, right? And so the person who goes, Yeah, you know what, that wild animal's chasing me, but I'm probably gonna be okay, that they got eaten. Okay, but the person whose brain was like, I need to run as fast as I possibly can and hide and like fight with every fiber of my body or I'm gonna die, those are our ancestors. And in some way, that vestigial like evolution is counterproductive in an environment where we are quite comfortable, where things are very convenient. So that we still have that pessimism in us, but in because we're not struggling for things, it's like almost it's got an energy and it needs somewhere to go. And right now it's going to, you know, how I'm doing in school or how I am in my life, like how I am as a husband, how I am as a father, how I'm doing professionally, right? Stuff that isn't life or death, stuff that isn't innately stressful.
SPEAKER_00Chris, I agree, but I think that it extends to how do I look online?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00How many, how many followers do I have, how many likes do I have, right? We have no place to displace our pessimism or our fear. And so we are finding an outlet for it, but an outlet that is so far out of our control that it becomes even more of a an abyss to get lost in. So I'm curious about this too. But thank you for that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so so what are you doing at home? So I I'll tell you what I did I did first. We were allowing both kids some degree of autonomy in like watching some TV or playing on an iPad or this, that, and the other thing. And what I observed, honestly, was that I found my kids to be quite irritable about it. Like they would, it was kind of in a routine, they would get home from school or whatever activity they had from the day, and they they were irritable to get to that, and then they were almost unreachable for that entire time. And then they were kind of irritable for a while after they were engaging with this technology. And my wife and I sat down, we were like, Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this to ourselves? We don't need to do this, right? We we know that we have children that you know, are at a developmental stage where we wouldn't let them just do whatever they want whenever they want, right? And so we made a hard break. We just said like we're not gonna do that anymore. Um now we watch a family movie once a week. We all sit down, we watch the same movie together for a couple hours. But other than that, we've basically just gone technology free. And I can tell you my daughter who's 10, for two weeks afterwards, she was you know like oh why are you doing this? You ruined my life, you know, this is I'm so bored. And then after that, it's been nothing but improvement in terms of just the general atmosphere, um, emotional regulation, everything in my house, I can't believe I waited so long to do it. When did you implement it? Uh May. So it's been about three months.
SPEAKER_00Good. How did they so how did they handle it over the summer? They got into good rhythms of doing other things?
SPEAKER_03Yeah they just I what I've always known is if I just if I if I set a hard boundary if I just said like hey I'm not gonna entertain you. My kids come up with the most creative amazing things right to do. And and what I've noticed is too 10 year old and six year old you wouldn't assume naturally that they necessarily want to do things to each other. They're playing with each other. They're interacting with each other. They're doing things cooperatively because what's available to them. So what what have you what have you put in place after listening to that and what have you observed?
SPEAKER_00Well we haven't we have not really introduced a lot of technology either so our older daughter does not have a does not have a smartphone we have a we don't have a home phone uh those have kind of gone away we have cell phones as parents but we have a home flip phone that we have one as well yeah that that's the home phone that if she wanted to use it she could use it to text a friend but she doesn't so that's just not how she operates. So that's partly just her set point. But we don't have a cell phone yet I think it's probably coming soon because at a certain point you need to know how to interact with technology and at a certain point it does matter that you can connect with a friend or a parent if you need to write home or something like that. So we're we're still on the edge of this. I think it's going to be about educating and talking about it. I will probably the intro to anxious generation uh the the forward by the author uh I think is a really good treatment of the whole book and so I will probably ask my older daughter to sit and listen to it with me and then we'll have a conversation about it. So I think that education awareness I think delaying adoption as long as possible is important. I think again I I work with students that have been brought up this way but I am not a huge fan of social media. I think it can be good absolutely absolutely but I think it can create some really bad habits and some really some really shaky places and so I want to delay that as long as possible as well. So we don't have much they don't we don't we are not gamers um we do have Netflix we don't have TV we don't have any other streaming services but I also I want to be careful not to paint with that singular brush either I don't I I don't feel like we have it all right at all times and I do think that this is what's working for our family right now and I feel good about it and I feel like we are hopefully creating habits that allow them to find joy and entertainment in places other than a screen but I I'd like to stay inside of our family and not think that it necessarily extends to other families. It's it's it feels pretty good for us right now period but we will get to a place where there are cell phones in our house.
SPEAKER_03Yeah you're not I mean and I always my wife and I have that conversation as well I go you know we were able to do this now we will not be able to do this forever right what we're what we're what we've implemented right now it's not forever and at the end of the day there's no stuffing everything back in Pandora's box. So what is there is there. You have to accept that and think about okay what do I think is best you know in the end and and you're probably going to make a lot of mistakes for sure I know that there will be some part of this that that I didn't get quite right or that we didn't get quite right but for now I'm happy to have made a change and if people ask me would you recommend doing something similar I'd say yeah absolutely absolutely it does it actually again not to bring everything full circle but it it speaks again to that short term long term. This is something I I run into all the time as a parent I go okay I know what kind of parent I want to be in the long term but what what do I have the capacity to be in the short term right and I I think I was using that technology. I'm cooking dinner every night five to six and I was like I just need people to leave me alone so what am I going to do? Right. And that was possible without without technology but at at a certain point in my life I thought it wasn't and so that's that's absolutely why I was there. I want to conclude with a kind of a silly question because I always like to get a little bit loose at the end of the podcast and um you're an you're a you're a nice Midwesterner you're from the Midwest aren't you I'm from Colorado. Oh you're from Colorado oh gosh you just you've you've been there so long that you've taken on the humble Midwesterner affect and so I made you uncomfortable right off the bat by complimenting you based on my listeners I want to bring that full circle in some of our emails I did notice that your first name is actually in full is is Jesson and in Danish it would be yes and um and so you you said you've got some Danish roots way back where do you want to lay claim in front of me to being the top Danish American swim coach?
SPEAKER_00No absolutely not not even remotely because I don't know how far back that goes and B, that's super presumptuous. Like I have no idea who else is out there that coaches swimming who's got Danish background.
SPEAKER_03And I don't so you're saying it's me I'm the one that's what you're saying.
SPEAKER_00I also I also feel this way I I'm proud of what we've done. Yep I am but I I I really I this is just an I I think super locally and so it's not about others it's not about uh it's not a relative thing this is not a competition this is a it is but it's it's not I I just want to do the best that we can do and I think we get we get it right a lot and we get it wrong sometimes too and so for me I just want to I just want to do the best I can and if that means that we've done a good job and last year we ended up winning getting second that's awesome. I'm happy about that this coming year if like our men's team is going to take a little bit of a step back we're gonna get back. We got a great class coming in but if next year if we get fourth and that's a huge victory for us I want to celebrate it. I want to know how to jump up and down and say this is awesome. We earned this trophy. So I don't think that far out afield Chris I I just think about the four walls around me.
SPEAKER_03Well congratulations on everything congratulations on producing a great podcast uh for my listeners I think this would be really great this took a bunch of directions that I didn't think it was going to take you ended up uh asking me a few questions uh so you turned the tables on me I really appreciate you making some time and helping us with the production end of this and everything else I wish you all the luck we're we're uh I guess a month ish away from the start of a new collegiate season so good luck with that I will of course be watching as a swimming super fan as well to see what happens with your teams and now I will have context for your NCAA results so that'll be amazing. For everybody that's listening right now if you want to reach out the way that uh some of my listeners did and and and told me to have Jess on the podcast you can write me at swimbriefpodcast at gmail.com you can go to chrisdcoach.com you can fill out a contact form or you can go to my Instagram chrisd underscore coach where I am grudgingly on social media despite the fact that I don't know that it's really good for me either. Jess given our conversation about social media do you do you have any places you want to send people just want to become bigger fans of a Kenyan social we I don't know what it is.
SPEAKER_00We do have a a team account an Instagram account. Just search it guys you can find it our student athletes are are in charge of that there's a committee that works on that and they do a really nice job and we try to keep it pretty professional if you will on it but no I don't have any footprint out there. So if people have thoughts or questions they can always write me at my Kenyan account bookj at Kenyon.edu and I'm always eager to learn and think and and grow with other people anytime.
SPEAKER_03Amazing there you have it folks thank you for listening and uh I'll see you again in a week.
SPEAKER_00Thanks Chris