Hey, it's Chris DeSantis and welcome to the swim brief. I wanted to take a few moments this week here in this bonus Tuesday podcast to expand on some of the stuff that I talked about in last week's podquest. Most namely, I got into this topic of sort of our collective knowledge in the sport of swimming about coaching women. And I had some really interesting conversations over the weekend, a lot of back and forth, including some of my friends, people who are frequent listeners to the podcast, who are sort of probing back and forth. And, you know, I always want to be aware of those conversations that like I get to a new place. Um I don't necessarily always share that with my audience. I don't share everything about my life with the people that are listening to this, but I think one of the things that has been really valuable here is sharing some of that conversation because what that uh can help you do on the other end is um first, I hope you feel like you're part of this conversation. I hope you feel like um that this is getting into some areas that you are also thinking about whether or not you agree with me or not. Um it's not really important, but um just that you have some stuff that makes you think and makes you reconsider and makes you think about what it is you actually believe and all this stuff. So if I could very briefly sort of rephrase the central point that I was making on the previous week's podcast, is um I was getting pretty frustrated looking at some of the results around women's NCAAs. Um and the frustration really boils down to I I don't think that a lot of women are having a very positive experience as they get to the upper levels doing the sport of swimming. And I think that's a bad thing. I love swimming. Um I didn't have a particularly good experience though when I got to the upper levels of swimming, so I know what that's like. And I, as somebody who loves the sport of swimming, I want people to be having a better experience doing it. And I have just found um both uh observationally and then in conversations with um women and men and all sorts of uh people around the sport of swimming, that um that I really do believe that we have a collective knowledge gap in it. And um I want to uh get into a couple more layers of understanding on this because I think, like anything, that if you keep thinking about it and you keep um probing some of the layers of it, you know, that kind of thought can keep expanding into some creativity around what to do. You don't need to come up with a solution like immediately upon discovering what a problem is. Um you you in fact um thinking that way, going uh sort of straight direct lines from problem to solution, I think is is in many ways counterproductive. Um and so I like to just sort of keep myself thinking about different angles of something. I find it it stimulates the creative process. So one of the thoughts that I had as I was talking through with some of my friends is um, you know, if we think about the whole structure of sports as we know it, for instance, for in this case, we're talking about collegiate sports. Okay. In their inception, collegiate sports were built for men. That's just historical fact. Like collegiate sports, not something that have existed, right? Like, you know, colleges have existed for a long time. Even in the United States, they've many of them have existed for hundreds of years. The concept of them having sports teams is a relatively new inception, right? I remember when I was coaching at Georgia Tech, we had like one of the most historic college swim teams. Okay, they've not even been around for 100 years at that point. Um and and so when you look at that structure, overwhelmingly at their inception, they were created for men. And all if you just take that piece of it and look at that from that end, you can kind of understand, right, especially when you look at all the stuff in sports that is can sometimes be very dogmatic, slow to change, you know, this is the way we've always done things, so we got to keep it this way. You can see how a lot of stuff gets woven into the culture and why, for instance, our iterative process on how to coach men is just better. We've been working on it for a longer amount of time, and we had that as an idea from the inception. How can we make this work for men? Now, the idea of college athletics for women is much newer, right? And it was, for lack of a better term, it was um grafted on to the existing structure of college sports for men in most cases, right? Um, the concept of let's have a women's swim team at a lot of places, started from the inception of now that this has changed down the line, but in a lot of places started, well, well, we have men's swimming, so we'll just make a men's swim team for women. I'm like, I I know I'm being a little bit cheeky with my language there, but that is um essentially the plan. That is that is essentially how we started things from the inception point. Now, when I was talking about this with Joel, he goes, Well, you know, I'm kind of uncomfortable talking about this because, you know, here it's us, a couple of guys discussing, you know, giving our opinions on women swimming. And I totally acknowledge that piece of it, I think. Um, like if it I would be lying if I said I wasn't uncomfortable with that too. But one of the counterpoints, you know, that people would come to that viewpoint with it would be like, well, we get we gotta listen to um gotta listen to women on this end. I think that's a great idea. I think that um it's true. I think in its application it becomes extremely tricky, and here's why. Because there is no individual reward for women being sharing, basically, um uh what they'd like to change in this sport system. There is, in fact, quite a bit to lose on an individual level. I'll explain what I mean there. On an individual level, there is quite a bit to lose by being outspoken on this topic. And I'll just let me just phrase it this way. If we look at the sport of swimming, um look at the most successful women that we've ever had on the coaching end of swimming, and you tell me, do you think that they owe their success to being outspoken about how the sport should be coached differently for women? If you believe that, I'd love to see your evidence. I'd love to I'd love to be wrong, but I just don't see it. And the reason to me is pretty simple. Again, because they have a lot to lose, right? Um if you have an existing system, um, I know of somebody who has at very many different junctures suggested a different way of doing things and faced quite a bit of resistance to that. And uh it can be really hard for you on an individual level. It's not um, it's not like people go like, oh, hey, Chris is so great, you know. I love your fresh perspective on things. That's not often the situation that I run into. And if you look, if you accept on the front end that we have an unfair system, that we have a system that is um not creating as good of an experience on average for women. Um they start from a position that makes it harder for them. So you see how they're this self-sensaturated, they start from a position that makes it harder for them to contribute. And I run into this immediately because um I have quite a few friends that are women that are coaches, and when I think about bringing them on to discuss this topic, it's not that I don't think that they couldn't give me hours of material. I absolutely think they could. Do I think they would? Or as their friend, do I even think that they should? And the answer to that is no. To both those questions. The answer is no. So then we return to the same problem, which is that we have a collective uh issue here, right? That um we have not created culturally a structure where it is very likely that somebody is going to give us the information, start start actually helping us with the thing that if you believe me, if you accept some of the stuff that I'm putting forth here, that we could use some help with. We have made it extremely hard for those people. So that's why I return to the front end of it, you know, um, because I think that if there is a critical mass of people who go, wait, wait, wait, maybe this is actually true. Um maybe we really could make a lot of progress. And by the way, maybe along the way to creating a better sporting experience for women in the sport of swimming, it's not like it's not like it's exclusive of the experience of men. I happen to believe, and I've always believed this in coaching. This is one of, I would guess, I guess I've for lack of a better term, I would define it as selfish feminism. I I believe that, for instance, in coaching, that um if I can influence creating a better environment for women in coaching, it will also be a better environment for me. I believe that. Because I believe that a lot of the things that have created a not so great experience for me in coaching are experiences that I have in common with the women that I see coaching. And so, you know, they these things are not. What my point here is that these things are not mutually exclusive. And you see now how um I'm trying to turn the corner and create this, move this from a problem, a problem, right? A collective action problem to an opportunity. Okay, so if we if we can start on the end of this is an unfair situation, I'll give you an example that I I've often um used, but maybe not in this podcast, but back in the days when I used to write and have a blog. Okay, so if we look at hiring practices and we say that there that women are disproportionately underrepresented in coaching, and um, you know, I think most people can accept that that is actually that is actually the case, right? And we can view that as a problem. I have a way of viewing it as an opportunity. So my thought is there are disproportionately um less women who have the potential to be frickin' phenomenal coaches who are not in positions of really big opportunity in coaching. And if you can figure out who those people are, if you want to invest the time to figure out um who those super talented people are who aren't being given an opportunity, well then you have just cracked the code on how to art outsmart your opposition. You have cracked the code on how to um get higher and and get opportunities for people that other people won't even know to look for. Right? And is it as easy as I just made it sound? Absolutely not. But if it was easy, everybody would do it, right? And obviously, everybody is not doing it because we're in the situation that we're in. So you gotta ask yourself, for instance, if you're looking out at the coaching landscape and you're saying, you agree with me that women are up underrepresented, you gotta you gotta ask yourself, how is that an opportunity for me in what I'm doing? How can I actually make that um in balance something that can actually manifest as something that will improve my competitive chances of success in this environment, and once you can make that shift to viewing it not as a problem, but actually as an opportunity, then your whole motivation changes, right? Because problem, okay, problem is in the realm of have to solve, got to figure it out, or else, right? You you you have like you gotta be able to zero in on this, or I don't know what, the world's gonna end. Opportunity is boy, I if you want to talk to me about an opportunity, I'm interested, right? If I if I just called you up today and I left a voicemail on your phone, now you might be a little suspicious of me because you go, Chris, you're you know, you're in business for yourself. You just start telling me about an opportunity. You just want me to give you some money. But let's just say somebody who you didn't think, you know, was just a coaching friend of yours, and they called you up and they just said, Hey, I really want to talk to you. I got this, like, there's I think there's an opportunity for you, or um somebody, you know, somebody told me, like, you're like, hmm, what's next? Yeah, what do I do? How do I get there? Okay. So I think that we can, if we start thinking a little bit differently about this, if we start seeing that um, for instance, if we can admit that um the coaching level, the level to which we coach women at the collegiate level is not up to the same standard as as men, then we have an opportunity to improve. Like just like just like look at it like swimmers. Like it's easier to improve when you're at a lower level. The higher level you get to, the harder it is to figure out what to do next. So we have all these different ways that we can frame this as in in a positive way and look at the situation in a different way. And I think, you know, I was a little bit emotional, I was a little bit lashing out the first time when I talked through this. So I wanted to give an opportunity to come back and revisit it another time and just give like a few more angles on the way that I'm I'm thinking about this. I really appreciate you guys all listening. Um, I'm looking forward to uh recording on again on Thursday with Joel, talking about some great stuff. We'll talk about some stuff um we're gonna start looking, maybe even past season. We're gonna give a little bit of early NCAA reactions um on the front end of that, same thing we did for the women's meet. Not a recap of events, but just stuff that, you know, big big ideas that we're thinking about. So look for that on Thursday. I'm gonna be down in Galveston, Texas, um, for the Golf Coaches Clinic coming up here in a few days. I'm really excited for that. Um, I'm excited anybody who listens who uh is down there, come say hello to me. I love to hear from people that listen to the podcast. Um, I am always pleasantly surprised uh in those situations. So please come say hello to me. I would love to meet you. And um, for everybody else, I will talk to you later this week and thank you for listening.