Hello and welcome to the swim brief. Um we're we're still spitballing names for this podcast. I'm I'm joined once again by uh two people that uh came on a few weeks ago to to have a pretty wide-ranging conversation. I'd say the gist of it was uh a lot about sort of cultural issues within the sport of swimming stuff that um is on the grassroot level. So uh maybe we're gonna call this uh what grinds my beans. Maybe we're gonna call this um what uh what what were some actually I think all the rest of the suggestions were not exactly appropriate for this format. So we'll just stick with what can't we swear here?
SPEAKER_00Like is this monetary?
SPEAKER_03I don't know that I've been rated or yeah, I don't know that I've been rated explicit on um uh Apple Podcasts, and maybe it's because nobody has um uh not enough people listen to go like, hey, there was a swear word again. I did, I did, I had a podcast recently where I was gonna swear a lot, and um, so I have decided you can adopt this practice if you want. Um, I have adopted instead of normal curse words, I just say Schubert instead. Um, because in my world, uh invoking the name of Billzebub himself um is is sort of a curse word. Anyway, with without further explanation, uh, I'm joined by the executive director of golf swimming, Julie Bachman. Julie, how are you?
SPEAKER_00Good morning. I'm awesome. How are you, Jared?
SPEAKER_03Surviving the um South Texas heat. You betcha. Yeah. And the aquatics director of the Minnetonka Public Schools District, uh former board member of USA Swimming, John Bradley. Do you want me to keep introducing you as a former board member of USA Swimming?
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_00It's uh it's an FBM.
SPEAKER_02FBM, that sounds like a like I mean, like I'm a furry or something like that.
SPEAKER_00Heavy on the BM.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I was gonna say FBM sounds like something they put on my three-year-old's notes um at the end of daycare. Like he had an FBM today. Um we cleaned it up though. It's it's all right. Um yeah, let's not do that. Okay, so one of the things we want to do here is, and we've we've we've very um on purpose, we've we've done very little sort of structuring of what this is. We want to have this sort of be regular and ongoing because there's always stuff to talk about um in this realm. Um, and I want to give uh Julie and John a little bit of an open forum and actually turn it into a conversation a bit with three people that are um looking at things from a little bit of a different angle. Um, so I'm gonna go to Julie first. Julie, what is um what is grinding your beans this week?
SPEAKER_00What is grinding? Well, I just wanted to, you know, I guess add a little bit to what you were saying. Sure. How this started was JB and I having conversations over the course of the last couple of years that we always say, you know, we really should be talking about this with more people.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00And and you know, usually that happens when you go to a convention or you know you have get togethers. We obviously haven't been having those as much. Um sorry about the dogs. And then, you know, me being a fan of yours and listening to your podcast and me reaching out to you and and just noticing that you are awesome and spend quite a bit of time, you know, talking about a lot of the competitive side of the sport, which is necessary and incredibly interesting.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_00Wells, quit it. I'm sorry. Um, but that I really think this is it would be a great forum to call out various different issues happening at the grassroots level with our clubs, just business, business issues, uh coaching, you know, stressor issues, parent athlete stressor issues, and talking about them, but more importantly, trying to figure out some solutions and and and providing people with the resources, you know, if they're going through the situation or you know, maybe learning from what we're talking about, or actually recognizing it that it's happening to them or their club, and then taking you know next steps. So yeah, I think we really just want to get into real life.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I I I I thank you for adding that. I mean, I I I think some of what we've discussed too is that um it can sound sometimes when you're talking about this stuff like you're just sort of uh railing against the powers that be, and part of the conversation we're trying to have is like stop waiting for some higher authority to fix this for you, um, because it's not gonna happen, um, which is frustrating to hear, especially like uh I know I get frustrated when I hear it because I I I kind of I wish it was better than that. Uh but at the same time, if you just spend all your time um, you know, sort of uh railing against that stuff and waiting, uh you're only gonna be more frustrated. So uh we're hoping that by having a discussion about some of this stuff that we can help people to be a bit more proactive, um, to take steps to affect change within their own uh local environment. And that, you know, when you reached out to me with that, that really resonated with me because I feel like my project right now, as I said on our previous podcast, is I've been um I've always offered um critiques of what's going on um in in various levels of leadership within the sport of swimming. Uh specifically US swimming, I've sort of always been, not always, but mostly been outside of that system. And now I'm inside it as a coach. I'm trying to work from the inside a little bit more than I used to. Um, and so uh I think it's gonna be a great learning experience for me as well. John, do you have anything to say before we get into some specific topics?
SPEAKER_02Um no, not really. I, you know, I I it I don't think I'm necessarily wrong or right about a lot of things, but I do think I have perspective. And, you know, I see a lot of people making decisions that tend to lead down the same paths that I've seen before. And so, you know, I think it's it's good to have these conversations and just to get people thinking about it. You know, I don't know how many solutions I have to offer, but you know, I think that you know, as I've gotten older and you know, I get grayer and this and that, I you know, you start to kind of think about all right, where has all this led to? What was the point of all this? And I think maybe that's part of what's going on right now is there's a lot of people who are trying to figure out what's the point, and their thoughts and processes of what's best for them versus what's best for their teams aren't necessarily in alignment and they don't know how to fix it. And I'd like to spend a lot of time talking about that kind of stuff about how do you because if we want this to be sustainable, and these careers should be sustainable. I mean, you you should be able to have a long career in stable coaching situations if certain things are present. And I don't think anybody is providing guidance right now as to how to get to that point because it's so fluid. There are so many things that can bubble up and create problems for you. So, you know, how do you navigate that? That's when I'm really interested in trying to help people who are maybe a little bit younger to get the things that they want out of it, not just the things that they may think they want in the moment.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And and John, I would add, I mean, you say like maybe maybe you don't have that many solutions. And I've I've heard this as I've been trying, you know, writing and having these sorts of discourses over time. I think um one criticism I've heard a lot has been like, well, you don't offer enough solutions. And um, I take that to heart. I know that um many people want uh uh solutions, but I would push back on the notion anybody thinks that that precludes you from having the discussion, because any good um problem solver knows you can't even begin to come up with solutions until you understand what the problem is. And right now we have far too little discussion about um and and sort of discourse on what the problems are, healthy discourse. Um, there's very few places. This is something that's very frustrating to me, and one of the reasons I like having this podcast, there's very few places to go to have a healthy discourse about our sport. Um, certainly I don't think swim swam is that place. That seems to be where a tremendous amount of discourse happens, but anonymous comment sections are objectively bad places to have it. Um, so this is a conversation with three people, you know their names, uh, you know where they are, and um hopefully that'll lead to a little bit better discussion. All right, Julie, let's get let's get into a more specific uh topic here. What have you got to to lead us off this week?
SPEAKER_00You know, so I mean, along with what JB was saying, you know, when you I feel like, and again, for those that don't know me, I am a total outsider. Yeah, I've been I've been in the sport now on various different levels, but I didn't I didn't grow up in swimming. I grew up in sports, but not in swimming. So I'm always looking at things like what what is going on here? Why do we do this thing? And there is a very specific paradigm for everything that we do, and and it's accepted as what's normal, it's accepted as to be what people should aspire to do. And we, whenever there's an outlier, we squash it like a bug, like, oh my God, you know, we gotta kill it. And I don't care what I don't care if it's competition related, like a perfect example of that is the way people are freaking out over Michael Andrew and Peter Andrew. And all of us can have any kind of opinion we want about that, but the fervor of comments that are mostly negative is similar to the last podcast that we were on. We were talking about introducing new types of competition. There's fervor and rejection of that as well. And and you know, it's uh I just think that's something we really need to take a hard look at is how do we lift up the people that are looking at things differently and and actually learn from them. You know, when somebody goes off and does something different. I mean, what's awesome about that is someone else is trying it. You're not the one putting your toe in the water, someone else is doing it. I mean, I I think we need to now more than ever just be very open to that. I did get a couple emails after we did our last uh podcast of people just thanking me that we actually were just talking about something different, and that made me feel better because it's like you know, you're on this podcast, it's just the three of us, and it's like, you know, does anybody really want to listen to this? But I think I think people appreciate uh talking about you know what what can we do to not crush the paradigm. We don't want to crush it. There's benefits to the way we've always done things. How can we add to it? Because when we start adding to it, we're gonna start helping you know the sport get better, which then essentially is gonna help our coaches, it's gonna help our athletes.
SPEAKER_03So that's I know that's a huge topic, but that's you gotta forward start to forward those to me because as I told you before we started recording today, I think I will I run into I don't know, I don't know if I've quantified it, but I run into too many situations where I sort of find the door slammed in my face sometimes because of what I write or or say here. And uh I like I've said in some previous podcasts and videos, I'm not gonna pretend like you know, like I just um just have uh impervious uh thick skin. Like I it it still bothers me um to be in that situation. So I I I I would love to see those because I don't run into enough people that are like that are that are uh remotely positive about this. Um uh so coaches, I think one one of the things you referenced there, we talk about coaches' well-being and um, you know, it's uh it's a big topic. I feel like it's a thing that gets uh an editorial maybe once every few months um on a swimming website, you know, and there's uh there's somebody who's um had a personal experience uh where they were maybe they were engaged in in in coaching and they they were went down a really unhealthy path and they sort of turned it around and they're they want to be an evangelist for this stuff. Um but other than that, I mean, I think that it's uh and I say this as somebody who's uh literally a part of his job is the well-being of coaches on my team. Um there is uh still uh in many situations a lack of of structure around that stuff. Um so when you when you think about some of the specific issues that go into the well-being of coaches participating in the sport, what are I I'll go to John, like what are some of the things that sort of bubble up to the forefront for you?
SPEAKER_02Um I think uh are we talking in terms of careers? Is that where we're at? I mean, yeah, I think uh being happy with what you are, I think is huge. Um I think uh not being forced into a certain way of thinking and you know being willing to try new things, and uh, if it doesn't work out knowing that you can always restart, um you know, there's a lot, a lot of people put a lot of pressure on themselves, I think, to get it right the first time. And you know, no matter what we do, there's there's always gonna be benefit. Let's talk about like training kids, for example. No matter what you do, every kid's gonna get some benefit physically from from what you do in terms of training. Yeah. Um and a lot of people think that you have to do it a certain way, you know, maybe it's you buy into the energy system idea from her band check or whatever, which any physiologist is gonna tell you is total BS, but it's a good way of training people and it's a good way of organizing kind of how you you put your training together in what you do. But you know, the idea that there are specific energy systems that that you know you have to get certain percentages of and that this is the way to do it, not medically sound, right? And if we want, I'll get my buddy Mike on here, who's a uh sports human performance guy at the Mayo Clinic, and he can tell you all about that. We that that would be a wild discussion. Um, so anyway, you want to you want to get you wanna have some independent thought at the same time, you want to have some job security. You know, you can't be this person who's running around trying every new thing or under the sun. So, how do you merge those two things and get into a place where you're happy with what you're doing, you're interested and you're innovative and you're you're trying to be better all the time. You're controlling the things you can control, right? And I don't think enough people understand how to do that. Or they come to that realization too late that, you know, maybe I don't have to worry about all these kids getting enough sleep. Maybe once I say it and I've documented it, um, if they choose to do it, that's great. But I don't need to put them to bed, right? You know, that makes that makes sense.
SPEAKER_03I don't need to tuck every single one of them in.
SPEAKER_02Right, but but you get you know, you get some of this control stuff going where it's I have to control everything, and you know, I don't know. Yeah, I wanted to circle back to something that Julie said though.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, please.
SPEAKER_02So earlier when you were talking about it, it was the that Peter Andrew, Michael Andrew thing, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And I should add, we we need to mention Michael Andrew once per podcast just for algorithm reasons, because you know it draws more listeners in, and then I can I can tag the post Michael Andrew, and then we'll get 50 more people listening.
SPEAKER_02That's what I've been thinking about this. So um if the way Michael Andrew trains would have been put out there by a better salesman, would more people be training like Michael Andrew? Because I think they would. And I think the problem is that the way that Peter Andrew and those around him who endorse that have promoted this, yeah, has been off-putting to a lot of people. And I think it's it's it's a similar argument, and I'm I know I'm crossing the streams here. I think it's a similar argument to vaccine hesitancy, where if it was marketed a certain way that you could get more people to buy in. I mean, I think this is less of a train of a I hate the way you train, and more of a marketing issue where people don't want to try it. I mean, if if if uh one of the things that was interesting is there were a number of people who pointed out during the Olympics, you know, Ron Aiken does USRPT. And I was thinking to myself, you know, I I don't think that your interpretation of what he does, and I don't know how he does it, but whatever he's doing, it's obviously working. Sure. Um, but he's talked about that, that he uses some of those principles in it, and there were a lot of people who I think I think their ears perked up and were like, maybe this is something I should be looking at, who never would have considered it before because it was coming from a different source.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think that but guys, but I don't let me just can I add on to that real quick. So the other thing that I've noticed about that over the years, and I've known the Andrew family for since Michael was 11, just because I was in the Midwest, and yeah, and you know, they are from a another country, Peter and Tina. Yeah, and they grew up a lot differently than we did, and they look at things completely different than we did, and I think that's also what was off-putting about it is that you know they don't look different. They don't, they they don't, you know, they're they don't look like they're from they don't American family, yeah. Yeah, they're not they don't look like they're from Africa, right? Um but I can tell you from personal uh experience that they do think differently, and it's not it's not it's not a bad thing, it's that they came from another country, and so I think the combination of all of that, and and this is I think adds on to what we what what I think we're we're essentially trying to say is that if it's different, it's wrong. If it doesn't bark this way, if it doesn't, you know, if the if the lineup of events at the swim meet don't look like this, if you know, then it's then it's a bad thing and we need to marginalize it instead of doing what JB just said.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so so let me jump on that because I think that so I think that what we're talking about, it's a lot like technology adoption. I look at I I try to look at things outside of swimming a lot to see if there's corollaries or different things that you can look at and say, okay, maybe this is applicable, you know, and this and that. And I there's this thing called an adoption curve, which is applied to technology. And basically what it does is it it looks like a bell curve, but it's organized into five different categories. And then there's a separate line that runs through this curve that that has to do with market share. And usually, I'll just kind of go through these. So the first one is uh like 2.5% of the people who are like your hyper early bleeding edge adopters of technology, that's that 2.5%. That's the Andrews family. Okay, now they're also innovators because they helped pioneer, but they bought into this real early, right? Then you've got early adopters, and those are the people who kind of glom onto it. That's about 13.5%. Then you get into the early majority, and once you hit the early majority, usually the technology can't be stopped by that point. The new technology will split the old technology. And I saw a study about Netflix that was done with this about how basically once Netflix got their subscription model going, it was inevitable that this was going to take over, right? Problem with these approaches, and I think a lot of it has to do with marketing and communication. Again, I go back to this idea of who's the messenger, who's the pie piper, you know. Think about that energy systems piece. It's John Urbanchek. Everybody loves John Urbanchek. The guy is amazing, and he's smart, and he's obviously done incredible things in his life that have helped hundreds of hundreds of people, probably thousands of people.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_02And you know, when that guy's selling it, you're gonna listen, right? But when somebody who you don't know who has one kit is selling it, all of a sudden I think a lot of people get really skeptical, and that's okay. Yeah, but again, is it I I think they're on to something, but you haven't seen it develop. It's all kind of just it's stuck because I think it's a victim of its, it's it's out. It's it's like again, I go back to the vaccine piece. It's not about the vaccines and their efficacy. We all know they work, right? It's about Anthony Fauci and he's misled us, or this or that, or the other thing. You know, it's it's about everything but the efficacy of the vaccine, right? You know, so how do you once you know that good idea is out there, how do you unpack it from maybe the way it was packaged before and repackage it to get it out there so you get some new people to try it, maybe put their own spin on it, and maybe it's something really good, you know.
SPEAKER_03I think it's I I I think it's really appropriate to bring up Michael Andrew too. Uh I didn't actually bring him up on my last podcast. Um, so that one failed failed the algorithm. But I I do think there's a lot to discuss there at the moment, and and it has a lot of applicability to the rest of the sport. I mean, I think to to to what you're saying, John, there's there's an aspect to which um I I almost think of uh the sport of swimming sometimes can be like that uh that indie band that you really like that then all of a sudden blew up, and the the people who are sort of the core fans are very upset at the newcomers to do so. Whenever anything new comes around, like people seem to be pretty upset instead of going, like, oh yeah, come on into the tent of swimming. Like, we got all sorts of things. Like I hear all the time, like, oh, there's so many ways up the mountain, but then it seems like there's these tiny little insular pieces where people get into this mindset, like, well, the way I'm doing it must be the best way, and anything else that's sort of popular threatens that in a way. And I do think um it's absolutely true that the the marketing end of it has been really bad. Um, in the sense that it's that it's just you know, a dad. I mean, that that's part of I've talked about as well, is is imagine how upsetting it is to many swim coaches that this guy's being coached by his dad. Because pretty much every swim coach I talk to is upset to some extent about a parent coaching their kid. So, like here we have an avatar of many of these swim coaches' sort of worst nightmare of a parent, some some parent who goes, Well, I I could handle all my kids' training, um, and we'll do it. But it's also successful.
SPEAKER_00But to that point, and I don't, I'm just for discussion purposes not to interrupt you, but it's also not really knowing what you're talking about. I mean, there's there's an assumption that, and I am not a defender of them, other than if I do if there's false information, I'm gonna call it out. But Peter's not just uh some regular old dad. Of course not. I mean, he you know, and so and there's been that perception. Um but yeah, but a lot of coaches see that when they look at it, they think about exactly, but that's all they want to see, they don't want to see anything else, and it's like it goes back to I was on the phone with I don't know if you know Herb Schwab, but he's he's an official in USA swimming and he's really involved with governance and knows a lot about what's going on. But anyway, talking to him last night, and we were talking about an issue, and I'm like, why is this so hard? And I mean, it literally was just like a swimmer was swimming at one of these uh national meets this weekend, she's on Texas AM. She temporarily uh for trials, uh, went back to her her club, and there's all this issue, like, why is she doing this? And you know, right? And it's like, why can't we say figure out how to say yes to things? Yeah, instead of always being like, nope, can't do that, or hey, that's wrong, or no, they shouldn't do it that way. I mean, I think that's you know, not to get completely off the tangent. I think I brought up Michael Andrew, and now we're talking about that. And I'm not saying I just think it's a evidence of this type of behavior that I mean it's normal human behavior, but it's like back to what you and I talked about earlier today, Chris. We have to be able to talk about these things, call each other out on the good things we're doing, lift each other up, but also say, hey, we shouldn't be doing that. You know, we shouldn't be, we we we need to be more open-minded, or let's invite this idea in and not try to marginalize it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I think the result is we've gotten one of one of the biggest talents in American swimming is on an island right now. Like the the biggest problem, one of the biggest problems you get to the national competitive level is I don't know that there's gonna be information going back and forth with Michael and Peter and the rest of um the swimming world. And I don't blame Michael and Peter for sort of isolating and not wanting, because I think they get a ton of um, I think they get a ton of Schubert uh about stuff that uh they don't uh necessarily deserve. And so like I don't blame them for sort of just walling things off and being like, well, we're just gonna we're gonna be over here doing our thing. Please don't bother us. But I think it's really bad um that uh that they're sort of isolated in that position because some information sharing, there's plenty of people that could help Michael Andrew to finish some of these races better than he is, but I don't see that um they're talking to the Andrews, and I don't see that the Andrews are talking to them. And um and it may seem like we're just talking about one very elite swimmer, but this is sort of a broader um systemic problem where yeah, where where the the two people who could share information to help each other are both standing in their corner with their arms crossed. Well, like that guy, I don't want to talk to him because you know, but it it didn't have to be that way.
SPEAKER_02It didn't have and here's my and and I'll I'll go back to this marketing thing. We're talking about oh, the swim coaches get upset because it's a dad. How many swim coaches do you know who are dads who have unbelievable good swimmers who are their own children? Right. Most of the swim coaches I know who have kids, their kids are decent swimmers, yeah, they're above average. Yeah, and sometimes you run into a kid like Nick Albiero out of Louisville, who almost makes the Olympic team, and his dad is the head coach at Louisville. Yeah, I mean that's that's the the the opposite of the Andrew situation, but it's the same thing. They have knowledge, they're working with their kid, but Albiero is not vilified. Why is that? Well, because he's probably a little more of a traditional trainer. But if you look at the things that Coach Albiero's done at Louisville, they're incredibly innovative. He is a much different kind of coach. And I think that again, go back to this messaging piece. It's about messaging and communications. I think that if this were presented as, hey, here's one methodology, hey, here's another methodology. You can pick the pieces that you think you like, but this is how these guys do it, and this is how these guys do it. And I think that's what somebody like Ron Aitken does, where he doesn't get caught up in, and I'm I'm not speaking for Coach Aiken, I'm just using him as an example. I think that that's where somebody who hears a good idea, they don't care where it's coming from. They just like it's a good idea and they're willing to try it. And that's the kind of uh personal uh personal uh uh confidence that you want in a coach who's willing to say, I'm willing to look at these things, I don't care what the sourcing is, and I can put my own spin on it, and maybe something good comes out of it. That's where we need to get to.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. You're you're touching on one of my big points right now because uh I've talked about on this podcast is I everybody who's read uh some of the stuff I've written has knows that I for a period coached absolute to the T, pure USRPT. And I I learned a lot from it. I learned a lot about what works and what doesn't work. I feel like I understand the concept. I I coach in a high volume program right now. So some people would say that's the opposite. The truth of the matter is the two the two systems have more in common than anyone wants to admit. Um, and in my opinion, and I don't think this should be a terribly controversial opinion, understanding what works about various methodologies of practice, not just like understanding what works about what you do, but actually understanding about what works that somebody else is doing just makes you better at what you do, uh, makes you more flexible, makes you more sort of agile, more able to respond to various situations. Because I I when I coached you as RPT, I had some kids that were floundering, frankly, under my coaching that that flourished. And I had some kids that flourished that started floundering. And so it sort of opened my eye, like, oh, okay, there's so something systemic here. Um, whereas I think a lot of coaching gets into, as I said, you get very sort of isolated, you get insular, you sort of figure out what works for you, and then you get this confirmation bias because whatever works for you, a certain segment of the people you're coaching, they will do well. And you so you go, well, those are the people who are doing it right, you know, instead of thinking like, oh, actually, my job as a coach is to is to make as many people that are, you know, sort of reasonably showing up to what I'm doing, um, to make it work for for as many people as possible, not just like take the ones that are that are doing well and go, well, see, this is that these people actually, you know, do the right thing, and that's why they're successful. Well, and here's another thing about that.
SPEAKER_02Because I think this has to do with with kind of what Julie, you and I were talking about earlier today.
SPEAKER_03And Ooh, what's that? I don't know what you guys were talking about earlier today.
SPEAKER_02People, I think people think that they're successful a lot of times because of the way they train, right? I mean, people think that oh, it's that my style of training, it's stuff training. Um, what if it has very little to do with the training and it has everything to do with the way you engage and interact with individuals? What if it's the way your personality infects people in a good way and makes you the person that they want to perform for? Yeah, you know, uh these coaches who are wildly successful, um they generally are incredibly engaging people. They're fun to talk to, they're interesting, they have hobbies, they they they and they're incredibly knowledgeable and they give them their time and their athletes respond to that. I think where we run into trouble is when you have people who are kind of the same sorts of people in the same town, and then all of a sudden there's not a good speech, there's not a good choice, or even worse, you get these kind of battles where people are like, Well, you shouldn't leave, my training's the best, you shouldn't leave my training's the best, and it has nothing to do with the training, it has everything to do with maybe this person's just better at coaching guys than they are girls, and that's why all the guys want to go slow. I mean, that's that might just be it, you know.
SPEAKER_00But but is it also the kind of like saying, Okay, my system is what works, it's not the swimmers. And not because I still haven't really heard us talk about what the swimmers need. Like there's always there's always this assumption that the coaches know everything. And I'm not saying you guys don't, you guys know a lot, but I see, you know, if I my my ultimate example is like uh Coach Sashewski, who for years would not do the one and done kid or the two years and done kid, and was like, I don't want to have anything to do with that, you know, that doesn't fit into my system, and had you know a few years where he was just floundering. And when he bought into that, it's like, okay, I'm gonna go recruit the best kid, and I'm going to actually build an offense around this kid's talents, which is, you know, I think that's really good coaching, you know, and and I think again, this is the last time I'll talk about Michael and Peter, but I know for a fact Michael would not have swam if he had not been brought up and and coached by his dad. He had no interest in being on a club, and you know, we can say, oh, why, or what does it say about him? It doesn't matter. What happened there was there was no club anywhere that offered what he needed. And what he needed was less volume, more intensity, he liked it. He loved to race, right? There are hundreds of thousands of kids out in the United States right now, great athletes that do multiple sports. That if we said to them, hey, we know you like swimming, you do summer swim league, you love to do it. You come and you practice during summer, you know, three days a week, four days a week, and then you have a meet or two meeks. What if we can replicate that to some degree in USA swimming, where you have a different kind of it's a group of kids like that that maybe they're just doing USRPT or they have a, you know, they their track is a little different, um, but they are going to meets. They they we don't vilify them for not swimming nine million yards a month. We we give them opportunity. And I and I I think the best coaches, the best business people in our sport or any sport are constantly trying to figure out how to have more availability to invite more people in. That's the part of you know, the inclusion part of our sport. You know, people want to look at DEI and say that, oh, you know, it's about race and and you know, being open to all it's like it's also about just having a lot of different products and opportunities for just this kid over here that's a really great athlete that just wants to swim and have a good time. Like, can we please figure this out?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but I I think I yeah, I think a lot of what you're talking about, like if you get back to the coach stuff in the system, I just see the incentive structure is built heavily towards a coach sort of pounding their chest about the way that they're doing, you know, running their practices or whatever, being special and different. That that seems to be um that sort of over, sort of irrational overconfident. Like it doesn't, it's not great marketing to be like, well, we we pretty feel pretty good about the way we do things here. Obviously, it doesn't work for everybody, and uh, you know, some people may find that they're like I don't uh I don't I don't know um how well that would work. And I I know too, I mean part of again, we're using our USRPT for a model of talking about other stuff. I think um you know, part of the problem with it is when you sort of apply it to most swimming situations, is it's an incredibly expensive, in a way, um uh training methodology. It requires a lot. Um to do it right, it requires a lot from the coaches and and a lot of of resources um in order to sort of manage and track a lot of the stuff that's going on. Um, so it's been very hard, I think, to apply as written um and sort of as uh as uh as evangelize on that side for places. So like we're just business model-wise, we are much more incentivized to do something um where we can have uh some more kids in the water where we don't need to track every single thing that they're doing while they're in the water. And um we maybe don't need as many coaches to track that because um I can tell you, I mean, you know, it I'm one of the reasons I think it works extremely well is that there's one coach and one athlete. Um, if you get to the ratios that most people in swimming clubs are doing on the pool deck, it's almost impossible to run.
SPEAKER_02Um can I tell you a secret?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER_02I think that 90% of the athletes in the United States, and more importantly, the people who pay for those athletes to swim in the United States, and the number might even be higher, really don't care about how good the head coaches or the head coach's system or whatever. You know what they care about? They care about getting a weekly email so they know when to get their kid to practice. Yeah, they care about knowing that their meet entries are done on time and that it's communicated back to them. They care that their billing is done correctly, they care about customer service. And I think the most successful clubs are the ones who know that piece, prioritize it, and make sure it happens. Because then when you have that piece down, you're going to have a group of happy, content people that then you can really start digging into and trying some different things. People don't want to be around a system that's chaotic, they want something that's structured. You walk into a McDonald's, you know what you're gonna get. You know that it's gonna be this. You know that in fact, when you go to a McDonald's and you get something that's terrible outside of your McDonald's experience, um, you generally are surprised because usually there's a standard, right? Yeah. I mean, so what's that bottom standard? It's like that with cars, it's like that with car dealerships. You walk into you know a Mercedes dealership, you know you're gonna get a certain level of service. You know, you walk into a Hyundai dealership, and this is a piece that Hyundai has struggled with, the dealership structure is different, and there's no guarantee of a similar experience from dealership to dealership. They struggle with it. That's one of the reasons why they struggle to penetrate the key is even worse. That's that's a bigger issue for them. This is about customer service, and again, if clubs would just figure that out and prioritize it, I think it would solve a whole lot of problems in in American sport for swimming. Because I mean, think about it. I mean you how many coaches have have put it together and set up their uh effective lines of communications for kids coming on the team? What do you get when you come on the team? So you join the wahoos, probably get some welcome pack, you have a couple of parents that help you out, this and that, the other thing. And you guys probably do it pretty well because you've been around forever, and that's what you do. Um, I'm gonna be honest with you, Minnetaka, we're not real good at that right now, and that's something I'm looking for. I don't know that we're that great at that. I mean, you're obviously getting competent. And we're not that you know, we we're not horrible at it, we're just not that great at it. But the problem is that around us, there are some teams that are very good at it, and they take it to us constantly because we are prioritizing the wrong thing. Yeah, that's the deal, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_03So I mean, I I I thought about it because I again I can't keep bringing up these tryouts, but that they're the lifeblood of what we're trying to do right now. Last week we had 70 kids come in for a tryout, and I'll be honest with you, it was extremely chaotic. And I was thinking as I was engaging in the chaos, I was thinking, like, this is not great from a customer perspective, that you sort of come in here and feel like, what the heck is going on? This is your entryway experience into our team. No, we didn't have time. I actually, once I finished, you know, personally, I think I tried out like 30 kids. Kid number 30, yeah, I went over and talked to her mom afterwards because I had nobody left to do one through 29. I didn't even say more than a word or two to the parents who are our customers, potential customers, who have brought their kid here to go, hey, is this a good place for my kid to be? And leaving it, I was thinking, like, I don't know exactly how to solve this, but I know this is not ideal from a sort of but I mean that's that's awesome self-reflection.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it really is because part of how you solve it is when somebody signs up for a tryout, you send them an email that says, here's what's gonna happen next. Right. And might even say it might even say, We may not have time to even talk to you at the pool. So don't freak out about it. You know, like literally just calling out exactly. I mean, you have these.
SPEAKER_03We did do that. So I feel I feel better already. Okay. I mean, we did do that, we did gather everybody and say, like, hey, afterwards, you'll get an email from the team. It'll have details about you know where we think think your kid might fit on the team and what you can sign up for. And that kind of stuff. So we do have some of that infrastructure, but it just strikes me, even at the moment, because there I was watching people in the water, and some of the kids that came in for the tryout, you know, because people are at all ability levels, they were struggling to finish a 50-free. And like, I'm I'm watching them like a hawk just from a water safety perspective. I don't want to lose sight of somebody that's struggling to get down to the pool. And at the same time, I have people coming up to me say, excuse me, um, I just have a question about and I'm like, I can't talk to you. I cannot. Right. I'm sorry. Yeah, I cannot speak to you right now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Which in turn can be taken as unfortunately. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's that's I I don't, I'm, I'm not, I don't wouldn't have done it any other way because it was absolutely the right thing to do in the situation. It just um certainly when you when I put my business hat on, it's not the world's best uh customer service.
SPEAKER_02Uh well, nobody nobody is the best at it, but that doesn't mean that you can't. So the next time you do a try-out, what's the solution? Okay, one, you have a lifeguard on deck, and that takes some of the pressure off of you as a coach. Two, you have a parent greeter on deck. That parent says, Hey, over here, anybody has any questions? You come talk to me. The coaches are evaluating your kids, leave them alone. We're gonna finish at five o'clock. If you want to hang around until then, you want to talk to the coaches, we'll make them available for 20 minutes. Done. And you've learned something, and now you've curated the experience so it's gonna be even better next time. Yeah, and that's the piece that I think when we get all wrapped up in all of this stuff about how are we gonna train these kids, how we're gonna do this, how are we gonna do that, and it gets lost. And that's where I think the really successful teams understand you gotta be good at kind of everything, and you got to understand what everything is, and that's the hard part.
SPEAKER_00It's I mean, it's it's one of the few things that can be controlled.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's a great way to put it right there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Why wouldn't why would you not control that? You know, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And and then you, you know, again, I I'm like the poster child for somebody who just didn't have anybody telling them what to expect, and always asking questions, not asking the right questions, um, thinking the grass was green or someplace else because I wasn't, it was it, I just wasn't getting information. It's like, could you please tell me what the process is here? That's all I'm asking. And and I think parents deserve that. And I and I think I and I I'm an inquisitive person. I don't ask those questions because I want to be you. I ask those because I want to know, and I also want to be a parent that when my kid is frustrated or questioning, I can say with a little bit of confidence, hey, hang in there. This is part of this process, or you know, this is what your coach is, you know, so that I can be step in step with the coach to make sure that what the coach wants to accomplish is also what my child is hearing at home. And that I mean, how often does that happen? I mean, I don't think we hear enough of the good stories. I hear bad stories every single day. I feel the craziest phone calls that you would. I mean, we could do a whole podcast on parents that call into the golf office with questions.
SPEAKER_03I could only imagine, George.
SPEAKER_00Okay, for 400. Um, it's like a Jeopardy category.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00So, and it always 100% of the time, I will call the coach, we'll talk about it, and it's a great opportunity for me to start laying some sort of foundation with that club, just like JB said. Like, tell me about what kind of newsletters you send out. Your coach that runs that group, what are their mechanisms of communication with the parents? And there never is any, you know what I mean? It's like everybody's trying to like play, you know, hide the Perrier water bottle. Like this is, you know, this is the golden goose. It's like, oh, we're not gonna tell you how to get this, but you better listen to me. You know, it's like, I don't know, it it we're our own worst enemy on that stuff because that is a controllable. It is a controllable to communicate, and there's so many ways you can communicate.
SPEAKER_02And that's a great idea for a podcast for us to talk about is what are the controllables out of swim club? Yeah, what are the things that you can control that like the five basics that you've got to do? Like Bill Parcells used to have this thing where he said, any team in the NFL can go eight and eight if you do these seven or eight things, and he's probably right, you know, it's controlling those things that you can control. Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen that apply to swim club, so let's do it.
SPEAKER_03All right, you write them down, John, because I don't know what they are. So you um you go ahead and write them down.
SPEAKER_00So let's do let's do let's let's I mean that's I mean, that definitely is a great lead-in for what we can talk about the next time we okay do this. I mean, JB and I can work on that. Um I think it's an awesome idea.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I would also like to see Julie's pig, which I hear rooting around there. Whereas right, right. Let's see your pig. Come on, take your pig.
SPEAKER_00She's giving the dog a massage right now.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god. Oh, you really do have a pig. No, that wasn't a euphemism for a pig.
SPEAKER_03Okay, for people who are listening to the audio version of this, we were actually just shown a pig. The pig was much smaller than the dog, it was uh nuzzling or whatever. I really just thought I heard the sound in the background, and I really did think it was just a dog that sounded like a pig, but no, it's in fact a pig.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this is this is what you signed on for, Chris. There you go.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's that's life in Lufkin, uh, Texas, right? You uh it is running a nature preserve.
SPEAKER_00It's all part of the Gulf family, baby.
SPEAKER_03That's right. Um, no, so I guess we hinted at it at the beginning, and I just sort of want to bring this into a cruise into an end because I think um there's been a nice healthy conversation about some marketing and some customer service stuff. Um, but the initial topic that I for a brief moment thought we were going to talk about, I think relates to this is I think oftentimes at the intersection of this stuff, you have a coach that just simply like their stress level is so high that it it presents a barrier to to enacting any of this stuff where they go, where you go, hey, like actually this would reduce your stress level. Like if you sent out this weekly email, it would be much better for you, um, stress-wise. But they're just like feel like they're sort of running in constant uh fire emergency mode. Um, so they're just going from place to place, sort of trying to um be reactive and it operates almost as a barrier to them doing some more proactive stuff. And I know I've I've run into that very many times in my own coaching career, even now, where um you know I have a job here that um frankly I don't I don't work that many hours in comparison to many, many swim coaches. I've noticed, um, in fact, I've gotten uh pretty strong evidence um in the form of some doctor's appointments, um, that my stress level is extremely high. It's extremely high. I I've somehow, despite all my efforts to structure uh structure things in a way that wouldn't lead me down that path, somehow inevitably I've ended up as that very stressed swim coach again. Um, so I'm at a bit of a loss because I as I'm listening to this, I'm thinking, like, oh yeah, yeah, I don't do that, I don't do that. And then I start thinking about it, and then I'm even more stressed than I was when this conversation goes and I it started, and and I think people listening are probably like from a certain perspective thinking, like, yeah, that would be great. Um, but like I gotta, you know, I gotta make sure I have practice written for tonight. Um, what do you what would you say to that? I'll let either one of you jump in.
SPEAKER_02I would say it's not about swimming, it's about it's about how you're setting yourself up. Swimming is just the way that that stress is manifesting itself. I'd be willing to bet that regardless of what you're what it is you do, that you would have those same stressors in another way. And I think the mistake we make in swimming is that we don't look at the individuals. We we we try to consolidate it all in oh, the rigors are the sport of this or that or the other thing, without looking at the inherent mental health of the individual. Um, what you said when you said you went to the doctor, um, I have been there. I was in the exact same situation about six years ago. And I went in and my blood pressure was 280 over 160. Oh my God. Which is, you know, as as my internist said uh when I saw him a few weeks later, his comment was, you know, I've seen some, I'm not the guy who deals with really high blood pressure. He goes, but um that was really high. And I was afraid you were gonna stroke out on the table, and I was like, well, you know, not really doing a whole lot for me right now, you know. But at the same time, when I went in, they gave me a test as the mail clinic, and they had me fill it out. And the the score on the test was high enough that they put me at risk of suicidal thoughts, that kind of thing. It was like, you know, you're you are obviously you have an incredible level of stress in your life. And that was a real wake-up call because that was when I made a lot of changes in my life and was able to kind of control those things that I knew would bother me. And I think that, you know, as I'm reading these stories, there was a story on Swim Swam about a coach, a younger coach recently uh took his own life. Incredibly bright coach, sounds like the guy had an incredibly bright future. I didn't know this person, right? I've read this same story 10 times in the last three or four years. Um and I hate it. I I hate it because you you know that there were people who are trying to help, you know that, and and we're somewhere along the way, we're getting stuck. And how do we help these people before we get to that point? You know, is it a healthy lifestyle? Is it making time for yourself? Is it what is it that we've got to do to help these people? And again, take the swimming out of it and bring in some mental health professionals who can say, look, these issues get consolidated into a couple of different categories. These are the warning signs. Now build if now from swimming, build out some levers where you can pull when things are getting too crazy, you know, and and look at it maybe a little differently, but we we gotta come up with something because again, it is an inherently stressful job if you let it get to you, and how do you make it better? And I think that's the key.
SPEAKER_00And we need to do a better job of supporting each other, not just those people, you know what I mean? Like it's all of us, and you know, I don't I don't coach anymore, um, but I'm around coaches and I'm listening on a daily basis, and I think one of the things that I guess I would feel most proud about is that I have coaches in my LSC that call me to tell me that they're in in mental stress and they need help. Yeah, and and I I have resources that I call and hook them up with. And we if there's a way to set that up in a more broad um you know way, I think what I I love that I love that coaches in the profession are are acknowledging and actually admitting like that's that's something that I even two years ago, you never heard anybody talking about any of this. But I but I but I think you know, I I think it's um we're all going through it. It's not just this guy over here and this gal over there, it's just various degrees, and then you know what's going on. Um, you know, some people are just in a different place on a given day than somebody else, but you know, um I think we have to start normalizing aspects of our sport where we can consistently be successful instead of so that a coach can say, Hey, I feel good about myself. I did something, I accomplished this. Look at I made these kids feel good, look at the parents are supporting me. But we we we've set up all these bars that are just impossible for 98% of our kids to ever achieve, but there's still an expectation, and I think that's really dangerous, and I and I think we're seeing it in a lot of different places in our sport, not just mental health, but the growth of our sport, the lack of. It's like this is why we need new and different ideas. And um I'll say one more thing. The other thing that's shocking me right now is is the number of teams that are looking for coaching help, like desperate for help. And you know, I'm like, oh, you need coaches too? And I'm thinking, what what are we actively doing to recruit new coaches into the sport? You know, ex-swimmers to tell them, hey, this is something, this is something you can, this is a great side hustle, you know, here's here's what you can do. Um, we're not helping ourselves, yeah. Well, and we need we need to figure that out.
SPEAKER_02How do we make the most of the resources we have? You know, I mean, it again, some of this stuff isn't rocket science. And is there a way that we can bring on, you know, it you have the junior coach program, which I think is a good one, you know, where you can have kids that are always in a line of sight, they're never a direct coach, but they can help you. You know, there a lot of teams have parents that can help. You know, why can't you have your parents teach kids how to streamline? You know, why can't you do it? Get them and get them registered, get them set. And if they're working with you, you've started them down that road. But we've got to take a look at what's available to us. Stop talking about, you know, I need you know, these coaches with this experience, da-da-da. Nobody has those people. I mean, they're they're all every business in the United States is struggling finding qualified help. So how are we gonna coach them up? How do we coach up the people who are gonna help us? Yeah, and make them better. And that's another, but take it and turn it around. That's something we should be able to control. We we we can do that, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I'll I'll I'll I'll say speak to that. I got two stories, and one of them is very relevant to you, Julie. I think um, you know, I we we had a a brief conversation about a coach in your LSC that's uh near and dear to me, Dirk Marshall. I think he is the most incredible coach I've ever seen at taking people from any walk of life and making them useful swim coaches on his team. I would gather that most of the people he hires to work for him have never coached swimming before. They they go to work there. He and he's very he hasly has a a system um for evaluating people to go like this person would be a good swim coach despite their, despite maybe not even despite uh if you talk to him for long enough. Um, he's actually looking for people who don't come from the sport of swimming because at least they might have an open mind, you know, to sort of being like, okay, here's how we're gonna teach a streamline here, here's how we're gonna set up our practice here, here's you know, so um that he won't run into as many sort of preconceived notions um about what they're doing. Another example of this I'll give that has always stuck with me is um people who follow the blog um way back, way back, know that I was um for a while quite obsessed with a swimmer from the Faroe Islands. This is this little community um sort of semi-independent country, 40,000 people in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. They had that was that girl. I know who you're talking about.
SPEAKER_02No, no, they're 800 and uh lot of freeze. Was that who that was?
SPEAKER_03No, she was from Denmark. Pal Pal Jungs was the boy who actually made two Danish Olympic teams because they're as I say, semi-independent for purposes of Olympic competition, they become part of Denmark, which is sort of how I got looped in to even paying attention. This kid was world class, and there were plenty of pretty good swimmers, not no one you would have heard of, coming out of this tiny little place. And I was just fascinated. And I uh talked to the coach because the coach, you know, he he was training this guy for a while out of a 16 and two-thirds meter pool. Um, and he's like, I'm the only swim coach, you know, for several hours um in this area. I said, like, how do you manage your team? How do he's like, Oh, I just parents, just parents volunteer and they come down and they all fulfill like a little specific task and we make it work. I was thinking, like, ah, shoot. I mean, that guy just had to innovate because there was nothing, there was no other option. There was no he he couldn't hire swim coaches to come in and do the things he needed to do to run a team. So he just figured out a way. Um, to make it go.
SPEAKER_02This is the the schoolhouse rock piece, uh, mother necessity, where would we be? You know, that that whole uh necessity is the mother invention thing. I I don't know who the first guy you're talking about is. Get that guy on here on the conversation. Yeah, let's get him on it, let's talk to him, let's hear about it because that's the kind of stuff that people need to hear, and not because they have to do it, but to realize that it can be done, and maybe that starts the definite path, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, and I I'll just uh loop back um onto the the mental health end of it. I think um uh I do like to be pretty open about that end of it. I've even been open here on this podcast because I do think uh, you know, I don't know that it's terribly helpful to me. And part of what I'm struggling with is I think I've figured out how very well how to help other people. Um but I I I get myself into situations where I can't figure out how to help myself. I mean, I um and uh I'm I'm still learning from my own brother. I I finally had a conversation with him. We weren't that close growing up, but I had a conversation with him a few years ago where he he taught me the um oxygen mask rule for mental health, which is you know, when you're on an airplane and the the airplane loses oxygen, they tell you put your own mask on first. Um, we were talking about our own childhood, and I was pretty mad at him for withdrawing in certain situations. And he said, Well, Chris, what I learned pretty early on, you got to put your own oxygen mask on first. Um, and that that's always uh stuck with me. So that's sort of my piece of advice for people because I think there's a lot of wonderfully empathetic people out in the sport of swimming who do do things for um who really help other people. But um, and that's part of my job that I do here. Um, but like I I try to be open uh with the people that I work with uh about what I'm working on as well, not only just to set an example, but also so that I give them the opportunity to help me because people can get siloed into like, oh, I'm the person who helps other people with their mental health. And then um like I it's always stuck with me that I I was educated at Penn, and a few years ago the director of mental health services at Penn died by suicide. And that was um, you know, sort of a reminder that sometimes the people who are at the forefront trying to help other people, they're they're struggling just as mightily as the people they're trying to help, and and they they can fall into the same traps as the people um that they're trying to help. Um and it is a very sad situation um with the coaches. I as like like John said, I've I've read far too many of these articles, and I've run into frankly too many people who I've seen sort of withdraw um people who are wonderful for the sport of swimming who have seen withdraw from coaching simply because they just go, like, it's just too stressful for me to coach, so I'm not gonna do it.
SPEAKER_02Maybe then you know, but that's that they're they're putting the oxygen mask on. They are, they are, and that that's a good thing because in the end, you got to take care of you, right? Yeah, maybe the the thing that's frustrating is that we can't find a role for them within the existing sport where they could contribute at a different level, at a level that works for them, right? You know, and and I think that's the the key to all of it is figuring out what works for you and what what you can do.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. All right, we're we're we're steaming towards the finish here. Um, I'm gonna give each of you a chance just to share a final thought, and then I'll uh I'll put a bow on this. Um, Julie, any final thoughts you want to share this week on what's uh grinding my gears with JB, JB and Chris.
SPEAKER_00Um let's see. I I think I would love if we could kind of announce, you know, maybe when we'll be back and then hold JB and I accountable to delivering something. Um I think I think this idea of um you know five things that you can do, and maybe there's more than five, maybe there's less, but I think it's almost framing it in like we're gonna give you some tools that you can implement within your swim club that's gonna help reduce your daily stress. Yeah, it's gonna you're gonna have a little front-end work to get these, you know, different things done and put in place, but then the long-term benefit of it is that your days are gonna get easier. Um, I think we can do that. And I think um I think that's what I would like to do.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, if you guys are game game. Yeah, I would love to do it. Let's um I'll set the goal that uh within three weeks we'll we'll have that one recorded. This uh this will go up the same day, just for listeners of the podcast. I'll sort of jump ahead to just say, um, I'm going on vacation in a couple weeks. I am trying to record ahead a bit. We'll see if I'm actually successful in doing that. Um part of part of listening to this operation uh that uh that you know is that um I do have a a whole other job, well, two other jobs really, because um parenting is its own uh of small children, especially is is its own uh job. And uh so we'll see. I'm not I'm not willing to hold myself accountable that we'll have this done within two weeks, even though I would like to do that. Um if we can record tomorrow, we definitely will have it done. Uh, but I don't know if you guys will be ready. Um then then maybe we'll have that as a uh as a evergreen podcast that will come up while I'm uh blissfully on vacation in uh in my other home of Denmark. Uh cool. Yeah, John, what else? Uh what else what you got here towards the finish?
SPEAKER_02I want to talk about this Australian thing where they picked their Olympic team for the swimming at a higher standard than the Olympic A standard and how that all panned out for them. Because I think they missed out on some people who could have contributed, you know, and and I think that when you look at the Tunisian kid, right, in the 400s, half new, yeah, who's from Tunisia, right? Yep. Um, you know, where's that guy in the Australian system? Where's that guy in the American system?
SPEAKER_00You know, and this is your takeaway from our conversation today.
SPEAKER_02This is his random last thoughts. Like, yeah, this is my random.
SPEAKER_00This is my random because I didn't know we were doing random. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Well, no, because I think that it kind of is there because there it shows that there's more than one way to do it, right? I mean, nobody saw that guy coming. And in fact, I mean, it it probably took till the 300 in that race, and everybody was like, you know, holy shnikes, this guy in lane eight is right there, you know. And again, I I I was talking with my buddy Mike about this, the human performance guy, and he's like, you know, you cast this wide net in sport, and you're gonna get some people who do crazy things. The marathoner from the United States, uh, what's her name?
SPEAKER_00Uh um the bronze medalist.
SPEAKER_02If I understand correctly, that was only her second marathon. Yeah. So how'd that happen? Right? I mean, and we and we see stuff like this all the time with little kids, where they, you know, you have a 10-year-old and they show up at the state meet the rank like 50th, and the next thing you know, they win the 50 free or they win the 200 free or something like that. It was like, oh my god, that's gives so many, blah, blah, blah. When you start seeing that at the international level, it's like, wait a minute, what's going on? And I think that we should be looking a little more at that kind of thing and saying, well, you know, it's not gonna happen all the time, but how do we how do we have that, you know, we know that these guys are gonna be here, you know, but we got these wild cards and and maybe they're there too. And and again, looping back, I'd be curious to think about, you know, did the Aussies shoot themselves in the foot by not having more people there who maybe would have bought in and just gone for it and gone bananas.
SPEAKER_03So I was thinking about it. Yeah, I I I appreciate you bringing that up, and I'm actually gonna respond to it as my final point because you're uh touching on another one of my things, and I think uh Julie, I'm gonna loop this into um sort of even more of a local grassroots swimming perspective. Um, this is near and dear to my heart, and and I know uh Paul, my boss, as well. We we come, we come from um small swimming countries, and if you look at some of these little countries, um they're doing they're making, in my opinion, the same mistake uh that you're referencing in Australia. Like in Denmark, you gotta have a FENA A standard. They won't take you to the Olympics with a FINA B standard, even if you're the best person in the country. And the result of that, I think, is that you have a lot of swimmers competing at the Olympics where um the big, big thing that they accomplished was getting there. You know, it's like that kid that just barely made the summer juniors cut. They don't usually swim well at summer juniors, you know, if they put everything into to qualifying. Um, and so everything in a lot of these countries becomes about qualifying and not the actual competition that they're qualifying for. And I saw an example of innovation of this in Denmark that I always refer back to. I think that the the guy who runs talent development in the country is actually a really smart guy, um, a very good leader. Um, and we had an incredibly tough standard for sending kids to European juniors, which was sort of like you know, our top 18 and under competition, although it's not quite 18 and unders for girls in uh in Europe. Um and we were having very few people because there was sort of no intermediate step from being an age group swimmer up there. So very few people come over it. What we did was we created another rung of competition um that was like 2% slower than um whatever the European junior standard was. And if you made that, you got to go on a trip to the Grand Prix in Stockholm. Right. We had, I think the year before we implemented, I think we had six kids make the European junior standard. 24 kids made the 2% standard uh to go to the meet in Stockholm. And the next year, with the standard set at a similar level, 12 kids were on the team. So we had grown the number of kids who could make a higher standard by creating a lower standard, essentially, but something that was reachable and something that they could take as a step in progression on their way. Um, and I think that that kind of stuff, I know um we we've also talked here about a non-focus on, you know, for instance, uh swimmers and parents and coaches, everybody being on cut times. Um, but creating enough opportunity that there's something at the end of the season, end of a year, that's sort of reachable and appropriate and um exciting for the swimmers to compete in, I think makes a huge difference. All right, next time on the swim reef, five things, maybe six things, maybe only four things. I don't think we're gonna do four things. I think it'll be probably five or more uh that you can. 25 things. 25, the 25 most important things you can control. And if you don't, you're a horrible swim coach. Um, we'll have that next time on the podcast. Thank you to uh JB and TB for joining me. Thank you to everybody for listening, and we'll talk to you again soon.