Taking Wins Where You Can Get Them

My 15-year-old daughter is slowly, but surely, coming out of her swimming slump. She returned from a high-altitude training trip in Arizona last Sunday and is swimming in the Parkway Summer Sizzler swim meet this weekend. Like many of her teammates, she’s not tapered and really tired from the training trip, but her coach saw definite improvements in her stroke so far at the meet this weekend.

I can’t tell whether her stroke is good or bad because I’m not a swimmer. Like I told her coach, she looks perfect to me all the time.  And the poor thing added 57 seconds in mile the first day of the meet. That wasn’t fun, but true to her nature, my girl kept her chin up and remained positive. She has the utmost faith that what her coaches keep telling her is true. So, she returned to the meet on Saturday and had a couple of good swims. In fact, she was only 8 seconds off her best time in the 800 free, and being in a practice suit, untapered, we considered that a WIN!

The coach says this shows good body position. I say it's a cool picture.

Getting feedback from coaches after a race.

  

Her backstroke is fun to photograph, and is hopefully coming back, too.

She doesn't swim butterfly often b/c it's not her stroke, but I love to get pictures when she does.

And here is her slowly but surely improving backstroke start. Yea! We see progress.

Supporting My Frustrated Swimmer

I’ve been a little hesitant to write this post because a Mom blogger always needs to be mindful of the privacy rights of her children. However, my teenage daughter has shared her swimming struggles somewhat publicly lately, and I thought if it would help another swimmer or another parent, then maybe it would be a good thing to share here.

My 14-year-old swims competitively and she is very serious about her sport. She has five sectional cuts, but since she turned 14 last spring, she has been adding lots of time in her events (not a good thing for you non-swimming readers).

Her body changed from the body of a child to the body of a woman, as is the case for many 14-year-olds. With those changes came some problems with her strokes. She worked very hard all summer and early this fall to correct those problems. She NEVER EVER misses a practice — early morning, evening, late afternoon, weekend, holiday — she’s there. She doesn’t back off at practice either — according to her coaches and some of her teammates, she is one of the hardest workers in the pool. She does the dryland work that our swim club provides her, and she continues to compete in swim meets.

We attended a swim meet in Columbia, MO a few weeks ago at which she had hoped to come close to swimming her best times. It didn’t happen. She had big adds in her best events. Because she was feeling good about the progress she had made on her strokes, it was hard for her to experience this again. And because I’d heard some of the positive feedback regarding her stroke work, I also had higher expectations about what would happen this past weekend. So initially, I was was frustrated with the results, too.

But then I had some great conversations with other parents and with one of her coaches, and I have to say, I’m even more proud to be this young lady’s mother. The parents reassured me that this is so very normal. Many of them shared stories in which their own daughters went through the very same thing around the same age. I’d heard this, but it helps to hear it again and again. Not all swimmers go through this, but a lot of them do, and many of them add time in their best events for more than a year. I remember one young lady in our club going through this a few years ago. She had been a “young star”  and then all of a sudden, she was adding time at every meet. At the time, I remember admiring her perseverance and telling my daughter to make a mental note of her work ethic. Of course, I hoped against hope that it “wouldn’t happen to my kid,” but I guess my daughter DID make a mental note, becuase she is now doing exactly what that young lady did. And you know what? That swimmer is one of my daughter’s biggest supporters, joking with her, reminding her of the struggles she endured, encouraging her to keep working hard at practice even when it’s not the popular thing to do. And her parents are among those reassuring me on a regular basis. That helps a lot.

One of the coaches told me that the she’s doing everything she should be doing to pull through this minus one — she needs to readjust her expectations. He said that when she competes in her next meet, she should look to drop off of her times from the meet in Columbia — NOT to drop time off her BEST times. He said it may still be months before she is coming close to swimming her best times. I cannot tell you how much that simple thing helped us. He also said as her parents, our job is to NOT get frustrated with her, but to support her.

He said part of supporting her includes never questioning the program she is following in front of her because she needs for us to believe in what she’s doing and in her coaches as much as she does. We aren’t the kind of parents who question the program. I know there are parents who jump ship to another club the minute their kids start struggling, blaming the coaches or some aspect of the training program for the issue. That’s not us. But it was good to be reminded of this so that we can talk to her about how MUCH we believe in her coaches and in her training program.

So, we just had another meet this weekend, and we did the whole “adjusted expectations” thing. It was so liberating. And you know what — she DID drop from almost all the times she swam in Columbia. She didn’t hit any of her best times — the closest she came was 3 seconds in her 200 free. But she left the meet feeling successful. Her coaches told her that her strokes are back to looking like they should. Now, she just needs to work on doing them faster.

So, if you’re the parent of a swimmer who is going through this, I hope you have coaches who are as wise as our coaches and as willing to comfort and reassure parents. If you don’t, maybe this post will help you support your swimmer through his or her trials.

A Small Lesson in Letting Go & A Note on (and to) Phelps

My 13-year-old is out of town right now at a swim meet in Texas, and she’s having some “bad” swims. She’s adding in almost all of her events, and she went to this meet expecting at least a few best times and maybe even one new sectional cut in an event in which she was only 1/2 second off.

Needless to say, she’s very disappointed and she sounds rather sad when she calls. (We didn’t go to this meet because we’ll be traveling for sectionals next month and all this travel gets very  expensive).  I hate it that I can’t be there to comfort her, but I know she’s growing up and has to learn to handle these things on her own.  Truth be told, she’s probably handling it just fine and it’s me that’s having the harder time with it.

I told her today to keep her chin up and remember that she has a TON more swims in her future. One bad meet does not define a swimming career. Her coach can help her figure out what needs to be emphasized in practice in the coming weeks as she starts getting ready for the big meets ahead.

On another note: I was interviewed (and quoted) by ABCnews.com about the Phelps/marijuana  situation and how swim moms are reacting to it. There are a lot of comments on the article about how “swim moms need to relax” and “don’t be so critical of Phelps” and “realize that someday your kids might make a mistake” (duh!) and “you’ve probably made mistakes” (double duh!), etc, etc. For the record:

• I am absolutely certain my children have and will continue to make mistakes.
• I have absolutely made mistakes myself. 

I’m not actually being very critical of Phelps and in fact praised his handling of his mistake and his apology (that part of the interview wasn’t quoted in the article so I’m putting it below).

Here is a summary of the rest of what I said:

Mr. Phelps — we admire your amazing athletic talent  in our household and hope this is an isolated incident from which you have learned and from which many of our children can also learn. Like I told my daughter this morning in light of her bad swim meet — keep your chin up!

New Sectional Cut (without the Blue Seventy)

My daughter got her sectional cut in the mile this weekend. She swam the race in 18:38:something (I can’t remember the last two digits and it’s not posted as of this writing.) She was about 3 seconds below the cut, which is 18:41:59.

There’s been some controversy about the Blue Seventy racing suit she wore when she got her first sectional cut in the 100 back. I wrote about that here, here and here. So, I thought I’d write about the fact that she DIDN’T have it on when she swam this weekend.

Getting a sectional cut in a Nike Hydra!

Unfortunately, after she got the cut in the mile on Friday night, she didn’t do too “swimmingly” during the rest of the meet and had some significant adds in her other races.  She was disapointed in her performance, and I had to remind her that one year ago, she didn’t even have a zone cut, much less four sectional cuts. (Funny how we always raise the bar for ourselves, isn’t it?) Besides, it’s her coach’s job to be disappointed with her, to talk to her about swimming tired and to point out the work she’s going to have to do to improve her turns, etc. It’s my job to be proud of her and to help her enjoy her accomplishments.

Anyway, back to the Blue Seventy. I think some of the controversy regarding the suit is waning. I’m glad.  The whole issue was silly, in my opinion. Fortunately, I’m aware that opinions are like . . . (well, nevermind).

New Sectional Cuts for My Daughter

My daughter achieved two new sectional cuts this weekend at a swim meet at the St. Peters Rec Plex.  She swam the 1000 free in 11:02:54 and the 200 back in 2:13:88.  Congratulations girl!  We’re very proud of and happy for her, as she has been working extremely hard and hasn’t missed a practice in more than three months.

When she got her new cuts, she was wearing her Blue Seventy racing suit, which I wrote about for the first time here.  She wore the suit at the suggestion of her coach.  A large number of other swimmers on our team, as well as other teams, also wore the Blue Seventy for competition this weekend.  Some swimmers in the suit achieved new best times and got new qualifying times.  Some did not. In fact, my daughter was the perfect “case study.”  She achieved new best times in the suit on Saturday, and she added to her best times on Sunday. Like her coach said:  “The suits do not make you fast.  When used properly, they are the finishing part of championship performance.”  (She’s not only a good coach, she’s good at summing things up without wasting words.)  Coach Pete , who writes a blog on Wordpress, tends to agree.  He wrote about it here. 

There has been controversy about these suits within our club and within the sport.  I applaud healthy debate, emphasis on the word ‘healthy.’  Simply put:  FINA has approved the suits, as has USA Swimming and our own LSC, Ozark Swimming, which I wrote about here. More simply put:  If I bought the same golf clubs that Tiger Woods uses, I couldn’t hit a hole in one.  If I wore the same tennis shoes as Michael Jordan, I couldn’t sink a basketball. If my bat was borrowed from Barry Bonds, I doubt if I’d even make contact with the ball, much less hit a home run. I don’t even think the steroids would help me.   The athletes using the equipment in combination with their hard work achieve the results.

Sectional Cut — Megazones in Indianapolis

Swimming the 100 Back at Megazones

Whoo hoo!!  My daughter got her sectional cut at Megazones in Indianapolis in the 100 back, going a 1:11:74.  We are so excited.  Being that this is our first sectional cut, I’m not going to try to explain it because I will look like the “newbie” swim mom that I am (even though she’s been swimming competitively since she was 6 and now she’s 13).  I wrote about her getting her zone cut here, and her sectional cut is an even bigger deal.  I’ll write about “the suit” — a Blueseventy Nero Comp racing suit — in another post.  But here, I just want to say, “Congratulations Girlie (our nickname for her at times).  Mom and Dad are very proud of you.“