End of Season Team Party

We had our annual end of season party this week. This is the affair where swimmer, parent and coach recognition takes place...in a word it was AWESOME! Each coach spoke for a few minutes about his/her group, what the objectives of that group were and how the season went. Ken then asked me (Don) to speak about the path...you know about the path - the one that starts with birth and ends up in Masters swimming...

Below are my notes for my 5 minutes on the subject of the evening...how does North Bay Aquatics help swimmers move from "here to there"...?

The PATH

PARENTS are the keepers of the path
With your love-support-financial aid- your volunteerism

COACHES = help light the path, marking it for clarity when forks appear

SWIMMERS - travel the path, learning as they go...
Learning how to swim - be good teammates and even better citizens and contributors to their community

Think of this team as a 3 Legged Stool - parents, swimmers, coaches - the moment one leg thinks it is more important than the others the stool is less stable let alone functional or comfortable

Ken told another excellent story at last week's team meeting about how his wife makes a killer minestrone soup...and how each swimmer is similarly made up of different ingredients...I just riffed off of that story.

Soup - pan is critical - without it there is no definition...there can be no soup without a pan

Water or stock of some sort, ingredients, heat, seasoning, simmer, maybe some crackers or a chunk of French bread

Our SWIMMER is similar -
Perhaps our team - NORTH BAY AQUATICS - is the "pot" - helping to define what shape the "soup" will look like

We also start with WATER and add ingredients -
Stroke work - turn work - start work - work on conditioning - more stroke work - some speed work - more stroke work - a dash of motivation - and some responsibility

The word "work" is used purposefully because WORK WORKS...

WORK WORKS TO BUILD COMPETENCY which WORKS TO BUILD CONFIDENCE (the most important muscle in the human body)...CONFIDENCE BUILDS PRIDE...

PRIDE BUILDS SELF ACCOUNTABILITY & HIGHER EXPECTATIONS & A SELF PERPETUATING CYCLE OF SUCCESS

We had a fine evening and we had an enormous amount of very positive feedback, especially from the parents who had more clarity about how our team works and the values of our direction.