The Value of Team

This from Wikipedia:

“A team comprises a group of people in a common purpose. Human teams are especially appropriate for conducting tasks that are high in complexity and have many interdependent subtasks.
A group does not necessarily constitute a team. Teams normally have members with complementary skills and generate synergy through a coordinated effort which allows each member to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. Naresh Jain (2009) claims:

Team members need to learn how to help one another, help other team members realize their true potential, and create an environment that allows everyone to go beyond his or her limitations.
A team becomes more than just a collection of people when a strong sense of mutual commitment creates synergy, thus generating performance greater than the sum of the performance of its individual members.”

We here at North Bay Aquatics believe that our swim team is reflective of many of the above sentiments. We have young age groupers, older swimmers with regional and or national aspirations, college or college bound swimmers, Masters Swimmers with all sorts of agendas including pool racing, open water racing, ocean channel crossings, tri-athlete competition and general overall health and fitness.

This is indeed a very divergent group with many different subsets of interests. We work tirelessly in the pursuit of uniting each of the different groups into our NBA Team. We have swimmers who train once or twice a week, usually on the weekend when they don’t have to go to work. We have swimmers who train 6 days a week, often twice a day. They have a different agenda. We have every imaginable variation in between those two extremes. And do we ever have a team!

All on the team are made aware of the contribution they make. It is like the jigsaw puzzle you do at the family reunion. Everyone is around the table with a thousand pieces looking at the picture on the box and attempting to figure out what the piece they hold in their hand means and where it fits in the grand scheme of the puzzle.

If you are a 10 and under at the local meet, or a 12 year old at the Junior Olympics, or a 16 year old National swimmer, or a 45 year old Masters at the local Open Water swim…or simply someone who comes to the pool for exercise and the “hit” off of the rest of the “Team” you know how you fit into the overall scheme of things.

We focus on making certain that all who are members know they make a difference…you already know the answer to the question of “Why do we do that?”…it is simply that everyone does make a difference…and we do mean everyone.

We are certain there are many other teams like ours. Why? Because registration in all levels of swimming is up significantly. If your team isn’t like ours then you have two choices; turn your team into one and if that isn’t possible for whatever the reason(s) then find one that is.

A team is so much more rewarding…and by the way, you will stay connected longer and be more fit…and if speed is your thing, you will swim faster as well.