We
just returned from the annual American Swimming Coaches Association’s Coaching
Clinic. What a fabulous gathering of people and energy. There is lots of good
news and unfortunately some bad news as well.
The
good news is that our coaching profession is filled with many energetic smart
women and men who take great pride in their profession of creating positive and
nurturing cultures for young people in which to immerse themselves as they
prepare for the “rest of their life”.
The
bad news is that the landscape is changing as we speak, dramatically, in a
financial way. We do not pretend to know the exact details but it goes
something like this.
Schools
are required to pay for meals for athletes on teams. This may not seem like a
big deal but when you take the number of athletes at any given school – your
former college or university – and do the math it amounts to millions – yes,
millions – of dollars per school. Now maybe you went to a smaller college and
so it is “only” several hundreds of thousands of dollars…you get the drift
here.
When
you add to this the specter of paying those athletes who are in revenue
generating sports – football and basketball – a yearly stipend, say $2,000 per
athlete, well you can see where this is headed.
So,
what can you do – now?
Pick
up the phone or send an email to your school and see what the need is and how
you can help contribute to the solution. Think about the swimming landscape and
how it would look if there wasn’t any competitive swimming. What would those
18-22 year student/athletes do? A few “rock stars” wouldn’t be impacted too
much. But the landscape would be littered with souls with broken dreams. One of
the big differences between our country and the third world is that our young
people have hope; hope of a better day, a better tomorrow. Without competitive
swimming many of those people may become disenfranchised…a shame indeed, one of
uncalculated proportions.
Make the call today, now.
Thank
you…
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