Watching 85 Try Something New

I love watching how Chad is approaching this new opportunity to play soccer. He's confident in self while showing great humility in how he's trying to become a competent player. Sure, this is primarily a publicity stunt but Chad's out there and allowing for his ego to take shot after shot and yet he persists in the pursuit of getting better without the fear of failure (and with the conscious realization that the probable outcome being failure).

The lessons that can be learned from how Chad is pursuing this passion should be transparent. Open, fearless, committed to getting better with each rep. Any athlete in any sport should watch how a professional like 85 pursues improvement, it's a thing of beauty.

Short Course Wrap Up

Getting back to my own coaching world, here at TSC my group known as Gold 2/3 has navigated the waters of short course season and the metrics show that the group is improving and healthier then at any point in the group's history.

This short course season we participated in 13 racing opportunities between meets and official TSC time trials and here is a look at the numbers...

1344 total swims
556 new best times
41% success ratio

It's well documented within my group that the primary metric for success are best times. Every best time is treated equally to others, whether it be from one of my Easterns qualifiers or all the way down to one of my swimmers fighting to try and make the Central Region Championships. Best times are best times and a ratio of 41% I consider to be above the 40% threshold.

Here's the breakdown of the swims...

Meet - # of best times (# of total swims) = %

Downtown Sprint - 24 (66) = 36%
Walker Invitational - 78 (184) = 42%
Harvest & Autumn - 102 (179) = 56%
Brantford Swim International - 17 (67) = 25%
Youth Cup & Mega City - 85 (136) = 62%
CAMO Invitational - 48 (104) = 46%
TSC TT #1 - 23 (58) = 39%
TSC TT #2 - 12 (16) = 75%
Cindy Nicholas - 44 (156) = 28%
Central Region Championships - 82 (148) = 55%
TSC TT #3 - 3 (6) = 50%
Speedo Easterns - 2 (3) = 66%
Junior Provincials - 10 (28) = 35%
Newmarket Invitational - 26 (193) = 13%

TOTAL - 556 (1344) = 41%

In addition to acceptable best time success, another metric that shows the group is moving forward are the qualifiers from the group.

Easterns qualifiers = 2 (last season = 0)
Provincial qualifiers = 5 (last season = 0)

Although I teach my group that success should not be gleaned from arbitrary time standards (which is what I find these standards to be), it is nice thing to have swimmers breaking through to these meets.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Beyond the metrics I'm beginning a process of group evaluation, looking at areas for improvement from both the swimmers and this coach. I'll have some thoughts on those evaluations in a future blog!