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To Fly
or Not to Fly
By WILLIAM J
PRICE
Saluki Swim Club
I’m old enough to run with
scissors, I hate Shakespeare and I don’t care who thinks I’m an illiterate
boob for saying it. I was force fed Shakespeare in high school, studied him
in college and even read a little, just for fun, while stranded in a
Siberian ice storm. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now.
If you really give
something a chance and find you honestly don’t like it then you have a right
to say that you don’t like it. To do this before you’ve even given it a
chance though is dishonest. My high school teachers and college professors
made me read Shakespeare. By the time of the Siberian ice incident I was
older and thought I would give it another try since I was stranded on a
Russian train four days from Moscow with nothing else to do. It didn’t work.
By giving Shakespeare a chance I might have discovered why he is considered
a great writer. Alas, I didn’t. It is plain that William Shakespeare and I
will never see eye to eye on the turn of a phrase.
This is the way swimmers
sometimes feel when they are learning the skills they need for the sport.
There are times when the coaches seem to be force feeding a dose of
butterfly or breaststroke to a group of swimmers who would just as soon swim
freestyle or backstroke for the rest of their lives. To allow this however
would be cheating children who may turn out to be the best flyers in the
world at sixteen. Just because they can’t do a stroke when they’re 10
doesn’t mean they’ll never be good at it.
Almost as soon as a child
joins our team he finds he is good at some stroke. If given the opportunity
he will perform this one skill all the time, especially if the other skills
he is not good at are difficult. The mission of the team is to make sure
that every swimmer has the opportunity to both learn and perform every
competitive skill—giving each stroke a chance.
No one can say what a child
will be good at as they get older. Coaches and parents both know this
through experience. Coaches see it everyday in the pool and parents know
that a child’s interests and abilities change as he ages. Levers formed by
muscle and limb change as the body grows. Since swimming depends on
mechanical advantage growth affects how well one is able to do the strokes.
Body composition changes and skills that were dependent on a certain set of
conditions change. Sometimes these changes are for the better, sometimes
not. We may not know what these changes will be but we do know that they
will occur. With a solid background in all skills and techniques required
for the sport these changes will be less of a problem especially if certain
strokes the child was once "good" at start to deteriorate. If they know how
to do all the strokes then they will be ready to fill the gap with a new
favorite.
After several years it will
begin to become apparent what a child is good at. The key is not to jump to
conclusions. One of the secrets of age group sport is this: It doesn’t
really matter what a child is good at. If he is taught the skills necessary
to participate in the sport then his ability will become apparent at the
right time. There are lots of decisions coaches, parents and swimmers need
to make but this isn’t one of them. This is something that will take its own
course no matter what or, in some cases, in spite of outside influences. The
mission of the team is clear; teach all the skills to all the swimmers so
that everyone has the opportunity to be the best they can be.
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