Coaching

Coaching has become one of things I really enjoy spending my time doing.  It is a way to give back to the sport that has really been such an important part of my life.  I love sharing my love of swimming and fitness with the kids.  I love seeing them develop the skills to get them across the pool and seeing them set goals and improve.  They all have different little personalities and I enjoy trying to find ways to motivate them and help them learn the strokes.  They make me smile even when I'm losing my voice.  I have confused people by saying "my kids have a swim meet"...
It is also very special to me to be coaching for the team I grew up swimming for.  It's a long standing club with a history of excellent swimmers and coaches.  And I feel great pride and responsibility being at the ground level, work with the future so to speak.  And this year I've just got a great feeling about the future for the club.  The novice families are great and enthusiastic, case in point, today I held an early morning special practice, just to get in some extra dive practice off blocks.  With just a few days notice, I asked families it they would be interested in heading to the University pool on a Saturday morning for a 1/2 hour of diving, this would be over 1 hour before the regular novice Saturday am swim in another pool in the other end of town so they would be getting out of one pool and then heading to another.  I didn't know that families would think it worth the while, so said I needed 5 kids to say they were interest in order to make it a go... well I was overwhelmed with "we're in" responses.  I ended up with 20 kids and feeling like an 1/2 hour was not nearly long enough.   And just to make it a classic special practice, I was emphasizing throwing oneself off the blocks and found myself off balance and in the pool, much to the kids laughter!
I've also had the excitement of having my first novice swimmer making a Regional time.  It is quite an awesome achievement!  I can't take any credit, this 10 year old is in my once a week swim program, so just has some natural talent.
Anyways to sum it up, the future for HAC looks bright and I'm thrilled to be involved.