CPR — all USA Swimming certified coaches must be CPR certified; so we all took a recertification class recently. It took way too long — a 2-3 hour class stretched into almost 6. YIKES.

Which makes me think about all of the good teachers and some of the poor teachers I’ve known. Wow, there are some unprepared teachers out there and usually they aren’t ‘professionals’ in any sense of the word. Being around teachers for the past many years (sorry, I won’t tell you how many) I know what goes into the preparation for class every day and when I attend a class that doesn’t quite measure up I immediately know that the teacher didn’t prepare for that single class or prepare to actually be a teacher by learning material for that class or how to be a teacher.

Same thing goes with coaching. If a coach isn’t prepared most every swimmer knows it. The littlest ones start playing around and not paying attention; older swimmers don’t know why they are doing that workout yet again — or they do know why — because coach didn’t prepare today.

We are all teachers; everyone learns by observation. How many times have you been into the grocery and been uplifted by a friendly hello by your cashier? Sometimes it happens. All too often it’s a perfunctory ‘hello,’ and business as usual. Some may not think that’s teaching, but who’s observing the behavior? Usually kids. So here comes another generation of not-quite-unfriendly cashiers. And some downright rude cashiers. How do you handle the stress in your life? By lashing out or holding in your frustration? Um, the proper response is probably communication. But how many of us share that portion of our lives with our children? How are they to learn; by us telling them how to do it? News flash — demonstration works much better.

Here’s to being a good teacher in everything we do, including coaching swimming. And a great CPR class next year.

The process or period of changing from one state to another …

I’ve been mucking out our storage room lately, going through accumulated school papers, saving for a scrapbook or two, but recycling most of them. I’ve come across a few team photos from past years, and really wonder where the time went. We’ve had alot of discussions and coach’s corners about swimmers who quit for one reason or another, but I thought I’d write a little about the swimmers who stay with our program for many years.

Maybe it was seeing four of them together over the weekend — and Willz during break, too. Sometimes we take these kids for granted, not realising that they are the heart and soul of our club. Swimmers come and go, but we maintain a small core of kids who are steady contributors to our program in many ways. Some don’t swim every season, but when I reminisce it’s not about who was there the entire season, but what they did over a period of years starting when they were 8 or 9 and ending sometime after high school.

And this is why it’s so great to be involved in a program where we see kids from their earliest swims to early adulthood. School coaches never see the 7 year old who wouldn’t talk loud enough to be heard, or couldn’t stay on top of the water to swim, or how hard someone worked to get a legal breaststroke kick, or a flip turn. But we still get to see all those little steps and watch them take on leadership roles on their school teams and swim their fastest times in either in one of our meets or a school meet.

And sometimes I get a chance to see a swimmer from their first piranha practice to being a co-worker. Kaiya will be leaving our program after this spring season and we’ll sure miss her. Kaiya has been a valued member of the Powell Swim Club for a long time. Ten years ago I certainly would never have believed she would be helping us coach our newest swimmers. But, time flies, children grow up.

Good luck, Kaiya, please keep in touch!

We’re coming up on a short break — our last practice of spring season is April 4; and we’ll start up again on May 5. Look for information on swim camp and our new yellow group program on the bulletin board and your in-box.

Star Wars (all of them) — on Spike TV — starts Friday, April 4. (Where did you see your first Star Wars movie?)

Have you signed up for your ‘My USA Swimming’ page?

Go here: http://www.usaswimming.org/usasweb/DesktopDefault.aspx

Click on ‘My USA Swimming’ under usa swimming tools in the left column and proceed from there. Once you’re signed up you can check your best times and times at all of the meets you’ve swam in.

Explore the site, there are a lot of interesting articles for you there. Remember your password and username!

It’s time to get this started. I hope you will comment on these crazy ramblings. We’ll be starting our newest project in May, a program for our newest swimmers! We really hope that this will help our team be stronger in the future, with more swimmers in each age group. Right now we’re calling this ‘group’ our Yellow group, but we’re open to suggestions.Coach Jerry and I will be attending a training in April so that we’ll be able to get this program rolling. In the meantime we’re looking for older swimmers who would like to teach our newest swimmers. Send me an email or call Jerry as soon as possible.

I hope you’re all swimming, running and lifting weights. Those things will really help your swimming, but as with everything else, you must engage your brain when you’re training. It’s not enough to just go through the motions. Think about what you’re doing, what muscles you’re using, how you can do it better. Do you use good posture when you’re lifting? Do you remember that there are two movements to each lift?

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