Archive for the ‘ Florida ’ Category

Sexual Abuse Allegations: US Swimming’s Preventative Measures

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

By David

I see that US Swimming is currently struggling to handle a series of sexual abuse allegations. Recently two of their coaches have been locked up for thirty years or so for molesting young swimmers and filming swimmers in the girl’s shower room. In the six years I was a member of US Swimming I thought their level of concern and management in this area was about right. They conducted full international background screening checks every two years, their Code of Conduct Rules were clear and while I was in the US close to forty coaches were expelled from the organization for sexual misconduct.

The system wasn’t perfect. I’d been in Florida for four years when a local coach, and President of the Florida Gold Coast region, was locked away for having sex with an underage female swimmer and distributing nude photographs over the internet of young boys taken in the team’s changing rooms. I’d only been in Florida a few months when one of my swimmers pointed out this fellow and said he was sleeping with one of his young swimmers. I heard that said several more times before he was caught. Each time I put the remarks down to malicious poolside gossip. I even told one of my older swimmers he really shouldn’t be spreading that sort of noxious stuff. Being a newcomer I never dreamed of reporting their comments. I also thought that if it’s a topic of open conversation in my team, Florida Gold Coast’s management must have heard the same rumors. They weren’t doing anything; neither would I. We were wrong.

However it’s not an easy thing for the US authorities to get right. I’m certainly not qualified to tell them how to address such a complex and difficult issue. What I do want to discuss are two narrow aspects of this malaise that demonstrate its complexity and its difficulty.

I’ve heard US Swimming is considering making it compulsory for coaches to allow the parents of swimmers to attend all swim practices. It’s fairly unusual in New Zealand for parents not to be allowed into the pool, but in the United States many clubs enforce some version of a “No Parent” rule. For example a club team near where I lived, based at Florida Atlantic University, limited parent access to the pool during practice. The St. Andrews Swim Team, also in Florida, publishes its version of a “no parents allowed” rule in their team rule book. Here’s what it says.

“Parents/Guardians are not permitted on the pool deck during scheduled practice times. Access to the pool deck is permitted during the final ten minutes of each practice session. There are shaded picnic tables at the pavilion for your convenience. This will allow for the coaches to attend to the swimmers without interruptions and will enable us to build an effective coach/swimmer relationship.”

I agree with the US Swimming proposal. It is ludicrous for any club to exclude parents from the pool. Parents have every right to watch their children at practice. What do these clubs have to hide? When it comes to abuse of any sort it is not only important for coaches to be above reproach they should be seen to be above reproach. Parents can’t do much seeing sitting in their car in the pool parking lot. Besides I’ve always considered parents to be an integral part of the swimmer’s coaching team. They have an obvious and vital role to play in an athlete’s sporting success; feeding swimmers, caring for them when they are sick, making sure they rest, all that important “outside the pool” stuff. I actually enjoy parents being around. It makes it a lot easier to communicate how children are progressing when parents can see it for themselves. It also means that when there is something to say, it can be said immediately. So, any move to open up all US Swimming practices to parents would certainly get my vote.

If US Swimming provides the parents of America with additional access, as I think they should, then those rights should come with responsibilities. Without some controls coaches will become an endangered species. Years ago I gave up getting into a pool with learn to swim or training classes. I just wasn’t prepared to take the risk of some parent making a complaint that is almost impossible to defend. In 2005 Nancy Gibbs wrote an article for Time called “Parents Behaving Badly”. In it she tells horror stories of teachers victimized by out of control parents. For example:

“Mara Sapon-Shevin, an education professor at Syracuse University, has had students call their parents from the classroom on a cell phone to complain about a low grade and then pass the phone over to her, in the middle of class, because the parent wanted to intervene. And she has had parents say they are paying a lot of money for their child’s education and imply that anything but an A is an unacceptable return on their investment.”

US Swimming has a duty to protect their good coaches. I’ve been fortunate. I have only experienced one case of “parents behaving badly”.

I should have been cautious of Linda from the start. On her first day at the pool she told me that she had paid for a private detective agency to conduct a thorough check into my life in the Virgin Islands, the USA, New Zealand and the UK and I was approved as a suitable coach for her two daughters. As time went by I discovered she’d seldom traveled outside Florida, she hated things foreign but drove a steel grey Audi SUV, reading “People” magazine was her major intellectual stimulation and she’d caused trouble and walked out of her daughter’s first elementary school. In Barcelona her daughter swam in a 50 freestyle race and came last. Linda sitting behind me in the stands burst into tears and walked out. A week later she emailed a complaint to my employer saying I’d “forced” her daughter to swim. Fortunately the complaint was full of lies. For example she said I’d told her daughter to “splash around in the shallow end” of the Barcelona Pool. The problem is that pool is two meters deep all over; there is no shallow end. Her complaint was full of silly errors like that and was dismissed.

My point is that just as parents need access, good coaches need protection. It is important US Swimming provides added safeguards for parents and their children. They must also ensure good coaches are protected by instituting a range of sanctions that deter parents on the lunatic fringe.

Posted in Florida, New Zealand, Training | No Comments »

Scorn Not

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

By David

Many Swimwatch stories discuss matters that concern elite swimming. We have written about swim suits, international championships, Mare Nostrum swim meets and national coaches. My favorite coaching is working with swimmers like Rhi Jeffrey, Oswaldo Quevedo, Jane Copland, Toni Jeffs, John Foster and Nichola Chellingworth. The revelation that, even these World class competitors were all once in someone’s Confident Beginners class, will surprise no one. In recognition of that fact, every day, I make a point of taking our juniors for the stroke correction portion of their practice.

For several reasons, it is well worth the twenty minutes. You become a better coach. A teacher once told me that elementary school teachers are better at teaching than university tutors. Teaching junior students requires more skill. At this level the task is not only to transfer information, but to transfer information in a manner that instills learning skills at the same time. That’s true for swimming too. Taking junior swimmers requires better explanations. For Rhi, “Catch a bit deeper,” is sufficient. She knows what it means and how to follow the instruction. She is also physically able to do it and even understands why it is important – and all without a long explanation from me. For juniors, good teaching requires that all that information is explained. Which means the coach has to know and think through the how and the why as well. And therein lies an exercise that is good for the coaching soul. I think I’ve answered more interesting whys and hows from juniors than from all the Rhis of the world.

Besides making the coach explain stroke techniques better, teaching young swimmers is a constant reminder of the breadth of the swimming curriculum. When all you do is coach Jane Copland type swimmers, it’s very easy to forget how much needs to be learned. I was at a swim meet with our junior swimmers this weekend. One of our eight year olds was not only swimming in his first backstroke race but ended up winning it as well. Before the race I was helping him find his lane and prepare for the right race. Americans do not bother with all that marshalling stuff so popular in the rest of the world. At big meets here you’d never get through them if you tried to carefully marshal all the swimmers. As we stood waiting for the start the eight year old asked, “How soon after I dive in do I roll over and start swimming backstroke?” Before you think that we must have omitted to cover backstroke starts, I should explain that backstroke starts had been taught on several occasions. This particular eight year old had however assumed that our in-the-water tuition had been to avoid getting out of the pool during what has been a cold Florida winter. Moments like that make you realize how much detail needs to be taught. And even then I bet there are a thousand small things you will miss. There is nothing like a few disqualifications to make you realize just how much has been missed.

The photograph below was taken at the same swim meet and is a classic illustration of this point.

It shows the start of the 10 and under boys 50 freestyle. Three of the boys in the photograph are members of our team. For one of them it was his first race, for another his second and for the third his fifth or sixth event. I’m very loyal to all the members of our team. However in this case I have to acknowledge we are still a little short of Phelps’ type starts. The really good thing about all this though is that progress is so obvious and exciting. From the uncontrolled tumbles shown in this photograph to well honed dives is not a long process and happens soon enough. We hope the three boys involved keep this picture as a reminder of how far they have progressed. We hope you enjoy the photograph and thank one of our mothers, Lori, for the skill and luck she had in capturing the moment.

Posted in Florida, Training | No Comments »

In Four Years, We’ll Know

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

By David

During the Christmas break, Jane came to Florida. We played a number of the games families do at this time of the year. I enjoy the Internet’s trivia quizzes. Some of the questions are great. For example, who thought up these two: Who hasn’t been Prime Minister of New Zealand and where is Stewart Island? It’s all in the intonation. Who hasn’t been the Prime Minister of New Zealand?

Last night we were asked to name four of the seven deadly sins. I never get them all but apparently they are, wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and gluttony. It got me thinking about which sin was most common and most damaging to a swimmer’s career. Why did talented athletes capable of university full ride scholarships not get them? Why did others capable of swimming for their country never make it? Why do 90% of Florida’s young swimmers drop out before realizing their potential? Is there one sin that explains the vast amount of underachievement that goes on in this sport? I think its greed.

Lydiard would agree. He constantly stressed the long term nature of an athlete’s career. Four years of full international training, he said, was the minimum apprenticeship for a top international competitor. And yet there are hundreds of athletes and thousands of parents and a few score of coaches who want results faster than that. In the United States, it’s especially bad. Around every corner there’s a McDonalds drive-through swim team. In my first three years here I was constantly being sent emails telling me I couldn’t coach a fast swimmer. The emails have dried up a bit since our team qualified six swimmers for the US National Championships, broke two Master’s World Records, won the Ft. Lauderdale International 4×50 relay and had swimmers win the open men’s freestyle and fly events at the same meet.

In spite of that I still see examples of the sin of greed. As Lydiard put it once, “In six months they will know they were right. In six years though, they will know their mistake. And then it’s too late.”

Let me give you a few examples.

I coached an extraordinarily gifted swimmer for two years. At twelve she would hang on a bar outside my office doing repeat sets of ten pull-ups. Concerned that she might be overdoing things I finally asked her to ease off to no more than 50 pull-ups before practice. After eighteen months swimming, at 14, she was easily cruising through occasional weeks of 100 kilometer and had swum 1.02 for 100 LCM freestyle. Just after she qualified for and swam in the finals of the Caribbean Islands Championships her parents told me they were being pressured by parents from the “private school” swim team down the road. She’s swimming too far, they said. She doesn’t race enough events, her strokes all funny, her growth will be affected and she’s got no social life. Finally an email arrived. Dear Mr. Wright, it said, “Our daughter must not swim as far in training. She must race more often and she must do more stroke correction in everything except freestyle.” It was the classic over anxious parent email; Alison refers to it as our “get out of jail card”. Two months later we left what the locals call “paradise”, knowing that this extraordinary girl’s career was a lost cause. That was four years ago. Today she still swims around 1.01/1.02 for 100 freestyle, she’s doing well in school and in every way is a well rounded, good person. But she’s not competing in the finals of the US National Championships or Olympic Trials and that’s where her talent lay until her parents lost or perhaps never knew the meaning of a sound swimming education.

In New Zealand I was fortunate to coach another extraordinary talent. She swam in the finals of the Commonwealth Games, qualified for the Olympic Games, won medals in the Oceania Games, Pan Pacific Games and World Cup Finals. Although she preferred the 50 freestyle, her father said her real talent lay in the 200. I agreed and gradually geared her training toward the 200 event with the firm goal of securing that gold medal in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Then she met a friend/partner who convinced her that more immediate rewards could be found in her favorite 50 meter event – and so they could. She began coaching herself and successfully went on to win further New Zealand Championships, break World Master’s Records and win two bronze medals in the Commonwealth Games 50 meters freestyle. In Sydney however Susan O’Neil won the 200 freestyle final in 1.58.24. Without question New Zealand could have won that race. One hundred meters in 57 followed by a minute was well within her capability. It’s about patience. Gold can be lost for the lack of it.

Recently I coached another talented young freestyler; perhaps not quite as gifted as the swimmers already mentioned in this article. However, what she missed in talent she more than made up for in work ethic. She swam further and harder than anybody I’ve coached at her age. I forever had to tell her, “That’s enough for today. You hop out now.” Given time her ability to work would have yielded plenty. My guess is that in four years she had the potential to be around – that’s above or below – 4 minutes for 400 and 8 minutes for 800 meters freestyle. Unfortunately, she had, and my guess is still has, a classic “over anxious parent” mother who has no idea how to handle winning and losing an athletic event. Kipling’s idea of meeting, with “triumph and disaster and treating those two impostors just the same” is a totally foreign concept. I’ve seen her walk out of events when her daughter didn’t perform as well as the mother thought she should. I’ve heard the girl accused of being gutless and not trying. I once heard the mother ask the girl when she was going to stop being mediocre and I was told that the girl had to swim faster to avoid the mother’s Boca Raton friends laughing at her. Wow, in that environment success is doomed to “blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air.” (For New Zealand readers; Boca Raton is the Remuera of South Florida)

Relevant to all these examples is potential. Clearly if a swimmers has the potential to swim 1.10 for 100 freestyle and does it, that is a major achievement; equal to the feats of a Phelps and Torres. But if you are a female capable of 8.10 for 800 meters freestyle and your best is say 8.52, then something has gone wrong. I am not impressed; 67 meters behind where you should be swimming by now is not good. Give me the 1.10 any time.

In a couple of years or so we will know whether the decisions made this year have worked or not. Lydiard was right, “In six months of course they are all right. In four years, I’m not so sure.”

Posted in Florida, Racing, Training | No Comments »

How to Fail at Internet Trolling

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

By Jane

I pose a question to you, dear Internet. How stupid would you have to be to write a hand-written anonymous letter to a party to whom you’d already sent hand-written mail?

I’m going with “fairly dense”. Here are two images of a letter received today by one of our swim team’s sponsors, Oyer, Macoviak and Associates, with whom East Coast Swimming has a referral programme. The letter is a print-out of Swimwatch’s last entry. The entire entry was printed out and included in the envelope; here, I’ve replicated only the pages which were written on. Note, the “sender’s address” is that of a public swimming pool and is, of course, fake. The pool had nothing to do with the note.

We immediately had our suspicions as to who was responsible for the note, and luckily, we had an older correspondence from the person with which we could cross-check the penmanship. When placing certain letters next to each other, it became even more apparent that our guess was correct. Forgive the photographed images of the older letter: someone else scanned today’s letter, and our scanner is broken.

I’m not a handwriting analysis expert, but I’m also not legally blind.

First, let’s look at “A”.

There are three tell-tale signs here. The straight line, extending slightly above the curve of the letter to the left is one; however, far more telling are the small flick backwards at the end of the stroke downwards, and the extended cross-stroke.

Let’s now look at an instance of a double “e”.

Again, a distinctive flick to the left, along with an identical overall shape, most certainly suggest that these were written by the same person.

On to the capital “D”.

Because I don’t doubt the eyesight of any of you, it’s unlikely I need to point out the similarities between these characters. However, it’s worth mentioning the defining point about each D: the bottom-heavy nature of the characters appears somewhat like the letter was filled with something–bullshit comes to mind–which was then left to settle.

There were two varieties of “r” in both letters. The second looks quite a lot like a “v”:

It appears even more convincing that the writer is the same person when two different ways of writing the “r” are included in both letter.

Finally, the writer’s rendition of “Seacrest” is remarkably similar in both instances.

Notice the follow-through from the “e” to the “a” in both words, as well as the similar “r”s. Finally, the fact that the stroke through the final “t” extends far further to the right seems like the perfect seal on the fact that today’s weird attempt to interfere with a local swim team’s sponsor and an earlier letter, written to the same team, were penned by the same person. Only the “t” was not the last shred of evidence: both letters were postmarked West Palm Beach, which is not the town in which the team is based.

I wonder if you also licked the envelope when you sealed it, and the stamp when you attached it? Anonymous trolling: you’re doing it wrong.

It’s obviously tempting to “out” the writer. If we were to print the full image of the older letter, the person’s identity would certainly be clear. But is it really worth it? The second rule of the Internet is not to feed the trolls, after all, and I think this applies, even though the correspondence was largely offline. Since it’s apparent that the person responsible reads this website with some regularity, I’m sure she’ll see this. And she’ll know that she failed.

Posted in Florida | 2 Comments »

A Christmas Story

Saturday, December 26th, 2009

By David

It’s Christmas morning and for some reason NBC is showing a program about the formation of the Home Depot chain of stores. It’s actually quite interesting. Three guys had the idea, moved to Atlanta and opened one store with money they’d borrowed from friends. Money was so short they also borrowed empty boxes and paint tins from suppliers and stocked the shelves with the fake stock. The impression of service, of being busy worked and after some early losses the retailer was on its way to becoming the 2,200 store giant it is today.

I love the fake paint tins story. I’ve formed two swim clubs in my coaching career: one in New Zealand in 1990 and the other in Florida in 2009. The New Zealand club was the most difficult. Alison came up with the name “The Local Swim Team”. At first Swimming New Zealand didn’t like the name as it did not suggest a geographical location. We pointed out that the Aquahawks Club name said nothing about Napier, Comet Club said nothing about Gisborne and while our old club Gale Force, was an accurate indication of Wellington’s weather, it certainly did not mention the town. Swimming New Zealand relented and The Local was formed – well, almost formed.

In those days to be a club in New Zealand meant having a minimum of 25 members. We had two, Toni Jeffs and Jane Copland. There was nothing wrong with the quality of the team, Toni was already representing the country and Jane would one day do the same. However we were a huge 23 members short of Swimming New Zealand’s minimum. Alison and I joined. Alison’s sister, brother, brother in law and mother became members – only eighteen to go. One of Toni’s friends who couldn’t swim but worked with her in the Body Shop became a founding member. Gradually we reduced the deficit. We even found another swimmer, Nichola Chellingworth who also went on to represent New Zealand with distinction in World Championships and Pan Pacific Games. The Local Swim Team must be the only Club ever formed whose entire founding swimming membership went on to swim for their country.

Finally, we had 24 members; just one to go. I think it was Alison’s idea; what about Sammy, our cat? The forms were completed and sent to Swimming New Zealand and there, as a proud founding member, was number 25 Sammy Wright, aged three, status: beginner. Our application was accepted and for one year Sammy was just as important to our cause as his more heralded team mates. In year two Sammy retired, his work well done. By that time we had real swimmers ready to take his place. For several years Alison’s mother and brother stayed on as members, proud of the role they had played in founding The Local.

One of Sammy’s many ploys to avoid swim practice

Forming the new team in Florida was not as difficult. There were a few idiots who went out of their way to perform a late term abortion; but failed. There was no need here for feline memberships, which is good since we no longer have a cat. We operate out of two pools and work hard to attract swimmers from families whose parents cannot afford the training fees. We rely on donations to cover the training fees of our swimmers. So far it’s worked. We have had fantastic support and today about half our members receive some form of financial assistance from the swim team Board. I like it. Talent is not restricted to the rich.

Each evening outside our pool young children receive instruction in football, basketball, cheerleading, tennis and now swimming. A couple of nights ago I noticed a huge man get out of a new Cadillac Escalade and wander over to join in a pick-up game of basketball. Soon he was absorbed in the game of feints and dunks, lay ups and three pointers. His size and skill prompted me to ask the Pool Manager, did she know who he was? Turns out he’s a defensive guard for the Cincinnati Bengals football team. It also turns out that twenty years ago he began his career out on the field behind our pool. Now, he’s not too big to come back at Christmas and share a game with his old mates. As I said, talent is not restricted to the rich. I’ve always thought the purpose of what we do is not to be an afternoon babysitting service. The purpose of what we do is to provide an opportunity to excel. I’ve known many call that elitism and demand more numbers and less quality. Elitism is not a sin. Elitism gives those who want the chance to excel; the opportunity to one day come back in an Escalade to play pick-up ball with their mates.

I’ve always been a bit suspicious of politicians. Washington DC changes a person’s ideals. Or does it? This week a member of Congress heard about our new team and its work. On Thursday, a check for $1000 arrived with a simple hand written note. It said, “Hope this helps.” It does – it helps because we need the funds but mostly it helps because a national representative understands our cause, understands the importance of offering the highest quality tuition to the least of us. Thank you Congressman.

From Sammy to Washington DC that’s quite a leap. Although I guess they share the distinction of getting something good up and running.

Donations to the East Coast Swim Team adopt a swimmer program can be made by using the DONATION button at the bottom of this page.

Posted in Florida, New Zealand | No Comments »

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