Continue reading »]]> Meet Type
This is an invitational meet for all swimmers with Zone, Champ, A, B, C, Pre-C and No Times. Only the five Western Wisconsin teams will be competing (HASA, RFSC, MAAC, NRTS, RVSC)

Order of Events

Pool Location
River Falls High School Pool 818 Cemetery Rd. River Falls, WI 54022

Time Schedule
Warm-up at 4:30 p.m. Meet starts at 5:30 p.m.

Facility
8 Lane, 25 Yard Indoor pool with lane lines and backstroke pennants.

Concessions
There will be NO concessions at this meet.

Entry Limitations
Age of a swimmer is determined by their age on the first day of the meet. A swimmer may compete in a maximum of 4 individual events per day, not including relays.

Fees
$15.00 per swimmer and $10 coaching fee per day.

Due Date
Email Lisa Peterson your entries by 2pm on Wednesday, May 23.

Continue reading »]]> USA Swimming has released an App called Deck Pass.  With Deck Pass you can look at your times online. It’s a great way to keep track of your goals, State Rank, and National Rank.

As you achieve new goals and accomplishments, USA Swimming will post Patches for you.  Patches are awarded for setting a new Personal Best time, achieving a new Time Standard, completing a long event for the first time, and placing high at a meet.  Patches can also be awarded to swimmers by their coaches.

The Deck Pass App is available to anyone.  Parents can use it to to stay involved in their swimmer and watch his or her accomplishments.

Deck Pass Link

Continue reading »]]> By Todd Huffman

“She’s so advanced!” beams the proud parent. “He’s just so smart!” boasts the doting grandmother.

So goes another day in the Lake Wobegon land of a pediatric office, where all the children are above average.

Not to disparage anyone, for who would contest the prerogative of kin to exult their beloved child? Would that all children be so adored.

Yet what happens when a child, since before she could talk, constantly hears that she’s smart? Does self-­awareness of one’s smartness translate into fearless confidence later on? Or does it instill fearful hesitance to try new things, fearing failure?

Kids today are being raised in an age where self-­confidence is everything. A positive attitude, not perseverance, is the answer to the riddle of success. At home and school, children are saturated with messages that they’re doing great — that they are great, innately so. They have what it takes.

Having been lauded from cradle to college for their greatness, too many leave the nest — if they leave at all — without the faintest idea of what greatness is, or what it demands. Greatness is always there and always theirs, and failure is always someone else’s fault.

According to a survey conducted by Columbia University, 85 percent of parents believe in the importance of telling their kids early and often that they’re smart. The presumption is that if a child believes he’s smart — having been told so, repeatedly — he won’t be intimidated by new challenges.

Constant praise is an angel on the shoulder, daily whispering the words of Al Franken’s Stuart Smalley: “You’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and doggone it, people like you!”

But a growing body of research strongly suggests that it works the other way around. Giving kids the tag of “smart” does not insulate them from underperforming. It actually might undermine their prospects of success.

Researchers long have noticed that large numbers of the smartest children severely underestimate their own aptitude. They lack confidence in their ability to tackle novel tasks. Smart children, to whom many things come very quickly, often give up just as quickly when things don’t.

Children afflicted with this lack of perceived competence adopt lower standards for success and expect less of themselves. They too readily divide the world into things they are naturally good at and things they are not. They pay rapt attention to the devil on the other shoulder, who shouts, “You’re not good at this!” Unless otherwise nudged or shoved into a new activity, too often they heed an internal warning to refrain.

Always having been praised for their intelligence, smart children often overlook or discount the importance of effort. My smarts are the key to my success, the kid’s reasoning goes, therefore I don’t need to put out effort. Expending effort is public proof that you can’t cut it on the strength of your natural gifts.

Researchers have measured the effect of praising schoolchildren for their intelligence (“you’re so smart at this”), as compared to the effect of praising them for their effort (“you must have worked really hard at this”). What is consistently found is that children praised for their effort subsequently choose harder tasks, while those praised for their intelligence choose easier ones.

Over and again, the “smart” kids took the easy way out.

The adverse effect of praise for innate intelligence on performance holds true for students of every socioeconomic class. And it knocks down both boys and girls — the very brightest girls, especially, are found most likely to collapse after failure.

Children praised solely and repeatedly for their intelligence are in effect being told the name of the game is to look smart, to not risk making mistakes and being embarrassed. Failure is assumed as evidence that they aren’t really smart at all.

Kids must of course be allowed to fail, and to learn from their failures. Let us do away with the hodgepodge of ribbons, pins and mass-­produced certificates that commemorate everything but real achievement. No more banning schoolyard games that inherently produce winners and losers. If we are constantly rewarding mediocrity, how will children learn the difference between the excellent and the ordinary?

Brushing aside failure and just focusing on the positive is not being a good parent, caregiver or teacher. A child who comes to believe failure is something so terrible that the adults in his life can’t acknowledge its existence is a child deprived of the opportunity to discuss mistakes — and a child who therefore can’t learn from them.

Our job instead is to instill in children a firm belief that the way to bounce back from failure is to work harder. In other words, try, try again.

People with persistence — the ability to repeatedly respond to failure by exerting more effort instead of simply giving up — rebound well and can sustain their motivation through long periods of delayed gratification. Children who receive rewards too frequently and superfluously will not develop persistence; instead, they’ll quit when the rewards disappear.

Praise is important, just not vacuous praise. Researchers have found that to be effective praise needs to be specific, credible and sincere. Again, intelligence alone should not be praised. Effort, true skill or talent, insight, intention, patience, humility, tolerance, and receptiveness to constructive criticism — combined with a determination to learn from it — should be praised.

Instead of saying “you’re so smart,” parents and teachers should say, “I like how you keep trying.” Emphasizing and praising effort gives a child a variable that they can control. They come to see themselves as masters of their destiny. Praising natural intelligence removes destiny from the child’s control and provides no good formula for responding to a failure.

Kids should be taught that intelligence is something developed rather than innate. Kids taught thusly are more likely to make effort, to strive no matter the challenge. The concept of teaching kids that the brain is a muscle, and that giving it a harder workout makes you smarter, has been shown to greatly improve young school-age children’s study habits and grades.

We should be honest with our children if we feel that they are capable of better work. As parents and as teachers, we should not be there to make children feel better, but to encourage them to do better.

As parents, what’s the bottom line? Love your kids unconditionally. But unconditional love does not require offering unconditional praise.

While there’s no mistaking the allure of a life outlook in which you’ll make every basket, get every job and reach every star, teaching your children such an outlook does not prepare them for adulthood. And preparing our children for adulthood is our first and largest responsibility as parents.

We should not implant the absurd notion of, “Of course you can do it.” Success is not bought and delivered with the currency of happy thoughts. Success is earned through tenacity, patience, scholarship, sacrifice, self-discipline and due diligence.

The best slogan to live by and to teach our children isn’t all that inspiring, but it’s the truth: Expect failure, but keep trying. Joy is found in the striving. And with persistence, you will have successes.

Savor them and treasure them, for you’ve earned them through hard work.

Continue reading »]]> By John Leonard

“Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.”

“Everything we do for our children that they can do for themselves, makes them weaker.” (Lynn Offerdahl, great swimming parent in Fort Lauderdale, FL.)

One of the really sad trends in American society is parental “concern” that removes adventure and opportunity for growth from American children’s lives. Yes, the world is a different place from the one I grew up in, and many other people, as well. In that world, we were not constantly supervised by parents, and most often, were pretty much totally unsupervised by adults for much of the summer and after school hours as well.

We got cuts and bruises, we did “dangerous things” and looked out for one another. One of us usually had a reasonable degree of sense, and rarely did anyone get seriously injured, but we constantly did “daring” things that helped us understand the limits to our ability (and we regularly exceeded what we thought was possible.)

Contrast that with the average child’s life today.

In those days, we prepared every day for our future independent lives. And then, we rarely if ever came home after high school, and certainly never needed our parents to “support us” later in life. (Ok, I know, we can all point to exceptions to that….)

Today, not so much.

One of the very best parts of swim practice is that EVERYDAY, you get to test your “Hero” capabilities. In every program in the USA, the challenge can be that you will “do something you have never done before” and “be a hero” in that growth. Challenge is the essence of swim practice and the child learns to fail, pick themselves up, and try, try, try again until they succeed. Whether it’s an eight year old learning to dive off the starting block, or a 17 year old senior trying to complete that set of 100’s on 1:05, the opportunities for “hero development” are there. And if coaches don’t offer that, athletes don’t accept the challenge and parents don’t support and applaud that, we’re not showing much confidence in our young people.

The days of 14 year old’s fighting off the Indians from Conestoga wagons crossing the great plains are gone. So are the 50’s when many of us took off at dawn and might not return home until after dark, with many “adventures” to grow from every day, but we can still go to practice, be completely responsible for our own success, and challenge ourselves to reach “hero status” every day.

And if you don’t practice and rehearse, you might really be clueless when you face that real-world challenge that all young people and adults do face, from time to time.

Heroes in practice prepare to be heroes in life.

Continue reading »]]> By Guy Edson

Inevitably, when I am explaining then next swim set to age group swimmers the hands start going up before I have finished giving the instruction!  I think to myself, “What is this?  I haven’t even given you the whole story yet?”

Since I am an old guy, I can tell you I never saw that happened 30 years ago.  This is a phenomenon I have noticed that is becoming progressively more common over the last 15 years.  .

Most people say that kids are different today.  If you use your favorite internet search engine and look for “are children different today” you’re going to find a ton of opinions and a tiny bit of authoritative research.  Most authoritative articles say that today’s kids actually DO think differently and that they learn differently than their parents… and very differently from people of my generation.

You might find articles that discuss “inductive discovery versus deductive discovery” and “inductive teaching versus deductive teaching.”  One article says that children’s brains are physically different including one area of the brain that is more developed these days and enhances inductive discovery – the ability to figure things out through interactive exchange.  Inductive teaching would allow and encourage hands to go up.  Deductive teaching, sometimes referred to as “old school” teaching, would discourage interaction and be more of the “be quiet and listen” type of teaching.

I started feeling guilty for being so “old school” and I had a fleeting thought that I should allow the hands to go up and accommodate the questions.  (But then I had this halting thought that it would now take me 5 minutes to explain a set and if I have 6 sets a day then that is… 30 minutes of explaining?)

Wait a minute!  This is apples and oranges.  Explaining a set is not “learning” a new skill or a new concept.  It is a set of INSTRUCTIONS for something they already know how to do.  I am talking about the about the basic ability to listen to instructions and “get it.”  One “gets it” by listening to the whole instruction within the context of the situation and then applying their brain.  And even when one doesn’t hear every detail one is left to figure it out.  And so I say, “hands down, listen, and think.”

Is this harsh?  Is it bad coaching technique?  I’d rather think it’s presenting the swimmers an opportunity to gain the life skill of learning to pay attention to instructions and then carrying them out.

Continue reading »]]> By Guy Edson

In the process of teaching swimming skills coaches often use “key words.”  Key words are a way to sum up a whole bunch of paragraphs into two, three, or four words that are easy for the swimmer to remember.  Coaches ask swimmers to recall the key words as they do a skill.

I came across an article entitled “88 Ways to Say “Very Good!” on www.gym.net, written by Gymnastics Risk Management and Consultation Michael A. Taylor coacht@gym.net .  As I read down the list I thought of the concept of “key words” for swim parents who want to give emotional support for their children’s progress without getting into technical details of stroke, splits, starts, etc.

I selected the last 23 items from the list and present them here.  Catch yourself using them!

You’re doing beautifully
You’re doing fine
You’re getting better every day
You’re learning fast
You’re on the right track now
You’re really improving
You’re really working hard today
You’ve got it made
You’ve got that down pat
You’ve just about got it
You’ve just about mastered that
You are doing much better today
You are really learning a lot
You are very good at that
You certainly did well today
You figured that out fast
You got it
You make it look easy
You must have been practicing
You out did yourself today
You really make this fun
You remembered
Your practicing has really paid off

Continue reading »]]> By Don Swartz

A couple of weeks ago at a mutual friend’s birthday party I reconnected with a former Masters swimmer from the 1970’s. Tom asked me what it was like coaching at this point in time vs. in the 60’s and 70’s. What had changed, if anything? I replied that some technique issues had been refined and racing strategies had been clarified to some extent. I said that belief systems still ruled the day when all was said and done. He asked me if the kids were any different. I said I thought there was less ability to connect the dots between responsibility and accountability. I also believe that parents are reluctant to allow their children to fail thereby robbing them of one of the great teaching experiences of all time.

He proceeded to tell me the story of his daughter Sydney (not her real name). A handful of years ago when she was 14 years old in 8th grade she declared that she wanted to attend a local private school that is very exclusive. They only admit 85 students each year. Hundreds apply.

She decided that in addition to her outstanding grades, test scores and letters of recommendation from various folks that she would sweeten her chances by expanding her resume by competing in a speaking contest. She entered with the idea of being a finalist, maybe even winning and felt if she did this it would really help her chances of gaining a spot at this school.

She decided to reprise Doris Day’s role of Annie Oakley. She got her outfit together and practiced her lines for weeks. As the contest neared the excitement in the home began to build. Tom was extremely proud of her and she was growing more confident by the day.

The evening of the contest Tom and Sydney drove to Sonoma County where the contest was being held. She took the stage looking sharp; he stood in the wings, the proud parent. As she wowed the crowd and the judges he beamed.

Part way through, she stopped. She had momentarily forgotten her lines. She looked at him for help. He smiled encouragingly. Unable to remember she turned her back on the judges and audience, closed her eyes and took a deep calming breath. For nearly a minute she stood there motionless, and then looked at him asking for help. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled willing her to remember, to go on.

She took another deep breath and turned back to the audience. She said “I am unable to continue. I have forgotten my lines. I thank all of you for this opportunity and while I am disappointed in myself I can tell you I practiced hard and have done my best. Unfortunately today I cannot go forward.” With her head held high she walked down through the crowd and out the front door with Tom following closely behind.

They got in the car and she burst into tears, sobbing mightily. He comforted her as best he could. He had mixed feelings of course; he felt badly for her and proud of her at the same time.

The next morning as they ate breakfast together they reread the contest rules. There in the fine print at the bottom it stated that “no contestant shall be penalized for being prompted.” He felt extremely disappointed in himself for not reading the rules more carefully. She said it didn’t matter all that much that she had prepared as well as she could and it simply didn’t work for her that night.

Tom told me that it has been 5 years since the incident and several times over those years his daughter has told him that she learned more about success, perseverance, dignity under pressure, handling disappointment and keeping things in perspective from that one incident than she ever would have had she been able to complete her speech that night.

She was accepted into the school anyway. She decided not to attend. She is a freshman in college today, doing well.

Continue reading »]]> By John Leonard

Think ahead to our end of season meets I would like to address both swimmers and parents about the team culture aspect of “success”.

First, please understand that the coaches will be excited for the swimmers when they do well.  Also understand that the “more excited” parents and coaches get about a good swim, the “bigger deal” it will be, and the HARDER it is for the child to continue to get better.

So, the coaches comments and attitude will FOCUS on how to get faster the next time the child swims the event, (how to swim better.) and we’d ask parents to offer a “restrained” congrats. I know this is counter-intuitive to parents, but TOO MUCH praise acts as a brake on further improvement.

We want to foster the idea that IMPROVEMENT comes from attention to detail, swimming correctly, and following instructions.  “Well done, good swim” is a good parental comment.  “AWESOME, UNBELIEVEABLE, FANTASTIC” is NOT a good set of comments.  (Think about what those words MEAN.)

Also, we want to teach the children that joy over a good swim is a good thing.  But perspective and recognizing that they are hard working swimmers with good coaching, is more important.  NATURALLY they will improve!  If they practice well, and consistently, they will improve — maybe not every time, but very often.  So the behavior of the athlete needs to follow the idea of “Act like you have been there before!”  (Instead of the showboating pro football player, who does dances and calls attention to himself for an ordinary tackle or run. They get paid millions of dollars to run or to tackle….they should be doggone good at it.  Just hand the ball to referee and get back in the huddle….)  Same in swimming.  Smile, shake hands with the swimmer next to you, go back and see the coach, accept a couple of congratulations and listen to the coach to learn how to continue to improve next time.  Two minutes after the race, forget it and start thinking through your next race.  And do EXACTLY the same after a less than satisfactory swim.

Be happy, celebrate, but be respectful of both your fellow competitors and the process of improvement.

Parents, please share this with your swimmers, either in writing or your own words.  Expect to hear the coaches explaining this to swimmers as well.

If the team culture is right, every swimmer will be “right”.