Mark Seguin: Hello again, everybody. Mark Seguin Minnesota Swim and Vibe. Today we have episode five of our podcast series, The Long Course, where we're going to talk about Minnesota Swim and Vibe and how that becomes the scaffolding and how we built that scaffolding to solve one of the bigger problems I think we face in swimming as a sport, as well as youth sports in general. Just a quick recap: episode one. we talked about the declining value proposition in the sport and how it's leading to a decrease in participation and satisfaction for kids, families, and coaches. Episode two, we highlighted what the cause of that Episode three, we identified who potentially could fix this issue. And episode four. We landed on how and what it looks like for lot of people just to do a little as the solution and How Minnesota Swim and Vibe was built to support that, to help enhance the ability for a lot of people to do just a little bit to get us to where we want to go. So let's talk about the first of three aspects that we built. And I'm going to call them rooms, just to kind of give you ⁓ a visual of what it's like in a digital world. So we have Minnesota Swim and Vibe as a public space, and it's divided into college, club, and school, as well as stuff for coaches and a podcast section. It's that's the public face of Minnesota Swim and Vibe. It's lightly curated. Everything's kind of there, but you have to search around for it. ⁓ we built three different rooms. There's an athlete room, coach room, and a fan room, which is mostly for parents. And today I to talk a little bit about the athlete's room. ⁓ so first of all, a pretty important distinction. It's not a room for athletes. It is every athlete gets their own room. And they can curate it and customize it and align it to whatever they want it to be. So before we get into that, let's talk about something that has kind of come into my mind as I've listened to the last few episodes you might get the impression that Minnesota Swim and Vibe is for slow kids. Right? We're doing all this to help out the kids that just aren't fast enough, and that's their problem. That's an incorrect statement. So let's talk about a couple things with this always-on scoreboard that we have out there as our only Of what we think is information. The results aren't information, they're a verdict. And they're always on. They're in their pocket. Always accessible. And they're just your results, they're everybody's results. Always there. Comparison becomes the de facto way to look at these things, which is not helpful. You will not find a parent guide out there or a guide to coaching children that says comparing them to others is the best way to go. But this is what it allows. And that's the only thing that's available. How does it impact different kids? The ones at the top, I think, actually, in my experience, end up dealing with the most anxiety they're always trying to move up one spot or two spots. ⁓ when they have a swim ⁓ performance that doesn't support that, doesn't move them up, they look at it as failure. And in swimming, you're gonna get that a lot, especially as you get older. Failure, failure, failure. And it starts wearing on a kid. Or someone below them starts to move up because they're improving. Failure, failure, failure. And honestly, what I see a lot with these kids is the end of their swimming career at high school, they're just grinding through it to survive. They've lost the love for the sport, they'll go on to college, they'll get a little escape from the constant pressure, and they'll slowly just fade out of the sport. It happens a lot. So don't think this is something just for the slow kids. This is something that impacts every swimmer. For the kids in the middle, it's a constant a whole bunch of kids are ahead of you and a whole bunch of kids behind you trying to catch you. That's exhausting. There's no escape from it. You move up 10, there's still a hundred ahead of you. There's still a hundred behind you, right behind you probably. That always on scoreboard leads to anxiety. And finally, the ones that you may think we've been talking about all along, the ones that have the slower times, they just don't feel like they belong because they're not good enough. That's pretty easy to understand. Because they're only seeing the results part of the sport and not the full experience of the sport. The truly things that they should be recognized and rewarded for for achieving aren't visible. We just have the scoreboard. So, what we build? We built the My Locker. The My Locker is a room that is specific to an individual where they can tailor it to their needs. And this is where we have built in that balance that I've talked about between results and experience. Results aren't bad, but when they exist as the true visible measure of a child, it becomes harmful. We do have results. We'll have they can have their best times in there. They can have their progression over time by event, ⁓ the events that they swam, they can have a list of the cuts that are there available for them for their age group or for their state, or they can look at where it takes to place eighth in their section or sixteenth in their section. That stuff's there, but that's only a sliver of it. What we also build in is things like recognition. Or they'll automatically get badges for performance, maybe for competing the first time in an event for a season, for winning a close race, for having some rando unique time. That's one part of recognition. We also allow coaches to send recognition badges to swimmers, divers, based on things like their leadership, their work ethic, their commitment. And we also allowed teammates to send badges, all positive, ⁓ just little images and things like that, just as a way to say, I see you, I support you. Recognition's important, that's all built in there. Goals. One of the most frustrating things that I've dealt with in all my coaching is when I ask kids to work on goals if they want, and they come back with a time. That's great. I'm glad that they have a time that they want to achieve. But when you're looking at goals, there's a whole bunch of behaviors and actions that you have to do get there. And those need to be detailed out as well. My Locker provides an AI agent built to assist you of not only thinking of the end result, but all the actions, behaviors, processes that you need to think about and consider and maybe add as part of that goal to get there. Otherwise, it's just a time on a page. It's kind of pointless. My Locker talks about nutrition. My Locker talks about recovery. My Locker has games that you can play with your teammates. ⁓ Nothing highly competitive, just more around fun and team building. Some individual games that are more entertaining than anything else, but God knows we have downtime on bus rides at meets. ⁓ My Locker also offers journaling, a lost art in the sport of swimming because it gets to be hard and kids really don't write anymore. So an electronic journal that can be as simple or as complex to look at your mood, the food you're eating if you want, your practice sets, ⁓ you approach practice, what you learned, what you worked on, how you felt after practice, how your body's feeling. You can make it anything you want. And you can fill it out as often as you want. You can be reminded. By your locker about it. And of course, like any good locker, you should be able to put in pictures and words and quotes and things like that there as well to really kind of make it your own space. The other thing about my locker is that it's very private. As a locker, it's a locker with a lock. It's for that specific swimmer. Coaches can't get in there. Parents can't get in there. But we made sure it's super safe so no shenanigans can go on there, on in there. Right? It's all built around positivity. Let's also talk about what it's not. It's not social media. Right? There is no interlocker communication mechanisms. There's no team chat. Nothing like that. Right? The only thing you can do is send a badge to someone, and your only options are things that are positive. That's it. You can play games, but those are also pretty hard locked to be positive. Also, privacy. Right. When you do register, we ask for an email address. We will never use your email address for anything. We'll never sell your email address to anybody. It's under lock and key in the big Minnesota Someone Buy blocker. So it's not accessible. So privacy is a big thing for us too. So, why is all this important? Why is a my locker even a thing? It goes back to what we talked about originally. It is an opportunity for the kids to put in their pocket on their phone equal weight to the things that are about the experience of the sport, that aren't easily measured, that are specific to them, to help them feel like they belong, to give them the things they need to make them feel like they belong. As well as giving them the other side of it too. The things that you would get anywhere in Swim Cloud or ⁓ whatever, name your tool. You'll have all the data there too. But we put it in a space where we say this is equal weight, this isn't everything. See the whole sport, enjoy the parts of it that you enjoy, and that's going to be different from everyone. So if you're listening to this and you're an athlete, I highly recommend you go to mn swimming vibe.com and register for your locker. Just need to enter your name and email. It will find you in our database and hook you up. It's that simple. If you don't like it, delete it. Sign out. Delete your account. Dunzo. Gone forever. If you're a coach, I'd encourage you to encourage your swimmers to get a locker. It's a great tool for them. It's going to give them a whole set, it's going to give them a way to look at the sport. that's going to make them enjoy practices and meets and the whole sport better. It'll probably help them communicate better with you. It'll help them become a better team if they're all engaged into it. These is are the tools that it's meant for. And if you're a parent, maybe suggest your kid gets a locker and signs up for it. Not so you can go snooping in it. It's okay. We'll talk about what the parents get down the road here in a couple episodes. But kids need a safe space. Kids love digital. Minnesota Swimming Vibe with My Locker gives you that safe digital space centered around the experience of swimming built by someone who absolutely loves the sport and thinks everyone should get the most positive experience out of participating in it and feel like they belong and have a space that they can curate to whatever their needs are and stay safe. So maybe suggest it. Because at the end of the day, none of this matters unless you put stuff in your locker. An empty locker is as good as no locker. I highly recommend you check it out. I ask everyone to at least check it out, provide feedback, you know how to find us. As we go into the next episode, we'll be talking about the coaches route, how we looked at what a coach would need to help support their experience. Thank you very much, everyone. Bye bye!