Mark Seguin: Hello everybody, Mark Sigwin, Minnesota Swim and Vibe. Returning for episode seven of the podcast series The Long Course, a look at swimming culture and how it's drifted over the last 20 to 30 years and how we can fight that current and get back. Today we're going talk about the fanzone. So, in previous episodes, we talked about what Minnesota's swimming vibe is built for scaffolding, for the athletes' experience. Which is my locker. We've talked about how Minnesota Swim and Vibe has built a scaffolding to support the coaches' experience in the sport, my teams. And today we're going to talk about how we have built the scaffolding to support the parents' experience or the fan in general, their experience in the sport. So I I'm kind of in a fortunate position where I I have been a swimmer for many years growing up. I've been a coach for nearly a decade. and I've also been a swim parent for over a decade, starting with my daughters swimming at the ages of eight, nine, somewhere in there, up through one who's still swimming her junior year in college. So I certainly have sat in those stands and understand that point of view as well. So let's talk a little bit about the problem, and as we've mentioned before, that we're trying to solve. What tools do you have as a swim fan or a swim parent? While you're sitting there in those stands. And the answer is pretty easy. Not much. You have Meat Mobile. And we've already talked about how when the only thing that you have is access to results and comparative results, that's what you're gonna gravitate towards. It's easy to become victim to thinking that's really what the sport's all about and what Is the true measure of success. Even if you don't believe that, that's what you have and that's what you're going to gravitate to. So the scaffolding Minnesota Swim and Vibe has built is called the fan zone. And it's a way where you can get a better picture of all the things needed to be a swim parent and support your child that go beyond just their time. So what is it exactly? So the fan zone, just like the coaches area or the athletes area, is specific to you as an individual. You get to choose your own adventure, so to speak, in there. One option you can be a super fan and you can follow as much stuff that you care about as you'd like. The other is you can kind of I would call it pick a pick a plant, pick a team. that you'd like to follow and this is specifically right now for high school, although you can follow college teams as well. But you're gonna pick a team probably that your child participates on. So once you pick that team, what are you gonna see? Well, that's kinda also up to you. We're gonna obviously have the the results for the team in there from their meets, but we're also gonna have the team schedule. We're gonna have the list of cuts, we're going to have some information around nutrition, we're gonna have some information around how to best support your athlete, things to say to them, things not to say, how to interact better with coaching, how to Teach you to teach your kids to advocate for themselves. Things like that. We're gonna give you the whole picture of some interesting information in there about the sport that maybe you're not aware of. but it's really a place where we can give you your team that you like to follow, as well as more information broadly around that team and the sport that's specific to parenting and to fans. You do have the option to follow a specific athlete. that has to be initiated by the athlete through their MyLocker, but they can certainly do that. They would generate a code, give it to you, you enter it, they approve it, and you can follow your athlete. Now it's not going to let you dive deep into your athlete stuff. It will give you their best times, their most recent results, things like that. but it's not going to allow you to kind of get into their locker, so to speak, and over-engage into the details of their swimming. It will give you the high-level summary of it all, but not the dirty, nitty-gritty details. And I think that's an important aspect to call out. understanding and knowing their times is great. over-engaging in those and making those the heart of the conversation with your athlete ends up being pretty harmful. So the end goal is to give parents and fans a space where they can get information they need about their athlete, about their team, about the sport, as well as information so they can best support their athlete through their entire experience while in the wonderful sport of swimming and diving. a couple couple other things I'd like to talk about. What's not? It's not a surveillance mechanism by any means. it's secure, it's private. it's not a social media platform. All right, there's no intercommunication going on in there. It's just a window in a room that's built specifically for you as a parent It's a pretty simple concept. and it's in alignment with everything Minnesota Swim and Vibe stands for. And a lot of what we've talked about through this entire podcast series is giving people the stuff that they need so they can experience the entire sport and not just the results side. hopefully making the sport more enjoyable for everyone, eventually leading to more success, more participation, better retention in the sport. And like I said in the beginning, overall just a better experience. So those are the the the three rooms that we have built at Minnesota Swim and Vibe. I hope you check them out. Like anything. If you don't like it, you can delete your account. And that's not a big deal. It doesn't cost anything. But I do hope that you check it out, right? You can only figure out if it works if people use it, provide feedback on it, and we'll continue to develop it to better support parents' needs. So that continues kind of the rooms that we built in the scaffolding for Minnesota Swim and Vibe and how we're trying to change the culture of swimming and diving in the state of Minnesota. We get into episode eight. We're going to talk a bit about some of the obstacles to that, and also tie it back to kind of the big picture of things. So, pretty short and sweet today, all about the fan zone, how parents and fans of the sport can get a little bit more, have a different set of technology in their hands to appreciate the sport and not just the results that we see at the pool. Thank you very much, Mark Sigwin, swim and vibe out.