Mark Seguin: Hello everyone, Mark Seguin Minnesota Swim and Vibe. Today we're going to have episode three of our podcast series, The Long Course, taking a look at the state of swimming in Minnesota Just to recap our previous episodes, episode one, we talked about the declining value proposition of the sport, how we are asking athletes and families and coaches to invest more time and energy. And money into the sport while getting less out of it on the other side. Episode two, we talked about how the well-intentioned technology the always-on scoreboard that's used as the default success has created culture where the results side of the sport are very visible, yet the experiential side of the sport has not kept up with that. So what we are exposing to everyone. is just the results base And again, having results visible isn't the problem. the problem, it's the only thing that's visible. That's what everyone hangs on now. And that's led to some issues within the sport. So does it have to stay that way? Can it be fixed? If it can be fixed, who's supposed to fix it? Well, I when we talk about the fix, we can't turn back the clock. It's not a subtraction fix. We are not going to get rid of the technologies that we have. Meat Mobile, etc., the ones that produce the always-on scoreboard. That's unrealistic, and I don't think it's beneficial either. There is a lot of value in what we see as far as results. The fix is to provide equal weight to the non-results, the experiential side of the sport, so everyone can see the whole picture and not just focus on the results side of it. It all needs to be on equal footing. who fixes it? ⁓ let's talk about governing bodies first of all, USA Swimming, National High School Federation, ⁓ MSHSL, Swimming, NCAA. Governing bodies make rules and they enforce rules. They do not make culture. That happens on a local level. So thinking that this is a USA swimming problem, I think is not theirs to fix. Now, can they do some things when we're talking about the time investment and the money investment into this work? Absolutely. I think governing bodies can have some impact, but when it comes to the amount of physical, emotional, mental energy that we put into it, that's culture. And that happens at the local level. Let's talk about families, parents, kids. Can we expect them to fix it? they're ⁓ directly impacted by the result of it, but you gotta remember, ⁓ as a parent, their first priority is their child. And asking them to be stewards for the culture of the sport, I think is a bit much to ask. Also, they're for most of them, the amount of time that they're spent in the sport is fairly minimal. You know, a kid's life cycle may be at best eight to ten years, a family maybe ten to twelve years. ⁓ but during that time they want to be focused on their kid. They don't want to be focused the culture of the sport. So I don't think it's really the families. so when we get down to it, it's not one specific group of people. It's going to be a the people that have a long-term investment into the sport. And it may come from coaches, it may come from officials, it may come from some people that participate in governing bodies, it may come from superfans it may come from any of these sources. That's where it's gonna have to come from. Because these are the people that don't care about this kid, and parents rightfully should care about that. They're caring about the sport. And that's a whole different thing. And if you've been in the sport 10, 15, 20, some people up to 50 years, The sport is always going to be there. And you have that investment into the sport and want to see it maintain a healthy state, not the decline of the value proposition which we're seeing. I'm going to call that group the long horizon community, right? These are the people that are the milers. We need the milers. Maybe some open water swimmers too. We need some 10Kers. it's not a sprint. So, what are some of the obstacles that we have when we're looking at accomplishing this? Finding a group of long-term community members working together to change the culture of our sport from a Primarily results-based endeavor to a balanced experiential and results-based sport, One of the obstacles is there's no true owner, right? There's no lead group of these people out there. There's not like the secret society of long-term community swim members. There's no organization. Another issue is a lot of this comes from the coaching community. And those who aren't engaged at the holistic sport level aren't apathetic. They care, but it might feel too big for them. They don't really even know where to start. I found myself in that spot years ago. Like, I want to do something. It's not that I don't care. I just don't know what to do. And in that scenario, they're going to tend to focus on what's right in front of them, their own pool and keeping that. happy and healthy to the best of their ability, but not understanding that the entire sport culture is creating this current that is pulling them in that direction. The other obstacle, or another obstacle, is a lot of people will say, yeah, we already do that. We do that all the time. Yeah, you do. A lot of coaches do. But again, that's your own pool and your audience is your own team. And if no one outside of your own pool and your own team sees it, that's not going to impact the overall culture of the sport. It's not. It's great, but it's isolated. Results? Those aren't isolated to your team. People can look at Meet Mobile and Swim Cloud and whatever, Minnesota Swim Vibe and see all the results all the time 24-7 across the entire state. The results are widely propagated. The experiential stuff, even if you do do it, is isolated to your own small environment. There's another group out there, and these are coaches as well. ⁓ it's not a big group, and it pains me to say this and pardon my language, but they just don't give a shit. Right? And I know they're out there. These are people that I have emailed directly and asked for either feedback or help on something, or if I can help them, and they don't even reply to not even just one email, but multiple emails. They don't care, they don't want to hear it. They're in their pool, their pool is good, everything's fine. I'm not gonna waste time and energy on them, ⁓ because I don't think you can convince them, but there is a small group. They're getting their paycheck, they're coaching, they're swimming, their pool is relatively happy, and they're gonna call it good. Not gonna mess with that. Just wanna call it out that that's out there too. Let's talk about math. Let's say you find someone that does want to take this on. One person cannot do it alone. Trust me, I've been trying for the last three years, and I'll be quite honest with you, I haven't made a lot of progress. I've got a lot of nodding heads that say, yeah, that's great, that's cute, that's fun, that's awesome. But when it comes time for people to make changes and participate, It's pretty slim. That's okay. It's progress. It's just not a lot. just thinking it from a team aspect. If I was taking on a team and I wanted to change the culture of it, me as a coach, it would take three to five years just to make that happen in a team of 40-50, much less a whole state where I don't interact with most of them. It's a challenge. So one person can't do it alone. So you have two paths really. This group of long-term community members, ⁓ all working in concert to spread it across the state and down to the depths of all the programs. Or the second option, everyone just has to do a little bit, a little tiny bit. That's an option. And that's an option I'm going to talk a little further in episode four about what exactly that looks like. And just to kind of tease a little bit about episode four, what that looks like, it's really hard because everyone's heads down. We talked about that in the first episode, right? Looking forward to talking about episode four with you guys. Stay tuned. Thank you very much.