Mark Seguin: Hello everyone, Mark Seguin Minnesota Swim and Vibe. Continuing on our podcast series, The Long Course, where the culture of swimming has gone over the last 20 to 30 years, and how do we get it back to some of the better pieces of it that seem to be missing these days? We're on episode six, where we're going to talk about one of the ways Minnesota Swim and Vibe is looking to influence that. In episode five, we talked about how We built MyLocker for the athletes, own special room for every individual athlete to customize as they want. And so they can balance the experiential part of the sport with the results part of the sport, which is one of the main problems that we're seeing. Today we're gonna flip it a little bit. We're gonna look at what Minnesota Swim and Dive has built, swim and vibe. We're gonna flip it a little today and look at what Minnesota Swim and Vibe has built for the high school coaches and hopefully expanding into Club coaches at some point as well. We'll see. but definitely focused on our high school coaches ⁓ So, I love my locker for the athletes, because it's incredibly customizable, it's rich, it's deep, it's engaging. we look at what we did for the coaches, and we built what's called my and that's really built ⁓ on a lot of my own and frustrations in. ⁓ the sport when it comes to administrative work and not having the tools that I would like to have to run practices, to run a program, to prepare for meets, all that stuff. My teams was built a couple different ways. One, to reduce the amount of time coaches have to spend on admin work. Okay, nobody likes it. It's taking away time that you have to spend on the work that you probably don't like. The second piece is that it looks to help elevate that experiential piece. As we talked about in episode four, coaches I expect to be good stewards of the sport, not just coaches on deck for the team in front of them. I think that's an obligation we all have. the tools just don't exist to help promote that or make it easy for them or even give them a place to where to start. ⁓ I think my Teams for Coaches does exactly that as well. And for the coaches out there, remember, this is going to help you, this change in culture is going to help you specifically in the long run. If you're tired of results obsessed parents or kids swimming club instead of high school because they think they're going to be a little bit faster, or you're tired of kids dropping out of your program after a year or two because they just don't feel like they belong, these are the tools that help support that for you. So don't think of it as charity. Think of it as you're helping yourself as well. So just like my locker is a room for a specific athlete, not just a room for all athletes, my teams is the same concept for coaches. It's a room for a coach or a coaching staff of a specific program. It's not a room for all coaches, right? It's private, it's walled off, it's secure. And also I think we gotta look at my teams as not one more thing that you have to do. This is something that it may be new, but it's actually gonna give you less work to do in the long run. And pretty quickly too. And I think another differentiator that we'll talk about ⁓ in this episode as well is this isn't just something that's out there. This is something that is supported by me personally. I know every coach out there has access to me via either telephone, text message, or email and my response time's pretty good. so this is something that is just not thrown out there and saying good luck. This is something that's saying, here it is, ⁓ will support you along the way and whatever you need with it as well. So, how does it make it easier for coaches to do their job? Well, let's start with roster management, which is a pain in the butt at the start of every year for every coach. ⁓ updating everyone's grades, making sure names are correct, everything's accurate. We have a very robust, easy, easy to use roster management tool. We help with meet entries, we help with practice structure, we help with all sorts of tools to look at the data that's collected on your ⁓ athletes in A whole bunch of tools not only just to track their progress as far as time, but as in the number of events they're competing in, their versatility, ⁓ and things like that to get a true picture of growth and development, and not just are they getting faster each time they're swimming. Because we know that just doesn't happen. And if you're relying on that as your key metric, ⁓ you're gonna be disappointed and you're gonna have parents that are disappointed and kids are disappointed. Growth is not linear in this sport and it's not always measured by time. So when we talk about stewardship, I think there's a couple of things that we can look at. I think the biggest one is taking away the admin time so you can actually focus more on that. But we do give you some other metrics where we capture milestones the first time that they break 105 and the 100 free, maybe. We give you the ability to send recognition to individual kids in their lockers in the form of badges for things like work ethic, leadership, being a good teammate, being a good sport, trying and failing. Right? These are the different ways that you can spread that stewardship. Another thing is just spreading your stewardship. further. And we've seen this already. ⁓ As a coaching community with access to me, if there's something that you think that would be great, you can just email me that and I'll see what it takes to build it out, and more than likely we'll build it out. This is how we ⁓ came up with the ability to take ⁓ a set and find iterations of that based on different intervals that take the same time. It's way that we put in the team history and team records and school records, and pool records. it's a way that we created a small calculator for adding up relay splits when you're trying to figure out relay time entries and things like that. ⁓ can take what you do best, share it with Minnesota Swim and Vibe, and it can become a tool that all the community can use. And you're giving a little bit back. And hopefully you'll see some things in there that you've never heard of or never seen and thought, hey, this is a great idea, I'll try it. That's that give and take. That's that give a little, take a little. And it builds up the whole community. Let's talk about what it's not. This isn't a surveillance tool. This isn't to make sure that you do what you're supposed to as a coach. It's a workspace with a lot of helpful tools to help you do your work easier. It's not accessible by fans, parents, it's not accessible by swimmers. There are a few things certainly you could share, but that's completely up to you. also It's also not a replacement for coaching. Just because you use this doesn't make you a good coach. It just gives you more time to focus on other things and administrative work. I think I said this earlier on, but I want to reiterate this because this is not something more to do. This replaces a lot of stuff that you already do and just makes it easier to do. So here's my ask to coaches with a little bit of hopefully not too fiery message as well. I want coaches, and I know all the high school coaches are aware of it. I've sent out emails, it's been available for two months now. ⁓ and every week I send out an email with some updates and how to register, and please check it out and provide feedback. ⁓ anyway, coaches, register. And I know that is something to do, but it's a 30-second ask. It's a name and an email, and no one's gonna do anything with the email. ⁓ That's all it takes. Try it. Check it out. Ask questions if you need to. If you need training, I'll provide it. We'll do it one-on-one via Zoom. If you hate it, fine, delete it. But trying's the thing. That's the first step. I want to get a little into that. So as I mentioned, we've been sending emails out to coaches. ⁓ and there's about 140 of them. And we have less than half of the coaches in the state that have even registered and looked at it. And that's a problem to me. And we'll talk about that more in a later episode of this about the obstacles to ⁓ this balanced community where we and we'll talk about that a little more ⁓ in a later episode where we're trying to change the culture of the sport where the current has drifted us to this results focused and the problems that it's caused ⁓ that we see as coaches, as we see as athletes, and we feel as parents. ⁓ one of those big obstacles is. The ability to change. Or the inability to change, actually. We'll talk about that more. But anyway, my ask is coaches, register, try it out. Provide feedback. Shape it to be your own. I'm all for that. Because again, it only works if you use it, or at least try it. Or we don't know it doesn't work if we try it and we find out it doesn't work. But just not doing that, that that's a hard line for me. ⁓ I am here to support you 100%. Like I said, anything from a text to a call to an email, you wanna write me a letter, I'll give you my address, ⁓ I'll meet you in person, I'll do a Zoom call, whatever you need, that support is there almost immediately. But you guys gotta go out there and try it. ⁓ that's my only ask for the coaches. So that's the My Teams in a Nutshell. It is a tool built by Minnesota Swim Envibe where a coach can have their own specific digital space to help them with their administrative tasks and maybe get a little more information to help them coach a little better, create more time so they can give a little bit back to the community and create a better experience for their athletes across the board. our next episode, episode seven, we're going to talk about what we built for the fans, which is mostly parents. There's some fans out there as well, and we looked at their experience and are trying to shape that to balance out the result-driven ⁓ culture the sport with something that ⁓ places equal weight on the experiential. Thank you all. Keep listening. Mark Siegwin, Minnesota Swim and Vibe, and I am out.