Mark Seguin: Hello everybody, Mark Seguin Minnesota Swim and Vibe. Continuing our long course podcast series the state of the sport of swimming, we are on episode four. And before we kind of get into that, let's talk about where we've come from. Episode one, the shifting value proposition of the sport, demanding more time, money, and energy out of athletes, families, and coaches, and giving less and less back to the majority of them. Episode two, what's to blame? ⁓ the always on scoreboard. Whose only true success metric is results. Episode three, who can fix it? And we left that off with it's not the parents, it's not the governing bodies. it's gonna come down to the long-term community, the people that are in the sport for 10, 15, 20 years ⁓ have a vested interest in that. they're going to have to do it. there's not one person that can do it. There's not a small group or committee of these people that exist that can do it. And even if they did, the workload's too much. So the only remaining option is we ask everyone to just do a little bit and that will add up to make the changes. So let's talk about everyone does a little. sounds nice, but how does a little from a lot of people actually add up to something? That bends the entire sport, at least in the state of Minnesota. That's what we'll talk about today. So, for example, right now, we talked about the always-on scoreboard. Results are ever present, always accessible, instant. So good swim, bad swim, whatever it happens to be, good performance, bad performance, boom, it pops up, it's there, it's consumed, we react. And I don't want to get rid of that. I think it's that's an okay thing. But what if we put equal footing on the experiential? What if we had things where ⁓ that same parent after a bad swim not only gets the result that this was a bad swim, but also has access to some things that are really good to say to your kid after a bad swim. They're gonna help them continue on and enjoy the sport and continue to improve instead of get frustrated and quit. ⁓ what if coaches had some of that available to them? What if we had all these resources that had equal footing to just the result? That's an interesting concept. Let me talk more about that. So, first of all, I think we can all agree that would be awesome, but it doesn't exist. It's nowhere. you can't go to one master coach out there that has all the answers, or some master parent who's lived through many kids of this and come out the other side successful. exists everywhere. There's so many coaches and parents. ⁓ and former athletes that have this wisdom, but it only exists with them. But that's also the problem. It only exists with them and only gets shared in their tiny little community or pool in front of them. No one else can take advantage of this. Every coach has their little bag of tricks, but that gives us all just a bunch of coaches that all have a little bag of tricks. If we were able to pull these all together, same thing with parents, same things for athletes, and share this and be able to take away from it equally. We would have a huge bag of tricks that the entire swim community can get to to help promote the experiential part of swimming par with the results part of swimming. It sounds crazy, but actually, when you think about it, makes a lot of sense. it certainly all can't come me. One, I don't have that much wisdom. ⁓ two, and that's just one voice and one experience. So it's gotta come from the entire community. So why doesn't this happen today if it's that easy? Do you have all this institutional knowledge that can be beneficial for the sport existing across the state? Why doesn't it all come together to form this massive community center of information? Well, a lot of times coaches ⁓ even think to share it, right? They're heads down focused on what's in front of them at the pool, doing what they can ⁓ the kids in front of them and the swims in front of them, ⁓ and the athletes in front of them, or dealing with the parents in front of them. They don't think that they need to share this beyond it just doesn't pop into their mind. They might not know how. Right? A lot of coaches aren't tech savvy social media juggernauts. They wouldn't even know how to put it together. It's just something that comes off the top of their head that comes out to their swimmers in the moment. Another impact of the heads down thing is they just feel like there's not time. It's not a priority. They've got other things to do than to worry about the rest of the swimming world. I think that's where we go back to what we talked about in the previous episode. As coaches, we need to think of ourselves not as just coaches for the kids that are there in front of us in that time and place. We also are stewards for the sport. I think we all have a responsibility to give back to it. Many of us were raised by it. And prioritizing and taking that little bit of time, if we're asking just a little, to share some of that information, I don't think is too much of an ask. And of course there's the other thing we mentioned. A lot of times we think, well, I have this stuff. I use it here for my team. My team's fine. So I don't need to worry about the rest of the state. Again, that goes back to stewardship over just being a coach. Being a steward. And I understand that, right? I've been coaching for a good period of time. I love my team. I care about my team, and I wanted to give my team every single thing that I could. But it didn't take me too long to realize, as I saw other teams or other coaches, that they had some stuff that I could learn as well. And I had some stuff that I could share with them. And that happens occasionally on deck when you find the time or the questions asked. But a hell of a lot more times than not, the question's never asked and that moment never happens. And who's on deck with all the coaches all the time with nothing going on? Nobody. That environment's not conducive for that. It can happen, but not conducive. So I've spent three episodes now kind of talking about what the issue is, what the cause is, how we might solve it. ⁓ but let me try to put this into practical terms, especially for the coaches, the the ones that I'm calling to be stewards of the sport. How does it benefit you directly? Right? Who's dealt with that parent that has come to you with some ridiculous request that's based around their kid's performance? I don't think they're acting out of line necessarily. I think they're acting with all the information that they have, and that's at always on scoreboard. Who's tired of a kid leaving their club to go to a different club down the road because they think that club's better? That's just a parent being a parent. Based on the information they have, which is the always on scoreboard. How about tired of a kid's quitting your team, even though they seem to love the sport, but they just don't feel like they're good enough? They're not getting all the recognition and the benefits of the always-on scoreboard that some of the other kids get. They love to do it. They might not be great, but they just don't feel like they belong. And translate that to any kid that doesn't feel like they belong, Because of what they put on that always-on scoreboard isn't on par with everyone else. If you're tired of those problems, like I was tired of those problems, this is a potential solution. This is a way to change what parents and what athletes consume to let them make a more well-rounded decision about whether to stay or whether to go. Whether to be upset or be supportive, whether to understand that the coach is developing the person and not just the swimmer who's judged by a time. A lot of the things that we see that we recognize as everyday problems are just symptoms of a bigger problem. The cultural problem of the sport. That is a result what most of us ⁓ as the only thing that's presented to them. So understanding taking a little time to help fix the culture, that's not charity. That's helping you solve your own problems in your pool by solving the bigger problem that exists across the sport. And I hope that's something we can all wrap our heads around a little bit, because that's a pretty big paradigm shift from how we tend to operate. So what's the first step in this? Let's say we get everyone even a majority of people out there agreeing that they should share. They should contribute this information, the experience of the sport, their wisdom, to some central community where people can ⁓ and consume however they wish. Well, we don't have one. Right? Every swim is going to show up somewhere and somewhere pretty fast. It's going to show up on Meet Mobile. It's going to show up on the USA Times database. It'll show up on Swim Cloud. It'll show up on Swim Intel. It will show up somewhere quickly. Every great experience, every learning lesson, every great conversation between coach and athlete. Every moment of encouragement from parent to athlete, athlete to athlete. There's no place for that to go. We're back to the uneven ground. Results, immaculate, ever-present visibility. The experiential side of the sport, nothing. Maybe your team's Instagram account every now and then, or some conversation that happens that no one gets to to to be privy to. That might actually be more life-changing than whatever the result was from that swim for an athlete. So that's really how Minnesota swim and vibe started. That's what its goal was meant to be. It was meant to be for the state of Minnesota, whether you're talking club swimming, you're talking high school swimming and diving, or college swimming and diving, this central place where you can get contributions from across the state, an easy place for everyone just to add their little bit, whether they think it's super relevant or not. It doesn't have to be life-changing. But Minnesota Swim Vibe wanted to be the place where you just contribute, we'll add it, organize it, present it, and make it easy for you so you can do that. You know, we didn't want to be a better or a different scoreboard for everyone. We do have a times database. We do power rankings. Great, because that stuff's important too. But we wanted to be the place where we could balance that out, at least within a state, within a region, something manageable. That could take the experiential and put it on par with the results so people can have access to the entire sport and experience all in one spot on equal footing. And it's not the answer. It's just the scaffolding. It's the infrastructure. Okay? It's not the answer. When the answer comes is when people start realizing what it's there for. And then it it's a good thing to use it a little bit. And I'm not saying that because I want ⁓ whatever followers, visitors, traffic, ⁓ money, fame, to be the hero, ⁓ recognition, none of that matters to me. I want the sport to be healthy for this generation, like it was healthy for my generation. And hopefully be even healthier for the generations to come. I want it to grow and flourish, not wither and die under the heat of a results focused culture. So as we get into the next couple of episodes and get into a little more detail, we'll talk about if Minnesota Swim and Vibe is the scaffolding or the infrastructure for all this, what do some of the rooms look like? What is a place for athletes to come to for their needs? Where is a place for parents and families fans to come to for their needs? Where's the place coaches can come to for their needs? We'll talk about all that, right? But I want to leave you with one kind of thought is this current has drifted us away from where I believe swimming truly was at its best to where it is now. It's still a current. And it's going to take everyone putting in a stroke or two to get us back to that other direction. And I Encourage you to continue to listen and follow along and share your thoughts ⁓ on if we can make that journey. I am hopeful as always that we can. I am not afraid of the work that has to come to make it happen. ⁓ And I look forward to sharing that with you guys. Thank you very much. Mark Seguin Swim and Vibe. I am out.