Ep 61 - Coaches Roundtable

Coaches Tyler McGill of Opelika Swim Team, John Butcher of Charger Aquatics, and Kevin Zakrzewski of Patriot Aquatics join Matt in a roundtable discussing USA Swimming club operations.

Transcript

00:00:03 - Introduction

This is the Your Sports Resource Podcast, where each week you'll learn actionable strategies that you can implement so the operations of your club support your coaching staff and the direction of your organization. We are committed to excellence in youth sports leadership. Let's get started. 

00:00:25 - Matt

Welcome to the Your Sports Resource Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Bos. Today we're going to be doing something new to the YSR podcast. I'm going to be having a roundtable discussion with 3 club coaches. I am super excited for this. I've been looking forward to this. 

00:00:44

I hope this is not the only one of these that we do. This is something that I would love to continue. I think this is going to bring great value to a lot of coaches and club teams across the country. So, first things first. Let's meet the coaches that are joining me today. 

00:01:02

I'm incredibly thankful for these three guys popping on. And like I said, I'm super excited. So, our first guest is the head coach of the Opelika Swim Team in Opelika, Alabama, right down the road from Auburn University, where he spent his college years. And Tyler, did you start coaching there?

00:01:24 - Tyler

Started coaching at, yes.

00:01:28 - Matt

Awesome. Yeah. So, our first guest is Tyler McGill of the Opelika Swim Team. Our next guest is from Albuquerque, New Mexico, John Butcher. John is the head coach of Charger Aquatics and is also the coach of the Albuquerque Academy. 

00:01:46

And our third guest is the head coach of Patriot Aquatic Club in Lincolnshire, Illinois, where he is also the Aquatics Director for Stevenson High School. All right, Kevin, I'm going to get it, Kevin Zakrzewski. All right, Kevin, thanks for being here today. 

00:02:05

So, we're going to cover a variety of topics, all kind of pertaining to the operational side of USA Swimming Clubs. And to give us as much time as possible, we're going to jump right in. So, the first topic I'd like to discuss is the hiring and training of coaches. So how are you, as leaders of a program, looking at what are your hiring practices, and then what are you doing once those coaches come on board? So, we'll start this one off with Tyler.

00:02:42 - Tyler

Yeah, I'm pretty lucky with the University. We've got a pretty awesome resource there where we have a ton of college kids who have swimming experience and a swimming background. And so, I try to tap into that background as much as I can, whether it's reaching out to the triathlon team or the club team, like the university club team, professors, people of that sort. 

00:03:09

So that's a huge resource for me in terms of recruiting coaches. Opelika itself is not a huge swimming community, but it's such ingrained into Auburn, into the surrounding areas that that's kind of where I have to tap into. And making connections and relationships that way and every now and then there's a random person that pops up that's not really affiliated with anything around the university. 

00:03:35

But that's our main resource in terms of, say, recruiting, but basically seeking and finding people who care about the sport and have a passion for it. And then it's just a matter of, okay, come on board, come see what we do and get plugged in and learn and grow from that way.

00:03:56 - Matt

Yeah. Obviously using those resources. That's awesome. How about you, John, down in New Mexico?

00:04:05 - John

Yeah. So, we have sort of a unique situation because we're so kind of geographically isolated where we're at. And Albuquerque being in kind of a unique space. When I took over as head coach in 2019, we had to do some hires and you do the usual postings and everything, but getting people out to Albuquerque is always a little bit of a challenge. 

00:04:29

So the way I've been doing it lately is kind of a lot of just tapping into program alums. So right now we've got a couple coaches on staff that grew up on the club, swimming on the club. My associate head coach, he ran one of our satellite programs back a while back. So just kind of tapping into that. 

00:04:54

Alumni brings in a lot of value. It's familiarity with our program. There's already a preexisting relationship between myself and the new coach. Their value and investment that they put into the club is obviously going to be at a very high level because it's close to their heart.

00:05:14

Yeah. That's awesome. Kevin?

00:05:21 - Kevin

Yeah. This is something that we have tried to get I don't want to say better at, but to get a wider net. Our facility and school are located where, my primary target has always been alumni. Right. Because that's the initial, they have a passion for not just the school but the program. 

00:05:44

But unfortunately, a lot of our alumni who come back after college or even do come back during college, they're doing internships or they want to live in the city. And with gas prices and everything, it's just hard to make it financially worthwhile for them to make that commute.

00:06:02 

So it has been a challenge for us. And we've tried the online, indeed, and stuff like that, or using our high school as a resource as well, which is really good, and it has been helpful. But a lot of times we get stuck with people that are interested in coaching with us and would love to do it, but they want a job with the high school first. 

00:06:24

So that's been our challenge. I think Tyler knows this from his Illinois days. There's a high density of clubs within the Chicago land area and we're all fighting for the same people. So we're all struggling to find people. 

00:06:40

No matter. Like, we've tried bumping up our incoming rates and stuff, so it's still a little bit of a challenge for us. But we're trying to find different ways. And listening to this will help kind of create more ideas too.

00:06:56 - Matt

Yeah. So, I have a second part to this question. And, Kevin, let's stick with you. Do you have, then, resources or programs in place to help when you have those coaches come in, support their further development? Because it seems like we're all know, like, yeah, it's tough to get coaches. So I think one of those areas is hanging on to the coaches when you get them and keeping them in your program is probably vital.

00:07:22 - Kevin

Right. I think there's two parts to that. Right. So you have your part-timers that they're just doing it because they love the sport, but they're not interested in fully really developing their knowledge. They want to be there for the kids. Right. 

00:07:35

And there's that part. And we love those people because we know they're here for the right reason. The second part is certain members of my staff have to go through an evaluation process every year. We're employees through the high school, so we're doing the same eval process as them. 

00:07:54

And part of it is goal setting. And it's a big focus on professional development. And we encourage our coaches. Like, if there's a seminar or something that you want to go to, let's find a way to get you to go to these things, or online trainings or a lot of things I've been trying to encourage my coaches, too, is any sort of strength and conditioning will always help. 

00:08:22

Because that is one of the things that we've taken most serious as a program, is really try to build our base of knowledge within dry land and strength and conditioning, because that's my philosophy. So we try to support all of our staff to, if there's something they're interested in. Let's find a way to get you that.

00:08:45 - Matt

Yeah. Awesome. John, how are you developing your coaches on your staff?

00:08:49 - John

Yeah, we're in kind of a similar situation to Kevin. We're technically owned and operated via the Albuquerque Academy. So a lot of my coaches, in terms of just trying to keep people around, were able to find other things, other ways. 

00:09:07

Most of my senior staff also coaches with one of the high school programs, whether it's the 6th, 7th grade, or JV or varsity, that's one way we kind of help augment their salary and keep them paid and busy. But also, as far as just developing coaches, we're really big on professional development. 

00:09:33

I'm full disclosure. I'm an ASCA ambassador, so I'm passionate about ASCA and the resources that it can provide. So we make sure that we budget and really build into the budget the ability to a maintain professional membership for all of our coaches, give them access to the educational benefits, and then we travel out and go to a clinic every year. 

00:09:59

Last year, I was able to bring ASCA into Albuquerque for a Four Corners clinic. And that was really great because some of our coaches are part-timers. Just we don't always get them to those events. So that was great and just utilizing the webinars. 

00:10:14

There's so much content now that's getting driven online for swimming. Try to direct our coaches to appropriate content as much as we can, and we also work really hard to kind of cultivate relationships with other teams and coaches. 

00:10:32

We went and did a camp last summer at Olympic Training Center with Clovis Swim Club out of California. And just the networking for our staff and kind of seeing what other people are doing, that's a huge resource, I think. And you got to connect with the other coaches on deck. 

00:10:49 - Matt

Awesome. Yeah, that's great stuff. All right, let's finish this off with Tyler.

00:10:52 - Tyler

Yeah. I think Alabama in general is pretty unique, and I really don't know if there's a high school in the state of Alabama that has a pool at its high school. There might be one or two, and I couldn't even tell you what those one or two are. 

00:11:11

And so for us, everything is run through. We're a city-owned team. Everything's run through the city. Everything's run through the club. There's no connection or affiliation with any kind of school or anything like that. So all of our coaches, outside of myself and one other, are part-time hourly coaches. 

00:11:33

They might work 4 to 6 hours a week kind of thing. But for the one other assistant coach I have, it's a lot of the idea of, okay, what's the goal? And, Kevin, you were talking about, what's the like, what are we trying to get to? And then let's try to build a plan in place that at least guides you and leads you that way. 

00:11:52

And building on what John was saying, like relationships and building relationships. We're having a club team come down at the beginning of the year in January, and we're going to do a one-day training session between our club and their club, and then we'll have a meet the next day. 

00:12:07

And so the idea being, all right, let's kind of share a practice, write different parts of practices, spend a bunch of time together, learn what you're doing well, figure out what we're doing well that you need help with and building that support that way. 

00:12:24

But ultimately, it's a lot of the same things again they talked about, which is finding clinics, finding resources, building into your budget, whether it's $250 so you can go and visit a club, stay in a hotel, and then come back the next day and build a relationship with the club team. 

00:12:43

And send a coach somewhere for a day just to see what other people are doing, and then come back and bring some of those ideas back and see the good things that some people are doing and trying to incorporate into that training program that you've already got scheduled.

00:12:59 - Matt

Yeah, that's some of the things we hear all the time with the clubs that we work with are, hey, there's just not enough resources out there. Or, hey, how do we connect with those people? And it's like, no, there's more than enough, right? You just have to go seek those opportunities. 

00:13:14

And I love that kind of pairing up with some other teams or going to visit another team, and that gives everybody a different perspective. I think if you're doing a training session with another team, I think that's great for your athletes because they get to see those other athletes, hey, they're same age. 

00:13:30

They're doing maybe some of the similar stuff, maybe they're doing some different stuff. But at the end of the day, it's giving them exposure. And then along with your coaches, I think that's awesome. That's really good stuff.

00:13:42 - Tyler

I think a lot of people use that. They think the only resource for continuing education is, like, go to a massive clinic where you have to get a plane in three days of a hotel and spend thousands of dollars, and it's like, you can do it for $150 if you can build the relationships with people, it's not an expensive thing to do. 

00:14:07

And with ASCA, for example, like, all the online content and all the webinars and things of that nature, there's a lot of ways that you can be consistent with the education side. That's not necessarily a giant budget expenditure that you've got to build into what you're doing every year.

00:14:24 - Matt

Thank you. The next thing I want to kind of go is shift towards programming. And let's start with John here. Looking at clubs from the financial aspect, we're kind of talking the competitive swimming side of things here. 

00:14:40

But what I'd like to kind of understand are, do your clubs offer other programs outside of the competitive aspect of swimming that either supplement your budget for the competitive side or I think sometimes we've run into clubs that potentially, their revenue from a swim lessons program, say, is higher than what they get for competitive swimming. And it's actually fueling the competitive swimming side.

00:15:02 - John

Like I said. And it seems like everybody right. We're kind of affiliated with either school or a city, so we're affiliated with that independent school, the Albuquerque Academy. They run a massive summer program every year, and we manage and set up all the programming for the Natatorium. 

00:15:26

So we've got this great in-house opportunity to, we run lessons, we run a number of other things through the pool. Coming out of COVID after we took big losses in our age group and developmental program, we started running like a six-week pre-team in the summer run by our coaching staff, where people could just get a quick taste of club swimming. 

00:15:56

And our retention rate out of that spend at least 50% every session we run. So we started doing that in the fall and the spring as well. So we don't necessarily draw a ton of revenue off the top just from that programming, but where we draw the revenue and the value is we're bringing in and building in a huge recruitment tool for the club and strengthening that relationship with the school. 

00:16:23

So it's kind of multifaceted in creating, you know. I would be totally happy to break even on the preteen program if I'm getting 50% kids coming into the program each time to then be contributing members and paying dues in our long-term plans and building out that base.

00:16:44 - Matt

Yeah. So essentially, as you have kids leaving, you're backfilling them pretty quickly just off of what you're doing within the community, right? All right let's shift to Kevin.

00:16:56 - Kevin

Yeah. I actually love what John just said about his pre-team thing, because we literally just this week, I've been in touch with a summer league program that is within Lake County and a couple of counties around us that were in need of a pool for their championship meet.

00:17:12 

And I was like, I think we could do it, but I would like to be a part of your summer league because for the same reason, I could create this separate entity that is like a feeder to our program. 

00:17:25

And that is one thing that ever since the Pandemic, our tenant under program has really struggled, and it has nothing to do with coaches, because during the Pandemic because we're a high school-based program, we had to give all the space to the high school kids first. 

00:17:45

So there was no space. I couldn't let many 10 unders, if any, in our program. So we're really looking into that, and that would be a source of some revenue for us. But we're also fortunate that with our relationship with the high school, their summer camp program for K through eight, we offer them lessons every day, so we get a healthy check from them. 

00:18:14

We also run a year-round swim lesson program, like, three or four days a week, a couple of hours here or there. We also have other sports like water polo diving that also help kind of buildup that revenue. So we're doing pretty good with all the stuff that we offer in our pool.

00:18:37 – Matt

Yeah. So you're having to balance, though, right? Then all those other programs. So that's a lot of work on your end. Right. If you've got diving, I mean, diving may be in a separate area, I don't know. But water polo, typically, those things are taking up potential swim time. Right.

00:18:52 - Kevin

Right. And last night, for a small window, for, like, 15 minutes, you could look at our pool and be like, okay, there's 8 lanes full of swimmers. There's two small lanes in between the bulkheads of swim lessons, age group, so 14.

00:19:05 

And underwater polo is getting in and warming up in four lanes, while diving is on the other half of the deep end finishing up. So it's a little chaotic, but we make it work. And they're continuing to grow, which is good.

00:19:20 - Matt

Yeah. So you're making it work, but it's also a huge benefit to your program. So that seems like it's super well worth it. All right, Tyler.

 00:19:29 - Tyler

I mean, with the city and kind of being a rec foundation, the idea of serving kids who might never even be interested in the competitive side is honestly where I have to start most of my building of the team.

00:19:46

 And so there's just these moments throughout the year where it's like, we've got kids who are doing ISR lessons, like little infants. There's swim lessons going on. There's pre-team kids who they can barely swim freestyle and backstroke, that they're going through a program that's non competitive, and then there's maybe four or five lanes of actual competitive or learned-to-be competitive swimming going on. 

00:20:10

So I think it's a lot of times it's looking at the space that you have, especially if you own a pool. Like, if you are the operator of a pool, not just a renter of a pool, it's like, okay, well, what are the therapy places in town that can come in and teach therapy in our pool, if that's a possibility? 

00:20:27

Or what are the other people that we can rent out our space to, to be able to build some of that revenue for a program to be financially healthy? 

00:20:37

But we obviously have great support from the city and are subsidized to the city, but at the same time, we're trying to create value in that and trying to create programming different options for kids throughout the year to show the value of investing into swimming from their end. 

00:20:53

So it's just looking at different options, different people who you wouldn't think are ever going to be in competitive swimming, and investing into those people as well, because the pool space is valuable in itself.

00:21:07 – Matt

Yeah, and we've worked with a bunch of clubs now, too, who seem like and I don't know if any of you have taken a route similar that are kind of moving towards having a group that's competitive, but it's not like super competitive swimming. 

00:21:23

It's like it's more fitness because you hear a lot of the same things. You got multisport kids. You have kids who maybe they don't want to travel all the time, but they want the fitness aspect of it. And those are kids, to me, that seem like you never know, right? 

00:21:37

I mean, one, you're probably creating a lifelong swimmer, which is incredible, and I think that's part of what everybody wants to do. Two, you're having revenue coming in, and then the third part is you never know. I mean, those kids may at some point be like, yeah, no, swimming is the way I do want to go. 

00:21:53

And then they have that at least the background, and then they kind of take off. And I don't know if any of you have anything going like that. I don't want to say a non-competitive, but somebody that's not the ultra-competitive swimmer.

00:22:12 – John & Matt

Go ahead, Kevin.

00:22:19 - Kevin

We wish we could offer space for kids just to stay in shape. Considering that we are a high school-based program, you think about all those JV kids because boys season just started. I think there's over 100 boys on our high school boys team. 

00:22:36

Not all of them obviously swim for our club, but it'd be nice if we had something where they could kind of stay involved, stay in shape, even if it's like 3 times a week. The one middle ground we do offer, since we offer multi-sports, is we try to encourage water polo kids to do swimming and swimmers to do water polo. 

00:23:01

And we do offer some sort of discount when they do both. Just so that we're still giving those water polo kids an opportunity to kind of stay in swimming shape, even if they're just there a few days a week. So we're kind of in the middle, but yes, that idea is something that we wish we could do more.

00:23:22 - Matt

Okay, John, did you have something. 

00:23:25- John

Yeah, I was just going to say we've sort of built that into the structure of our groups at our program. So each of our divisions, developmental age group, and senior has a breakdown in our group structure where it's a little bit more loose on attendance. 

00:23:44

So in our developmental program, we have an option to come one time a week. Like you can have a one-time-a-week group where that way and what we found was we were losing all these younger kids that wanted to come try swimming, but then we'd change seasons and now it'd be basketball season and our schedule didn't fit with them anymore. 

00:24:05

So we've really worked to kind of tool our schedule and our layout of developmental groups so that families can do swim team once a week. And you never know that 7, 8, 9, 10 year old may end up being one of your studs down the line that would have left if they didn't have a little bit more loose structure. 

00:24:24

So our tiers, the bottom tier in our age group and our senior groups as well, carry a lot of numbers because you know that you're not going to have a ton in the water every time, and you just kind of structure how you're allocating lane space to match what that group looks like. 

00:24:45

So that way we're keeping people in the fold, we're boosting numbers and we're getting dues revenue out of that. But we're also at the same time, we're still obviously geared towards competitive swimming and trying to support that end.

00:25:00 - Matt

Awesome. Thanks, guys. That's really good. Let's shift. I want to look at how you involve the families, your membership, and your families within your program. So I guess it's kind of a two-part question, but what are the things that you require as far as parent involvement? Are there mandatory volunteer hours or how do you draw them and get them interested in helping out? So let's start this one with Kevin.

00:25:34 - Kevin

Yeah, we've evolved over, especially since the pandemic when volunteership just kind of plummeted. No one wanted to come out and help out nearly as much as they were pre-pandemic. So we've created a couple different programs or entities. 

00:25:53

So our volunteer policy is pretty lenient in the sense of we only ask parents to help out for one session when we host meets. That's the only requirement, I would say. But on the flip side, we have this reward program where we reward those that put in the most sessions, where we credit their accounts. 

00:26:15

So that has definitely helped escalate some of the volunteer opportunities. But the other thing we have done is created this Patriot or Parent Advisory committee. So it's a group of parents. Ideally, it's one from each training group. 

00:26:38

And occasionally we'll get together and talk about some of their feedback about some of the things going on. And we'll also talk about future planning of social events and all that. So we don't really have a board or anything. They're all just volunteers. And since we're in school district program, but that's how we get the parents involved with our program.

00:27:06 - Matt

Nice, Tyler.

00:27:07 - Tyler

Yeah, since the onset, I've made it very clear to my parents we don't have mandatory volunteer situations. I try to always stress we are a community of giving. We are a team of giving. And so in that, there's a lot of parents who love to give and there's a lot of parents who actively don't want to give. 

00:27:31

And so in that, it's finding the space for those parents who don't really like to do things to find ways to get them involved. And it can be social things. So like at the start of the year, we do this international potluck dinner where parents can sign up because we have kids from all over the world who are part of our program and the first thing we do is like, okay, sign up, bring a dish from whatever. 

00:27:56

And so parents are getting involved in being around the team and they're becoming more invested in the team. And then as I see more parents investing, it's having those one-on-one conversations and saying, hey, have you thought about becoming an official, hey, you're coming to all the meets.

00:28:11

Have you thought about working a computer? Have you thought about helping our timing all of our timers that come in? And so especially for the new families to come in and think, okay, I want to be involved in this sport and my kids swimming once or twice a week and I've got these mandatory volunteer hours. 

00:28:30

Parents are just going to push back on that so quick from my end. So we try to identify people as they get more invested into the sport and try to push them further into it and get them more involved. To the point now where we've got great involvement from our parents, and we have parents who want to do hospitality committees, and we have parents who want to run social media and all this kind of thing, and they're finding these opportunities to be more involved. 

00:28:56

And when they find those opportunities, it's saying yes or figuring out how we can say yes to them to be involved and versus saying, no, you can't do that. That's something that only the school runs or the city runs. It's trying to find solutions that allow them to be involved in what they're doing. 

00:29:14

And our biggest issue is that there's always just timers at a swim meet, which I don't know that there's a swim meet out there that doesn't have that kind of issue. So if that's our only issue, we feel like we're in a good spot. 

00:29:26

But just identifying the parents as they get more invested and then having those one-on-one conversations and putting the bug in their ear of, well, maybe you should try to look into this, or have you thought about this group and being involved in that group as well.

00:29:43 - Matt

Yeah, we all know swimming like most youth sports, right? They kind of operate off of volunteers. We know coaches can't do everything, and I'm loving that we're hearing some different ideas and different perspectives. So. How about you, John? How do you guys involve the parents in your club?

00:30:01 - John

You know, we talk a lot as a staff in a program about this parent-athlete coach triangle and the relationships that intersect through that. So parents are a big part of supporting our athletes and supporting our coaches and our program as a whole. 

00:30:21

We do have a volunteer requirement policy, so every family is required a certain amount of points for the year. We incentivize the hard-to-get positions with a higher point per hour total. We offer families the opportunity because not everybody can come work at a swim meet. 

00:30:40

So we'll offer points if they bring like we try to do home cooked meals as hospitality as much as we can. So we'll incentivize that and use that as a tool. But we run a ton of meets. So New Mexico, we run probably at least a third to half the meets in the LSC, you know, probably 6 to 10 a year. 

00:31:06

So with that, we're obviously heavily reliant on volunteers to make those meets go. So that's part of why we have the policy. I will say, too, coming out of COVID just like Kevin was saying, parents don't want to volunteer. There is a fine, and I know a lot of clubs around the country do that too. 

00:31:27

If they don't complete their hours, we give them some leeway if they're close, but it ends up at the end of the year being a pretty big boost to the budget when parents go, you know what, I'd rather just pay that fee and not have to deal with it. And we're more than happy to buffer a little bit on our budget from that.

00:31:46 - Matt

Yeah, that's the hard part I found, too, where it's nice because it helps like you said, boost your budget. But if you're running meets, you still need those timers, right? So it's like you still need those people there. 

00:32:00

So, man, do you have a secret on finding timers for meets if you're running that many? Because it's hilarious you work with teams. That's such a question. Like, man, it's just we're always asking for divers. We're always asking. So maybe it's just one of those things that we never be answered.

00:32:17 - John

We run a 10-lane format for our short course yards meets, so we're looking for 20 per session, and we're always chasing it. And it's like everybody else, we end up with those great parents that will step up every time. 

00:32:34

I really like Kevin's idea about incentivizing on the other end. I think I'm going to steal that because that obviously reward those parents that know, reward the parents that are stepping up for you, and that's going to be very visible and publicized. Right. And then families can go, oh, maybe I should think about that.

00:32:54 - Tyler

Yeah, we do a thing where if you become an official and you do your sessions and everything, you get a huge discount on your per month billing per swimmer. And it's amazing, as soon as the parents realize I could pay significantly less a month for me to go through this coursework and become an official and be at the pool like I'm already at the pool, it's amazing how many are like, okay, I'll go through that process.

00:33:18 

I'll spend a couple of hours figuring that out, so that incentive is there. And I would push back a little bit on the idea that parents don't want to volunteer. I would say a lot of times parents don't know or they don't feel comfortable volunteering and they don't feel like they're I don't say wanted, but there's this idea of we just need you and you've got to fill this quota. 

00:33:38

And to me, building the relationships with the parents and talking to them consistently and the buy-in to the team has increased since COVID From our end, they want to be more involved. It's just trying to figure out where to get them involved. 

00:33:52

But that can be a difficult task in itself, and especially if you've got several hundred parents that you're trying to just build relationships with. It's exhausting, but certainly helps on the volunteer end when they feel more invested into what you're doing, kids are doing.

00:34:07 - Matt

Yeah, I know those parents are out there. I mean, I'm one of them, right? My kids are not in swimming, so I find myself volunteering to do all kinds of stuff, whether it was been in ice hockey or lacrosse or softball because I'm one of those parents I know for myself where I'm like, I want to do something. 

00:34:23

If I'm there, I don't want to sit and just kind of be in a chair watching or in the bleachers. It's like, I'd rather be active in doing something. And I know there's a lot of people out there, and I think that's a great point, though, Tyler, as far as it's just letting them know it's right, they have to feel that, hey, I can do this. Right. 

00:34:44

It's not that big a deal, even though if they don't know anything about the sport. And I think that's a good way to get them involved and have them understand that sport so kind of sticking with. And you kind of all mentioned, I think, a little bit of this, but I want to dig in a little bit more on the family side as far as how do you communicate.

00:35:06

Right. Do you have a strategy in know whether it's with yourself or your coaches or as a club? You know on how the communication goes out, how frequent, what you're communicating, what have you guys found that works well for you as far as communication with your membership? Let's stick with Tyler on that.

00:35:25 - Tyler

Yeah, we use an online platform just to send emails and text messages and updates and things of that nature. And normally when there's this period of time where I've got a bunch of information out, I just send in advance, hey, you might get three or four emails today, please read through everything that you get. 

00:35:45

Otherwise, I just try to be mindful of how much content I'm sending and making sure I'm sending the information that parents can look at and see two or three bullet points and get the information, and be done with it. But yeah, the different online platforms, whether it's for us, it's through Active or through Team Unifier, the different comments, whatever those platforms are that people use, that's what we use. And we text out, we email out, all that kind of stuff. 

00:36:18 - Matt

Okay. How about you, John?

00:36:21 - John

 Yeah, we're Team Unify. We utilize that as a major tool for communication. There's an expectation that lead coaches will send a weekly email to their practice group with important information. I will send out emails to the team as a whole with probably bimonthly, monthly emails with important information. 

00:36:48

I always want our families to be involved and know what's going on. We obviously and transparency too with communication is so critical in our map and safe sport world with our senior groups. So my group is the exception of the senior elite group needs to be in charge of their swimming fully and they own the communication piece. 

00:37:17

They need to be in charge of that. So the way we kind of work through that is we have a GroupMe. I use GroupMe like crazy. Every travel meet. We build out a GroupMe list and utilize that with full coaching staff, looped in for map guidelines. 

00:37:33

And that's just such a great way to communicate with our families and with our athletes, we talk about like a communication chain of command. So lead coaches. I want them to work directly with their groups and the parents with their groups. 

00:37:50

Loop in the head coach for their division as needed and then pass up the chain when things need to come to me as well. Just to help our coaches, empower them to take charge of communicating and learn to communicate. 

00:38:06

Because I think when you hire young coaches, there's always that piece of like they're uncomfortable at first with making that connection with families and getting to know them and putting themselves out there. So I think empowering them in those moments and giving them those tools and that ownership is really critical. But then obviously, you know, there are times where we're going to need other people to weigh in.

00:38:31 - Matt 

Yeah. John, I love that. I love the fact that you know because I think that's one of the things that's missed sometimes with younger coaches. It's intimidating, right? Oftentimes the parents are older than they are and they just don't know how to approach or if the parent may have a question. 

00:38:45

And they're just like giving them that knowledge and understanding of how to communicate, what to communicate, and knowing when to pass that on, I think is invaluable for a lot of younger coaches. So that's awesome. How about you, Kevin?

00:39:01 - Kevin

Yeah, we try to do a weekly newsletter to at least get a chunk of information out or some sort of education, not just for swimming, but also for water polo and stuff. But kind of similar to what the other guys have been saying is trying to encourage the lead coaches to handle the little communications here or there. 

00:39:23

And like John, we created GroupMe group chats. It's super simple. It gets the information out quick. And this season was actually the first time we created them for each group with the parents before like you saying, we used it on travel meets for our older kids, but now we're trying it with the parents. 

00:39:43

And I was a little 50/50 on it because you never know, there could be one parent that might be sharing too much or whatever, but I feel like it's been really good and there's actually been some sharing between parents on any information like, oh, I need a new suit, what do I do? 

00:40:04

And other parents will help that parent out, which has been great. And then we just kind of moderate the group chat. But it's super simple for us with all the high school meets and everything. Whenever there's a change that day, we could send it out right away because not everyone's on their email 24/7. 

00:40:26

So that has been helpful. Any sort of big emails will come from me where it's going through the whole program, whether it's like updates and stuff. We just recently had some pool issues and that was all coming from so that's kind of how we've been doing it, so.

00:40:48 - Matt

Great. Great. Okay, last thing I'd like to kind of talk about growth and sustainability. So, John, I want to start with you. Do you have long-term goals set out? And then if you do goal setting for your organization, how are you making sure that that's something that's going to be sustainable over a longer period of time?

00:41:13 - John

Sure, yeah. So I've been head coach since 2019. I've been at the program since 2012. So one of the first things I did when I took over was we made a five-year plan with the staff kind of in a collaborative goal setting. 

00:41:28

Obviously, March 2020 derailed that plan and so we had to kind of pivot and we ended up making like a three-year plan coming out of 2021 just following the quad. And I think we set goals within each division. So we operate in our developmental age group and senior divisions. 

00:41:49

We've got targets for each of those. We assess them at the end of the swim year to kind of see where we're at. Some of them you end up hitting, some of you end up not. But it at least provides you with a little bit of a roadmap and I think that's really important. 

00:42:10

One of the big things coming out know, once we were able to get back in the water in a greater capacity because New Mexico we were very shut down for a very long time. And so we had a lot of work to do and still do to get our age group program and our long-term numbers and development back in line. 

00:42:31

But I think having that roadmap has been huge. We're hopefully returning, we want to return to being a bronze or silver-medal club. We were at that right when COVID hit and we're just kind of chasing that still. 

00:42:47

But bigger than anything, we're trying to build team culture and reestablish that in terms of how we structure ourselves, how we train our athletes, our parents, our coaches so that as they move up through the groups it's a little bit more seamless and that culture of trust, hard work, and accountability comes all the way through. 

00:43:08

As far as sustainability, it's been so much focus on growth of numbers and building out our twelve and under age groups because we're built like an hourglass right now. So our base is really coming on strong because we've been hyper-aggressive with pre-team and advertising and marketing to try to build out our numbers. 

00:43:34

Our tenant under numbers are really high for where we've been in the past. So it's the long game at this point and trying to build for the future on just numbers and having everything in place to then be able to get back to performance across all levels.

00:43:55 - Matt

Nice. Let's shift over to you, Kevin.

00:43:58 - Kevin 

We're actually very similar in a sense that going into COVID we were a 225 program and coming out we were a 125 and we've been slowly building that back up. And the primary focus, the long-term goal for that quad when we came out, was rebuilding that twelve and unders. 

00:44:22

As a coach, my focus has always been the high-end performance group. We call them our elite group, and at some point, those kids are going to run out if we don't rebuild that base. So we've made it a focus of trying to find ways to get more kids in the pool, and that has been a primary focus. 

00:44:44

And kind of like what John said, I could kind of see this retention dip at our 13, 14 age group, and that is the kids that were 10 when COVID happened. So I know there's still some work to be done there, and that's like in the water piece. 

00:45:05

And we've done the same thing with water polo and diving. And our age group water polo program went from maybe having 15 to 20 kids per season. We're hitting 50 now. So we've really put a focus on we need to rebuild these bases like you said, and kind of rebuild it from there. 

00:45:27

I mean, I've been lucky to still have such high-level kids where we've been silver medal, so we've been good with the high-end performance. In the other side of it was we needed to be better long-term with social engagement. Right. Our social media is mediocre. Our social gatherings are well below average from the programs around us. Right. 

00:45:57

And that is something that we've taken more seriously, having, just more social events for kids and parents that are outside the pool that create that relationship and that atmosphere that these guys have been talking about, which I think is one of the weaknesses of our program. So that has been the other side of what our long-term goal was in trying to rebrand our atmosphere.

00:46:29 - Matt

Okay, Tyler, finish this one off.

00:46:31 - Tyler

Yeah. I started with Opelika in 2018, and truly a park and rec-only, summer league-only program. I think we had 12 to 15 kids that would swim competitively beyond August. And so we were probably one of the few clubs that actually grew through COVID, because we were nothing before COVID And so we've gone from that to we fluctuate seasonally between 175 and 200, 225, kind of in that range based on the younger kids and what they're doing with other sports. 

00:47:12

But in terms of our big goal, it was like, we've got to change, I would say the swimming literacy within the community, there was just no swimming, really in our community. And so a lot of what I've had to do over the last five years is promote swim lessons, promote water safety, promote just basic health, and being involved in the sport and allowing it to be in the community. 

00:47:36

The idea of silver or bronze level type of clubs is something that's definitely, next five years down the road, we're in the midst of opening a beautiful outdoor 50 meters facility in the next five or six months. And that plays a huge part into growth and sustainability and offering programming and things of that nature. 

00:48:00

So it's really been starting from ground zero and slowly building up, but starting with this idea of, okay, let's invest swimming into the community and let's let people understand that it's a lifetime activity. There's so many bodies of water around us and what we do, it's like whether it's on rivers and lakes and the Gulf and all that kind of stuff, it just wasn't a part of what was going on in Opelika. 

00:48:31

So that's been a huge thing for us. And through that, every year, we're thinking, okay, how can we advance swimming competitively within our program? So what we've seen is just people become more competitive and wanting to do more and wanting to go to more meets and getting better and getting faster. 

00:48:50

But that's been such a low priority for the first four or five years. It's going to be interesting from our end as we have a new facility and as more people have been in the sport for several years of, okay, how do we now try to get some kids to go to juniors? How do we get to that silver medal or that bronze-level kind of club? But I think that's going to happen organically from our end if we stay focused on the things that got us this far, to begin with.

00:49:17 - Matt

Yeah, that's one of the things we do a lot of work with teams on the cultural piece right? And setting forth what's your strategy moving forward? And I'm loving this. Obviously, it's not an easy process, right? This stuff takes time. You have to have plans in place. 

00:49:36

You have to have processes in place. But I think the cultural part is where it starts, right? Just creating and teaching, and that helps pull those people in. So any final thoughts from any of you before we wrap this up?

00:49:49 - Tyler

Yeah, but I do have one question for Kevin. When you talk about some of the social engagement outside of the pool for younger swimmers, what are some of the things that you guys have done? We do a great job with the 12 to 15, but do you guys do stuff like, even younger than that?

00:50:10 - Kevin

So we just had an event. It was going to a roller rink with the kids. Okay. Yeah, there's still a roller rink not far from us. It's not as popular from when I was a kid, but it's still something we could do. We've done bowling events in the past. 

00:50:30

Our school is big enough where we've actually hosted an event here where kids were playing basketball. I don't know if you guys are familiar with Gaga. We had all this stuff going on. I mean, we're still building our numbers when we host those events.

00:50:47 

It's still like 50, 40 kids which is still a decent number, but we're hoping to get a bigger push on that. The one thing I will say, unfortunately, because of our pool issues, we had to cancel a meet we were hosting. But out of that came an idea that me and two of my closest friends who are coaches at other teams threw an idea together to do a one-day, 12 and-under holiday-themed event. 

00:51:19

So we're going to host that in December and we're going to decorate the pool like crazy and do a little fundraiser stuff. So I would consider that like a 12 and under more of a social event with some competition.

00:51:35 - Tyler

Yeah. Okay, cool. 

00:51:39 - Matt

Anybody else? Any final thoughts? Thanks, everybody for listening today. And I thank you Tyler and John and Kevin, for joining me in this discussion. I hope this was helpful. I think there's a lot of really good stuff that people can take away from our conversation today and apply it to your situation. 

00:52:05

Like I said, this is something that I've been looking forward to and I hope we can do more of these in the future. So please subscribe, rate, review the podcast to help us reach a bigger audience. And don't forget to check our website, yoursportsresource.com, where you can find articles, tools, and get more information on what we do. Thank you.