00:00:02 - 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 - Renata
Hello and welcome to the Your Sports Resource podcast. My name is Renata Porter and today we are really fortunate to have the head coach and owner of the South Louisiana Swim Team, Kier Braendel with us. Now, Kier is the head coach and owner of SLST, an aquatic institution based in Metairie, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans. With a robust background in coaching and commitment to athlete development, Kier has made significant contributions to the swimming community.
00:00:58
Kier's journey in coaching commenced at the age of 18 where she discovered her passion for coaching and teaching at her neighborhood country club, Green Acres. Her dedication to skillset flourished as she transitioned to coaching from the Crescent City Swim Club, the very team she competed for during the formative years. Over a decade-long tenure at CCSC, Kier honed her expertise, transcending beyond coaching to become a mentor and leader within the organization. Welcome, Kier. I appreciate you joining us.
00:01:35 - Kier
Thanks for having me.
00:01:37 - Renata
All right, so tell us a little bit about SLST and give us your, you know, I know you, I read your history there, but give us your history in that transition into why you started your own club.
00:01:51 - Kier
Okay, great. So I started SLST that we're in our 14th season, so we're like mid-teen years. I started it out of a desire to own a team and lead a group of people. I had been around swimming my whole life. I grew up swimming of one of six kids where it was just like our family thing. We did do other activities, but we all went through swimming. We all had different stories and experiences, but I always lean towards the teaching and coaching.
00:02:21
So I started teaching some swim lessons at 13. I started coaching at a country club that we grew up in while also swimming for our club team. And then when I went to college, I went to Tulane University in New Orleans and I realized that, like, you know, I still wanted to be on the pool deck even though I wasn't swimming in college. So I asked for a job with my old coach and he gave me one. So when I started coaching there, I did it for money on the side with the flexible schedule so I could schedule my classes around it.
00:02:53
But I also really loved it. It was some of the best parts of my day was going back to the pool after doing college stuff and just like, seeing families and kids and through all, like, different hard times I've had. Every time I've walked on the pool deck, everything just made sense. So I always coached on the side through my undergrad time, getting my degree and then even going to get my master's. I also still coached. And at some point, while I was getting my master's, got it in public administration, my thesis was involved in swimming. I realized I just wanted to be a coach. I didn't want to be anything else.
00:03:30
So I told my boss. He gave me some extra roles. But in Louisiana, well, especially in the New Orleans area, we don't have a lot of indoor or, like, functioning pools that can operate year-round. And it's one year. We found there was an indoor pool that had been refurbished after Katrina and no one was using it. And so something inside of me was like, you have the skill set. And I was being called to lead my own team and I knew that it was the time and if I didn't do it, someone else would.
00:04:02
So I left my job as an assistant with the team I grew up with and I started my own thing. And we started with 23 members. I was told I wasn't going to make it past winter, but here I am, you know, 14 years later. And I built that, the team, on the idea of coaching and teaching kids. I was also a school teacher at the time. I also, like, taught PE at different schools. And I just really like developing people. I like developing myself. I like to watch kids develop. And I think that that's, like, really why I started the team. It's for competition swimming, and it is to make better athletes, but it really is just to see that growth in people.
00:04:50 - Renata
So talk about that transition when you made the leap. Like, talk about how. I love that you said that you were called to it, but there had to be a bit of trepidation because a lot of coaches who really want to go off and do their own thing are worried about being seen that they're poaching or stealing swimmers. And so talk about how you made that transition because you moved with 23 and I think you did some special things in order to make sure that you stayed above the line when you transferred to doing your own thing.
00:05:21 - Kier
I knew that leaving the team that I was on was going to be challenging and I knew that I. There was going to be some negative feedback. So when I started, I didn't really do any recruiting. I did have some people that I knew that were in like an outside community kind of 20 minutes away that supported and encouraged me to start the program. But really I built from the base up. So, like, the pool I rented was on the campus of a school. So I marketed the students and then I used those students who like, didn't have a background in swimming at all.
00:05:57
They were to school with a pool that was just newly renovated but weren't doing any swimming. So I got a lot of members there. I had been in the country club circuit for a long time because that's where I coached first. So I had lots of different contacts that I knew. So I marketed to all the different parents and all the different country clubs that I knew to let them know about like specialty clinics or workshop out shops I was offering or just to put my name out there. And then I advertised with Groupon.
00:06:26
So Groupon was a service. It was at the ground roots of where you pretty much didn't make any money. You got a ton of people through your door, but people saw what you were doing. So, yeah, I think at the time, like, whatever you charged, Groupon got, like all of it except for 10%. But you'd still if you did a good job with that customer, you know, you retain that customer. So that really helped me put my name out there. I also have advertised with the moms' blogs. Yeah, I had forgotten this, that. So there's, I don't know if in every community they have the same, but on Facebook, there's a mom's blog. New Orleans has mom's blog. It's a business and there's parents that run it.
00:07:14
They write articles and they're really invested in the community. So we also advertise with them. And we have a swim mom who's a writer who wrote like an article about her daughter that has anxiety, that kind of promoted the team in it. But we also did, like, formal advertising over their swim lesson section. I will say advertising with them got a lot of people through our door that maybe weren't aligned with competitive swimming, but it's still got our word out there.
00:07:43 - Renata
Yeah, I think that's great information. So any coach that's looking to make a leap, you have to think about. Sometimes you have to think about outside of the box and you also have to, like, probably steady yourself or ready yourself for the fact that listen, you're not going to have a massive team at first, so you have to learn about doing the right things first and moving yourself forward. Yeah.
00:08:02 - Kier
I was going to say our growth maybe seemed a little slow in the beginning too, just because there were other, there have been other teams in our area that have started that mainly focused on like high school age athletes. I mean, we did have some, I mean, I think our oldest swimmer at the time was maybe twelve or 13. And we were, we mainly were young. We were like eight and under.
00:08:22
And so it takes time for those kids to get older. So you gotta wait like the 4 to 5 years. But we built from the bottom up and, and now I have a full system. So kids leave the sport at certain ages because they choose other things. Kids leave the team but now that if those things happen, we have a built-in security system of kids that are constantly coming in because we focus on the bottom, not the top. So you don't focus on the top. We build up.
00:08:52 - Renata
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of goes to like, some of the things that I repeat to clients over and over again. Like, to me, the most valuable role in the organization is the head age group coach because they are the one that's actually building the pipeline. Right. So, the investment in that coach has to be quite substantial to make sure that they're breeding fun, the love of sport. Right. So, yeah.
00:09:16
All right, I want to switch to a little bit that, you know, because you're a coach-owned team, you have to balance your duties between the, you know, being the head coach and running the operations. And they're very different skill sets, but clubs are moving towards that combination CEO/head coach role. So how do you navigate the two different sides of your brain, so to speak, and being able to navigate both of those roles?
00:09:45 - Kier
Well, I guess kind of piggybacking what you said before. I am the head age group coach on my program, so I am the coach owner. In the beginning, I was kind of a little bit of everything. But as we built up, I have another coach that is our senior coach. And I am like, I think I'm like the middleman. I'm the transitional person. And it gives me an eyesight on all of my levels because I can see who's coming to me and who's exiting from me.
00:10:13
And then as far as the different skill sets, I think that kind of gives some of that pressure off of like some of the detailed minutiae, traveling kind of stress that the senior level athletes give to a coach in trying to get to college and making these cuts. I use those that time and resources to build up the business and work on different things that are maybe administrative, like, structure and parent volunteers, and accounting. And also, I think that putting myself in the role as the head age group coach and doing the owner role kind of makes it a little bit more flex.
00:10:58
But I do oversee the whole program, so I do a lot of delegating, and we do a lot of feedback and we do a lot of communicating, and I probably should delegate more, but I do think that I have a really good pulse of where my team is at and what we need, where we need to go and the direction we need to go into. I do have a lot of support, I think, with my staff, too, that if I need to step out and start do some owner roles, I have the support to be able to do that.
00:11:28 - Renata
Oh, wonderful. But so that section right there was full of a lot of gems, and I like the fact that you said that you were over the head coach role, that kind of, I mean, sorry, head age group coach. And that it does free you up from some of the responsibilities that the senior coach has, because that was resonated by Paul at Wahoos. And I think what else is important is you actually have that perspective or visibility over how each group is flowing into each other.
00:11:56
So you're making sure that when the kids are coming in at the early age and as they progress through groups, you have that eye line or that visibility of what's working. So there's less reteaching as they get older, and you've got that visibility of that fluid transition between programs, which I think is really important, as well as a head coach.
00:12:17 - Kier
Oh, absolutely. And it's helped a lot, too, because things that we did years ago, we've changed our methods because we've seen the kids pass through, and we're like, oh, some of these kids need to be held a little bit longer in this group. In this group, sometimes we would pass kids on too quickly, or the signs of, like, readiness are way more clear now. Like, we know when an athlete's ready to come into this group and when to come out of it, and it gives you a lot of confidence in talking to a parent.
00:12:46
You know, like a really talented athlete. Parents want to push them and move them through, and you're like, well, speed isn't just what we're looking for. They have to have these social-emotional skills. They have to have this understanding of what we're doing. So it really does help being in that, integral, kind of pivotal role of. It's also my favorite.
00:13:12 - Renata
Well, that helps, doesn't it? That helps, yeah. But I also love, you know, there's also one key aspect that I think a lot of head coaches, I don't care if they're combos, CEO roles or not, but they really need to trust their staff to be the professionals that you've hired them to be right. Now that doesn't mean you kind of just leave them alone. There has to be a balance of accountability. So I find that a lot of times, not all the time, but a lot of times, coaches are either at one end of the spectrum or the other.
00:13:47
So they are either, doing everything and hoarding the activity because people don't live up to expectations, which means you're not providing learning opportunities for others or you're on the complete other side and you're totally micromanaging your work, which means you're devaluing them as a person who could contribute so beautifully to your organization and if you feel like you have to micromanage, well, then again, they're not learning and you're taking away their opportunity to grow or you've got the wrong people. Right.
00:14:22
So I think it's really important to surround yourself with the right staff and that, you know, when you're in that head coach role or that senior role, part of that role is teaching. And it's not teaching just your swimmers, it's teaching your staff. That's how you elevate your entire organization. So that's a really valid point that I just wanted to reiterate to those who are listening.
00:14:45
All right, so let's move on to. Oh, no, let me ask you one more question about this. So what do you think is the key for success for that person who is in that dual role? Because I do find that a lot of these people who are in this role, they do struggle with it. Like, they have the absolute desire to be really good on. On those two opposing skill sides of skill sets. But, you know, so what do you feel like is in that dual role? What is the key to success there?
00:15:16 - Kier
Okay, I'll say. The first thing I could say is that you will struggle a little. Like, there will be some struggle when you figure out where your sweet spot is. So you will have to know that what your roles and responsibilities are and you can't avoid any of them. But you also have to know which ones you can do the best, which ones can be delegated and where you're stepping in as a support, and which ones you absolutely have to do and then you need to be organized. You need to set the time aside to make sure you're putting the time into each of those roles.
00:15:48
I do a lot of block scheduling, so I'll have certain work that I do on certain days, and I try not to venture far from it. I know when we get in a heavy competition season, sometimes I just need to recover or I have to switch around what we're doing because there's a deadline, or I've been traveling at a meet all weekend and I have to change it. But I always come back to these specific skills that I do on specific days, and it really helps me get back on track. So you just really need to know what's expected of you and know that it will take some time for you to map it out. But once you do, you have a good system down. It's not as hard as you think.
00:16:32 - Renata
Yeah, and maybe don't be so hard on yourself, either. Beat yourself up. No one person can get everything done, and no one person knows everything. Everybody learns.
00:16:41 - Kier
Right, exactly. And you get better. The more you do it, you get better. I'll say, COVID was hard for a lot of swim teams, but COVID was actually helpful for our team because of me not having to organize and schedule, and plan for the competitions. Even though we wanted to be a competitions, I had more time to reevaluate my organizational structure and what my why was and why. Why I was coaching, because it was a time where you could exit easily because of so many stressors. But it, instead, we just more doubled down on what we could do, and we really launched even more afterwards because of it.
00:17:24 - Renata
All right, I want to switch over into staff investment now. If you've listened to several of the interviews, and this is a similar question that I ask a lot of the coaches, and we, as an organization, really push the head coaches or whatever that senior role is to invest in their coaches. Because if you develop your coaches and they learn, then you elevate the swimmers as a whole, as an entire organization. What are some of the things that you do? And not everything has to be a conference. Right. And so what are some of the things that you do that really help to develop your staff become the coaches you want them to be and helps them become the coaches they want to be?
00:18:09 - Kier
So I do give my assistant coaches a lot of independence in that we do seasonal planning, but they create their own workouts, and I give feedback on what the direction and themes are of what we're doing. I also have signed up all my staff for ASCA and have had some incentives in place for different certifications, so they all have access on their own time to become more educated separately. We have gone to local conferences here, and I do value learning that way. We also do a lot of peer talking to other coaches either in our state or when we travel just to kind of see what else is out there.
00:18:56
And then just recently, I have been really intrigued and interested in the AAU kind of model that's coming up, where I am working to transition my recreational team, which is like, more developmental swimmers are less competitive, into the AAU swimming model. And they have a great resource for coaching certifications called the Positive Coaching Alliance, which the trajectory and the mindset of what they value and that those trainings are what I would like my coaches to filter through with their why in coaching. So we're doing some trainings through there and then we do our quarterly meetings, although I do. I did have some recommendations from you with one of our cold sessions on some more timely meetings in a different way to build up our staff and support.
00:19:55 - Renata
So there's two things I want to pick away at. Like, what is different about that positive coaching alliance that you like? What do they deliver that you feel like you really resonate with?
00:20:08 – Kier
I really resonate. Okay. So as coaches, we have a lot of pressure on performance because we're a competitive swim team and our goal is for kids to swim well. And sometimes coaches in their roles don't really, not always, but sometimes they lack some confidence and trying to put ourselves out there because we're putting. We're going through this training plan and we're putting these kids out there, but ultimately, we're not the one swimming. So it's sometimes the pressure of that can really get to you.
00:20:38
The positive coaching alliance really makes you focus on this dual double coach role where you're not just coaching for the scoreboard, it's the scoreboard and the swimmer. So you're looking at what are some skills that you're teaching this summer? What are some character building that you're doing, learning that you're not failing if you're not reaching your goal time? Effort is more important than outcome. How you handle an adverse situation is more important than getting out there and beating somebody.
00:21:09
Making sure you're teaching the person and also teaching the athlete at the same time and helps kind of take that pressure off the coach and the swimmer. And studies have shown that performance is better whenever athletes are coached in this environment, not just in swimming, but in other sports.
00:21:27 - Renata
Okay, awesome. And I love it. But a lot of clubs are recognizing the fact that they need to go to that holistic view of the whole child. Right. And maybe kind of leave that competitive sector for the heavy pushing to the senior. Right. And your seniors will be stronger in the areas of resilience and things like that. If you're really focusing on the whole athlete in the younger, in my perspective, I'm assuming that would be the case. Right.
00:22:01 - Kier
It's a lot about, great risk-taking. Putting yourself out there to go and take a risk by competing. Some kids are really natural at risk-taking. Some kids are perfectionists and self-sabotage, because they want to do everything right. And they might be really good at training and practice, but they get there. It's kind of overwhelming. So coaching a kid through that is more than just teaching them skills in the water. You have to have the ability to give an athlete ownership over their swimming, and it's a much better way of giving a kid or a swimmer or a young adult ownership over their process. And that skill transfers to everything in life, not just swimming. Right.
00:22:49 - Renata
So that positive coaching alliance, do you have to be an AAU member or something like that to get that information, or can people just go onto the website?
00:22:57 - Kier
I think you can just go to positivecoachingalliance.com and sign up. But if you become an AAU coach, there's three sections that are required. That's their requirement. So you have to take three of them, but you don't have to be an AAU coach to take them.
00:23:14 - Renata
Awesome. Thank you for that. The other thing you mentioned that is interesting, and I just kind of want to poke at a bit, and that is, you said peer talking, and you said you go to meets and talk to people. Can you explain that a little bit more? What do you mean by that?
00:23:29 - Kier
Oh, yeah, sure. So we've been around swimming a long time, and me and my staff were like, we like people. Like, that's why we're coaching. So when we go to meets, we like to meet other coaches. You know, some coaches are more open to communicating. Some still have that whole gatekeeping of knowledge. But my staff and I have learned a lot, actually from peers on the pool deck that we've opened up to that maybe had the same problems that we had or maybe had different ones and we've also helped them through and it's really nice to have that.
00:24:04
Well, I have some coaching friends and I'll just text when I'm going through like a hard time, be like, what would you do about this? But, and we've met on the pool deck and it's not just within our state, you know, coaches that coached in our state and moved on or coaches that we've met at travel meets because everybody has a different experience. I've not met a team that's operated the same as each other yet we're all organic little organizations. And so somebody may have had a problem that I already, that I'm going through right now can be like, oh, you can get through this or I might have just solved a problem that could help someone else.
00:24:44 - Renata
Yeah, I think that's so encouraging because I feel like coaches hold their cards so close to their chest. They're afraid to, that they, I don't know. I mean, sometimes I liken it like they got some special thing going on that they're inventing the wheel that they don't want to share. But I think a lot of times they just really feel like they'd be exposing themselves, that they need help or support and that's not really it.
00:25:08
I mean, you have to think about the fact that you'd be helping the entire swimming community by coaches sharing information with each other and saying, like you said, I'm having a problem here and they may be able to go, I tried this, too and I failed just like you did. But I also tried this, like that knowledge can be just pivotal in your organization. So finding a peer to relate to sometimes might be even better than having a mentor. You know, I just think having someone that can travel along with you is wonderful.
00:25:43 - Kier
And I'm not going to say like, so when I first started, I was really uncomfortable with like, you know, showcasing my weaknesses, but then I just realized that, like, I'm not a static human being either. I mean, I'm not, I evolve also. I develop, too. We develop as people and I mean, I like to read a lot and I like to. I'm always like, I'm always willing to learn. So I think that when I once I got to the point where I was just like in order for me to be better, I have to recognize where my weaknesses are and the only people that can help you is if you talk about it.
00:26:18 - Renata
That's great information for coaches. Like, really, I mean, your own development is necessary. And again, I know you can do courses and learn things online, but they tend to be high-level. And the areas where people have problems is when they try to take those philosophies or viewpoints or trying to implement a new idea and don't, they need the detail to understand how to relate that to their own organization. And that's where learning from other experiences is where it's going to be key. You're going to move much quicker.
00:26:55 - Kier
Yeah, there's been a couple of instances where I thought something was, like the end of the world, and they're like, oh, no, that happened to me, too. I was like, oh, yeah, okay. This is just something. This is just something that you go through. Like, this is something you have to deal with, you know?
00:27:10 - Renata
I think I have probably a final question for you, and that is, you mentioned COLT earlier. You are one of the people who participates in our COLT Program. And basically, that's club operations leadership training. It just kind of really dives deep into the basic platforms of what we believe makes a successful organization. And then we take that and we adapt it to, while there's a learning piece, there's also a discussion piece about how do we take that and adapt it to your organization.
00:27:47
And you kind of get that one-on-one opportunity to be speaking to an outside advisor month to month where you're talking about specific things like growth, money, how do you organize your team? What is leadership, what are communications? Those kinds of things. So tell us, like, what have you learned from COLT that you've been able to, you know, apply to your organization, or, like, where have you received the reassurance that you're actually on the right track?
00:28:16 - Kier
Sure. So COLT has been really great in that it's like once a month meeting, but there's a specific topic. It's kind of like a full year of cleaning house. So, I mentioned, I really like learning and improving and getting better and COLT, broken down into these structured, I guess, organized parts of what it means to own a business because I am the leader of my organization. You know, if I'm neglecting something, it gets neglected unless it's fully systemized and delegated. So COLT really helped. In the beginning, we had just redone our mission and vision statement.
00:28:53
But, you know, working with, in the beginning, it helped us redo it even better, that made sure that I was going forwards in the direction I wanted to. We went over budgeting, and we've gone over strategic planning, all these different areas that are things that you really want to work on as a leader. But sometimes, life just gets too hectic. So for me, investing in that gave me a focus every month. And, I mean, I'm still involved. We haven't finished out the year, but I really like the positive feedback of, like, oh, man, I'm doing that right. And then the areas where I was like, oh, man, I need to do that better. I'll implement, put it on the target for next year.
00:29:35
I'll start encouraging that in my repertoire now. So it's really good feedback, especially sometimes when you get stuck in the coaching, leadership role. You kind of feel like you're, like, in a void where there's no one giving information back. It was really good to consult with someone to have some feedback on, like, oh, you're doing. You're maybe making this mistake, but you're doing this really well. So it's a good, honest assessment, and it really also helps to define the different roles we have in a swim team, because sometimes people, swim team is just, you go and you swim some laps, kids have a lot of fun.
00:30:16
You go to meets, then you go home. But that's not what swim teams are. There's way, way more involved. There's so many little things. We're event planners. We are CPAs, we are accountants, we are communicators, we're motivational speakers. We're designers because we're making these plans. There's so many different roles that a coach, especially a coach in a management position, serves. It's really good to see all the parts broken down.
00:30:47 - Renata
It's also good for us as an organization as well, because we get to learn, I mean, even when I go to clients, you know, I'm always learning, even if I'm delivering similar information in the workshop, like vision, values, and behaviors in those workshops, I'm always learning things about organizations that are great for us to share with other clubs. So the same thing with COLT. I get to go, okay, I didn't understand. I didn't know that, you know, or I can go back to other clubs and go, oh, wow, let me ask everybody that I've been working with, hey, how do you guys handle this?
00:31:24
And it's just information that we share. Again, all of it is in the effort of really grounding and establishing the community, the swimming community, as excelling and being able to excel. All right. Any final words or thoughts? I'm hoping that you would be open to those coaches who might be looking to branch off and start their own club, that you'd be open to them writing to you or contacting you.
00:31:55 - Kier
Yeah, definitely. That if anybody is interested in starting their own club or just started their own club and have some questions or problems they're navigating. Definitely open to helping anybody. And I would just recommend this, that when you are. If you're deciding on whether to start your own club, make sure it's not just to have athletes that can compete and win against other athletes. Then make sure when you are taking on the role of starting a club that you're there to develop the swimmers as people, too, and enhance the swimming community as a whole, that it's just your team shouldn't be just a place to pull kids from other teams, to just go and be faster.
00:32:41
Swimming is a valuable sport, and the competition is just one part of it. It's a lifestyle, I still swim for exercise. I have swimmers that have passed through me that never swim in college but are still giving back to the sport. I just ran into one yesterday who was coming to do some lifeguarding, assistant stuff for some volunteering and was like, man, I missed the pool. So swimming is more than just the scoreboard, even though it is the scoreboard also. So make sure you have in you, because it is a really precious thing, you know?
00:33:19 - Renata
Yeah, I think that's really good valid advice and great advice. I mean, even for the coaches who may be running from boards, right? Valid that you may not have a great board and you want to move on, but you really have to understand what you're getting into and understand what you want to accomplish. It can't be just that you're running away from something. So it's really valid. Thank you for that. How can they find your information if they go to the website? And what is that? SLST.
00:33:48 - Kier
So our overarching website is actually www.thedigitalpool.com but our competition team site is www.slst-seahorses.com. And my email address is slst.seahorses@gmail.com.
00:34:11 – Renata
Okay. And we'll put that in the show notes for everybody. All right, well, Kier, thank you so much for sharing your information and your thoughts. I'm sure it's going to be great for the listeners, so I really do appreciate your time.
00:34:26 - Kier
All right, thank you. Thank you for having me.
00:34:28 - Renata
And thank you everyone for listening. And please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast so we can reach a bigger audience and help others such as yourself. And don't forget to visit the website www.yoursportsresource.com, where you can find articles and tools as well as more information about how we can work with you. Or go view the COLT Program on there if you might be interested in that. Finally, remember, what is common sense is not always common practice. So put what you learn into action. Don't just be good, be good at it.
Thanks, everyone!
