Growing the Team and Swim Meets

Now that we know what our team should be about (vision), it’s time to talk about how to get there (mission). In Part 2, we are going to focus on more realistic ways to implement what we discussed in Part 1. All the good intentions in the world won’t make up for poor planning and execution. But first, we need swimmers… lots of swimmers!

Growing the Team

If you have space in your pool, you should be actively trying to fill it with swimmers. A big team is a good team and there are multiple reasons for this, not the least of which is finances. Many coaches just want to coach on deck and make the fatal mistake of neglecting the business aspect of a swim team. It won’t matter how fast your swimmers are if you only have a few of them on the team. This is not a sustainable model and rarely are great teams built in a single generation of swimmers.

Coaches don’t come cheap and proving your team’s worth to the aquatics director or community at large need big teams that make a big impact. Each swimmer you recruit (depending on your monthly dues) can be worth over $1,000 a year. Imagine, if you recruit just 10 new kids a year to the team, you increase revenue by $10,000 a year. If those kids stick it out for 10 years (from eight to 18 years old), that’s $100,000! If someone handed you an extra 100 grand, do you think you could use that to improve your team? I’m sure you could…

If the finances don’t convince you, then another reason to recruit as many kids as possible is because you coach a bell curve. Even if you were a perfect coach and wrote the best sets with the ideal recovery time and proper nutrition for each swimmer you will still end up with a bell curve of performance on your team. A few will be fast, a few will be slow and most will be in the middle (but as we said in Part 1, all can be good regardless of speed). If you want more fast swimmers, you need a bigger bell. Expecting to take everyone or even a majority of swimmers to the extreme performance level is unrealistic. Your best chance of making a superstar swimmer is getting as many swimmers to walk through the front doors as possible.

Of course, you never say this out loud to your team. Your goal is to maximize the potential of everyone on your team, but realistically you need to realize not everyone has the same potential and over a large enough scale, your team’s individual performance will look like a bell curve.

So how do we build these numbers up? The best way is to have a feeder system through swim lessons. Swim lessons are NOT the same as swim team. Lessons are for small group instructions on how to swim all the strokes. No performance or training goals exist. It’s a pure teaching environment perfect for the youngsters. But as those kids graduate, many swimmers (and their parents) will be looking for the next level. All the good instruction in the world won’t make up for a little competitive spirit and team culture to enhance someone’s swimming. You want to make it obvious and easy to transition from swim lessons to swim team.

The ideal situation would be to own your own swim lesson program. This way, you can profit financially as well as control your “product” from beginning to end. Many swim lesson programs turn into glorified (and expensive) babysitting groups. You want the kids exiting the lesson program to be technically sound and ready for your team. This will happen best under your direct guidance. Owning your own lesson program also gives you a chance to employ some of your older swimmers to help with the little guys. This is beneficial for everyone since the little kids look up to the big ones and become more motivated to join the swim team. This is also beneficial for the big kids to relearn and reinforce good techniques they should be swimming with. More importantly, it gives both big and little kids a feeling of contributing to something bigger and longer lasting than themselves… like a team!

Tangent: Depending on the child labor laws in your region, offering the chance for big kids to teach swim lessons can be a form of scholarship activity, allowing them to be on the swim team for a reduced or free cost.

Even if you don’t own your own swim lesson program, almost every town has them. Actively reach out, help out and recruit from those programs. Most swim lesson instructors want to see their little guys grow up to be great swimmers, you can be that opportunity for them. But, if you don’t get out there and talk to people, don’t expect it to happen on its own.

Summer league is also a large swimming market to tap into. Most coaches reading this likely run year-round clubs, so recruiting from a group of swimmers who haven’t seen the benefit and joy of swimming year-round is another easy step to improve recruiting. Don’t necessarily poach kids, you don’t want that reputation. But make your local summer league teams aware that if they so desired, swimming year round is possible on your team.

If you don’t have the time to actively be part of the summer league team, you can at least offer to run some clinics for their swimmers and/or coaches. Build credibility as someone who wants to improve swimming for everyone in the community, not just for your swimmers. Don’t be so competitive that you aren’t willing to help a “rival” team. There are no rival teams, this is swimming… the water, the clock and ourselves are the ultimate rivals. 

One of the best things about swimming is that everyone races. There are no benchwarmers in swimming… but there are a lot of them in other sports. Especially for high school coaches, recruit the benchwarmers. Not only do the athletes NOT want to waste time on a bench or sideline, but the parents and coaches don’t want to see hard work and determination be beaten by talent (often the case in other sports). Swimming can be their chance to get in the game and be part of something bigger. Some schools are even happy to have coaches come and talk to their student body to explain what a swim team really is and invite them to join (at least, they let us talk). Heck, even the grand coach David Marsh said gymnastics is great until level 6, then get out! Imagine all the parents trying to get their kids to a safer sport, you can give it to them in swimming! Bottom line, these opportunities don’t make themselves, you have to put yourself out there which can be absolutely terrifying.

The suggestions above work by direct contact with your prospective swimmer or family. But to reach a larger audience, you will have to advertise. Typical radio or local TV may be ok for some, but flyers are likely to target your potential customers better. Sign up for Vista print’s email newsletter, wait for them to offer 50% off everything and make yourself a few hundred (or thousand) flyers for you to distribute in neighborhoods, schools, churches, Boy’s and Girl’s Club, give with Halloween candy (yeah we did that)… anywhere you can get a flyer in in the hands of parents. Give them to your current swimmers to distribute to their friends at school and invite them to try the swim team out for a week or two for free. Schedule a little hard work, a bit of technique and a lot of fun and inspiration when they visit. Even if you spend a few hundred dollars on flyers and only pick up a couple kids, that’s a good return on investment because those kids add up to thousands of dollars over the years.

Here are examples of flyers we have used to recruit at a new satellite location as we expanded our club’s presence in central Iowa:

The key points of any flyer are to identify the problem and the solution. The problem: “Are you the parent of an athlete looking for a new sport?” Before you can ever convince anyone of buying something, you have to convince them they need it and that you solve a problem for them. The solution: “ACAC is a year-round swim club that teaches character and swimming through being on a team.” Everything else is just supporting evidence: coaching ability, success of the team, past swimming experience…

On our team, if you can cross the pool you’re in. We had the room at the time, so we wanted to include as many kids as we could. Does it make it difficult to manage a practice with kids who can swim a 100 in 60 seconds and in the next lane is a kid who can’t do a 50 in 60 seconds? Yeah, for sure. But that’s your problem to deal with, don’t pick and choose the kids just to make it easy on yourself in practice. Cover your bases first, fill the pool up, then you can have the luxury of picking and choosing.

You will also notice on the flyer that scholarship assistance is available for low income families. There is usually a grant or group of people willing to fund a scholarship program for your swimmers. Our criteria have been based on whether the kid is provided free school lunch or not. Other teams provide major discounts for families in exchange for increased volunteer work by the swimmer and parents at meets. Regardless of how you go about it, this is not a move to gain diversity for diversity’s sake. Your team has the potential and power to make an impact in the community and this is the first step. Speaking of community, how are you going to convince everyone in town you’re the real deal academy to turn kids into adults? You have to get social of course.

Social media like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter can be a powerful advertising and communication tool. Obviously, you need to be very careful what and how you post to avoid safe sport issues. And you should have written approval by the parents prior to them signing up for the team. After that, using social media to build a local following of community businesses, leaders and supporters can pay dividends in the long run.

You can also post your flyers and invites for new swimmers and your current swimming families can share those links with their friends. You can pay to advertise as well and target your town’s specific demographics, but that’s not necessary. By having a large local following, you can also support local business in exchange for services. For instance, if you need hospitality food for your swim meet, you can trade social media posts for the catering business and share coupon codes in exchange for free catering. Or you can show off your pretty swim meet packets and trophies/medals created by local businesses.

When you do post, the trick is to make it as team oriented as possible. Show the tough workout the team did, the community service the team did or the swim meet the team hosted or traveled to. Avoid displaying the achievements of the individual because trust us… there are some parents out there that get real jealous if you forget their kid and the vicious cycle never ends!

You don’t have to do all these things, but definitely try a couple and find what works for you. More importantly, don’t get discouraged by rejection! Businesses know that for every customer they make a sale to, there are 50-100 who didn’t buy from them. You will get rejected and turned down much, much, MUCH more often than you get accepted. It’s totally normal, don’t let it phase you 😉

Growing Swim Meets

A major aspect of a professional swim coach’s job is hosting swim meets. Hosting a big, multi-day swim meet takes a great deal of organization and time. Meets should be fun and exciting, they should showcase your swim team and its culture, and they should make money to help pay the bills. Here are our tips and tricks to creating the most kickass swim meet in the region!

Let’s say you are starting from scratch. You need an organized plan, an army of volunteers and a lot of competition to show up.  Let’s get started with the plan.

Firstly, no one wants to come to a boring meet, and the excitement starts with the meet name. “Summer Opener” and “Last Chance Meet” are… lame. We want a name that has a theme behind it. A name that will draw in the kids, parents, and coaches; a name that will promise them a fun time. For instance, our summer meet is called Rock the Blocks and we bring blow up musical instruments for the kids to jam out to the overhead music (which is raging of course). This will also make it easier for your t-shirt vendor to make fun designs and sell more shirts.

For our finals session, we play rocking walk-out music for the A-finalists and announce their names and their team before they get up on the block. We make at least one session memorable and elevated. This way when the kids and coaches go back home, they will remember the exciting moments and want to come back. Swim meets like regular businesses need return customers. Offer an experience rather than a product and people will come back. Here are few of our favorite walk out songs:

Start from the Beginning of the Song

1. Ladies and Gentlemen by Saliva- For the Opening Event!
2. Afterlife by Switchfoot
3. Stockholm Syndrome by Muse
4. Song 2 by Blur
5. Centuries by Fallout Boy
6. Click Click Boom by Slaliva
7. Coming Undone by Korn
8. Your’re Going Down by Sick Puppies
9. The Clincher by Chevelle
10. You want to Battle? (Here’s a War) by Bullet for my Vallentine
11. Courtesy Call by Thousand Foot Crutch
12. Let the Sparks Fly by Thousand Foot Crutch
13. Bangarang by Skrillex (although anything by Skrillex is probably close enough)
14. Pretty Handsome Awkward by The Used
15. Monster by Skillet
16. I Get Wicked by Thousand Foot Crutch
17. Enter Sandman by Metallica
18. Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine
19. Born for Greatness by Papa Roach
20. Monkey Wrench by Foo Fighters
21. Hail to the King by Avenged Sevenfold
22. Suicide and Redemption by Metallica (instrumental)
23. Eruption by Van Halen (instrumental)
24. Jordan by Buckethead (instrumental)
25. Joker and the Thief by Wolfmother

Start at a Specific Time in the Song

1. I am the Fire by Halestorm (start at 45s)
2. Devil by Shinedown (start at 53s)
3. The Amazing Spider Man by Hans Zimmer (start at 3:23)
4. Ready Aim Fire by Imagine Dragons (start at 25s)
5. The Greatest by Sia (start at 15s, for long distance races)
6. King Nothing by Metallica (start at 20s)
7. Broken Beat Scarred by Metallica (start at 1:00)

For “Han Solo” Heats

1. Lonely Day by System of a Down
2. One is the Loneliest Number by Three Dog Night
3. All by Myself by Celine Dion (start at 1:30)

Tangent: You can also announce that the top seed of the A-finals can come and choose their walk-out music. The choices you will get from teenagers are priceless!

Next, make the event lineup something everyone will enjoy. Save the 1000, the mile and the 800 free relay for dedicated intersquad meets, distance dual meets and championship meets. Parents don’t like coming to meets and wait 3 hours to watch their kid swim one race. Remember, parents drive the kids to the meets, they hang out there just as long as them and they are the ones paying in time and money to be there. If they are unhappy, you don’t have a good meet and you won’t get return customers. Another way to keep parents happy is to minimize how much time off of work they need to take to attend your meet. For instance, don’t run sessions Friday morning or Sunday evening. Leave these times open for families to drive and help them save on hotel costs by not having to come to your town on Thursday.

Tangent: People keep talking about how to make swimming a more mainstream sport. Simple, sell beer and hot dogs in the stands! It’s actually ok to do so by USA Swimming standards, but most facilities are family friendly or schools and don’t allow it ☹

Your event list will obviously be different based on the size of the meet and number of days you are running. The trick is not to get boxed into a “typical” meet and try to provide something memorable and fun in your event lineup. Here are some examples:

• Run a meet long sprint shoot-out. For instance, the Armbruster meet in Iowa City (home of the invention of butterfly) runs a 50-meter butterfly long course shoot-out that boils down to a 1 vs 1 race during the last session.
• Run 25s of stroke for all ages (50s long course) and 100 IM on Friday evening to kick start the meet! Everyone loves the short races, especially the big kids who haven’t done them in years. AND, you get to increase your swim meet’s revenue by charging for each of these races that only take a few seconds per heat.
• Run mixed relays if you are up for the organizational challenge. Especially popular with the Master’s crew.
• Give away prizes and gifts during “Hot Heats.” Especially popular with the 10 and unders.
• Run a Friday night “Open water” event. During the summer in the long course pool, instead of having a typical session, take out the lane lines and put in the triathlon lake buoys. Run a special open water race swimming around the pool like it’s a small lake.

Here is an example of what we do for our big summer meet. This has been a popular meet with over 600 kids in attendance running out of an 8-lane long course pool. We actually host it at the town’s water park. The swim meet occupies the pool, while the remaining water park is open. Attendees get to both go to the meet and water park, so young siblings and parents who want to enjoy their day at the meet can do so. Notice that the Saturday Prelim/Final events are relatively short and that there is time for families to drive in and out of town on Friday and Sunday.

Running a big meet like this takes an army of parent volunteers. Meet managers, officials, timers and hospitality volunteers depend on having dedicated and well-trained parents. The better and more efficient all these aspects work, the more kids you can fit in a 4-hour session and therefore the more money you can make at your swim meet. We like to use a simple Sign-up Genius page to keep track and organize our volunteers.

Another way to increase revenue of your meet is to keep the costs down. One major expense that can usually be avoided with a little planning is hospitality. You could have the parents make food and bring it in. But many local businesses are happy to cater at least one session of your swim meet in exchange for some advertising. Include a coupon in the meet packet, throw up a company banner, announce sponsors over the speakers during the meet… etc. Or get even more creative and make some block advertisements!

These plywood ads have a slot where different paper ads can be put inside. This way, during the entire meet, everyone in attendance will have their eyes on your sponsor’s logo. There are a couple of tricks to recruiting local businesses to sponsor your meet. Firstly, you have to reach out early… like 6 months in advance at least. Many businesses have a budget they allocate to events like swim meets, but in order to take advantage of the tax write-off, they need to be approached very early on.  We also like to thank our sponsors personally by sending them a signed meet packet or poster they can hang in their establishment to showcase their commitment to support local events. Lastly, we try to schedule team dinners at least once at those locations as another way to say thank you and increase their revenue. Sponsors are also people we want as return customers. If they don’t benefit from the deal, they won’t be back. Here is our recruiting letter we use when looking for sponsors:

We are almost there! We have a fun exciting meet planned and have our team organized to run it efficiently. Now we just need some swimmers. Simply setting up a sanctioned meet isn’t going to be enough to fill it up to maximum capacity. You have to recruit teams and give them a good reason to come. Yes, everyone wants to go to a nice fancy facility to race, but if you don’t have that you need to showcase your other strengths: good hospitality, lower costs, exciting atmosphere, fun events and giveaways…

The most important aspect of recruiting a team to your meet is to reciprocate and bring your team to their swim meet. Remember that teams use meets to raise money and almost all of that comes from the swimmers who sign up. If people come to your meet, they are bringing you money. You should do the same for them. This way, you can establish a long term back and forth revenue stream.

Tangent: If for some reason you go to a competitor’s meets but they refuse to come to yours, it may be time to start looking for a new meet to go to. Even if it means you have to go to a “less than stellar” facility.

In addition to your typical swim team, you can expand your horizons when it comes to recruiting. College clubs are one of the fastest growing sectors in our sport and these kids want the chance to race. Many colleges have a group of kids that train and race together and they usually have funding to travel and compete at rival schools. Reaching out to them and inviting them to race at your meet can add a few swimmers to your meet. In addition, these college clubs are usually part of the US Masters umbrella. Dual sanctioning your swim meet to be legal under USA Swimming and US Masters (or equivalent international governing bodies) can help you recruit more swimmers interested in a chance to race.

It’s not just swimmers and parents who decide what meets to come to, but coaches as well. We want to make it fun and memorable for them as well. Hosting a social event for the coaches can be more memorable and inviting than a fancy location and facility. Remember that most of the time teams just want a chance to race and have fun. Going best times isn’t always going to be the priority or the memorable part of a meet. So, readjust your focus to creating an event and an experience rather than just another pool to swim in.