Coaching Girls vs. Boys, Round 2

It’s time for more anecdotal evidence that girls and boys are different, especially when it comes to coaching a swim team.

Observation #1: Nicknames. If girls on a swim team give each other nicknames, they’re going to be cute permutations of the girls’ given names. "Hope" becomes "Hopi," "Ashley" becomes "Sassily," and "Kim" becomes "Kimba." When boys give each other nicknames, the names are going to be a reflection of a boy’s physical, mental or moral shortcomings.

There have been several standouts from all my years of swim-coach spousing. There was "Cakes," a name which had some murky connection to the guy’s hindquarters. Then there was "Weest" which is short for the French word "Egoiste" which came from a TV commercial popular at the time for a men’s cologne where a bunch of angry women are yelling "Egoiste!" out their apartment-building windows at a departing guy who apparently is a cad. This swimmer wasn’t so much a cad as he was just a very driven individual who would gripe at anyone who wasn’t training as hard as he thought they should – and that included senior citizens and small children.

My favorite nickname, though, has been "Crow" which is short for "Scarecrow" which came from the Wizard of Oz character who said, "If I only had a brain." But the truly scary thing is that all of the gentlemen upon whom these nicknames were bestowed will still answer to those nicknames when you see them at alumni events.

Observation #2: Displays of Team Spirit. If you need it committed to posterboard, then you’re going to need a girl. If you need it in day-glo colors and embellished with glitter glue, you are definitely going to need a girl. What you will get with boys, when it comes to displays of team spirit, are things that can only be shaved off or measured in decibels. That’s because boys stopped making posters of any kind somewhere around the fifth grade. They also don’t make adorable name-tags in the shape of dolphins or flip-flops for hotel-room doors and lockers. And if boys create any kind of a "Countdown to Conference" display, it’s going to be on a dry-erase board and its subject matter will be R- if not NC-17-rated.

Observation #3: The Details. Boys often show a blithe disregard for the details of daily living – like "eat more protein than sugar," "speed limits are not optional," and "if you don’t stop touching it, it will get infected." But when it comes to obsessing over details in the pool, boys are more apt to do this than girls. A girl might cry if you give her a set of 384 50s, IM order, but she’ll do it. A boy will do it but then he’s going to want to compare his splits from this time to the last time he did the set. A girl might look at another team’s roster just to see if there’s anybody she knows from high school or club swimming. A boy will have pulled up the roster, Googled all the names on it, downloaded his opponents’ times from wherever he can find meet results, and then prepared recommendations for a dual-meet line-up.

And Observation #4: Gift Giving. If girls are in charge of picking out a season-end gift for a coach, it will be something thoughtful like a gift certificate to a restaurant and they’ll include free babysitting. If boys are in charge, it’s going to be a homemade calendar with team pictures like the one above.

(Incidentally, here was Round One: http://mrscoachchronicles.blogspot.com/2008/08/coaching-girls-vs-boys.html)

A Modest Buoyancy Proposal

While others debate the legality and morality of LZR and other new-technology suits, I have a more practical idea. I say who needs new technology when you can just go organic! Work with what you already have – your body! As long as you’re not planning to have children some day, the sky’s the limit!

For starters, let’s think creatively about the issue of buoyancy. Many athletes have the buoyancy of granite because of their low body-fat percentage. (Some people might call that "too skinny," but I personally prefer the term "adipose-challenged.")

So what do you do if you’re adipose-challenged and you want to improve your buoyancy but the blueseventies are on back order until 2010? Lipo-augmentation!

Lipo-augmentation is the reverse of liposuction, but this way, you put the float right where you need it and there is not an official in the world who’s going to go poking around to see what’s real and what’s added once it’s on the inside of you. Heck, if I could inject a pull buoy under each one of my butt cheeks, I would!

Furthermore, plastic surgeons would probably be willing to perform the procedure dirt cheap because the floundering economy has decimated their cosmetic-surgery revenues.

But why stop there? How about a little help for the genealogically challenged? You know who we’re talking about here – those poor athletes who, through no fault of their own, are not descended from Helga, the grape-stomping pride of the Rhine Valley with size 15EEEE feet (and mitts to match)? How wrong would it be to surgically widen those feet and hands? Maybe even get a little webbed-skin action going there between the digits? FINA would be hard-pressed to prove it’s wrong when you figure all we’re doing here is evening the playing field.

And besides, as long as you crank out a few records first, and the Amalgamated Surgeons Guild drops a few contributions in the right coffers, by the time everyone starts howling in protest, we'll be able to say, "Oh, that train already left the station, it's too late to bring it back."

Finally, who really needs their head to swim? Hydro-dynamically speaking, a skull can be a major drag through the water, not to mention the problems it causes when an athlete thinks he or she should think.

And if the entire head can’t be removed, perhaps some of it can be harvested for lipo-augmentation elsewhere in the body! After all, the fat heads of the swimming world deserve a chance, too!

Are You There, God? It’s Me in Last Place

When I competed at track in college, I had a teammate who was very religious. Now I’ve been a church-goer all my life, so having a very religious teammate wasn’t, in and of itself, a big deal. Besides, the school I went to was a Catholic university, so a quick Sign-of-the-Cross before or after a race wasn’t unusual for anyone.

But this teammate was religious in a way that took that whole "Spread the Word" thing a little more seriously than most. Beth liked to hang out near the finish lines of races, hand out prayer cards and invite people to her Wednesday-night prayer meetings. But she didn’t hand the cards and invitations out to the runners who won. Beth was smart: She went after the folks who came in last, or close to it. That’s because she knew there’s nothing like getting your butt kicked hard to make a lifestyle change that doesn’t generate lactic acid seem more attractive.

Mr. Coach’s school is affiliated with the Methodist church, but they attract people of many different faiths to the school. I’ve modified more than one dinner menu for religious or philosophical reasons, and that’s cool. Food is a great way to learn more about how and why other people live their lives the way they do.

So Mr. Coach runs a swim team with plenty of room for spirituality on it. The only time he gets nervous, though, is when a kid suddenly discovers God (or any kind of Higher Power) in the middle of a season that hasn’t been going so well. It has been Mr. Coach’s experience that mid-season conversions rarely take – although if a kid is eating right, sleeping right, showing up for all the practices, getting good grades and then decides to start speaking in tongues, then that’s a spiritual awakening he can live with. But finding religion while short-cutting around the earthly obligations usually means somebody is just looking for the on-ramp to Miracle Highway.

Which reminds me of my fourth-grade teacher, Sister Caroline Mary. Before every test, Sister Caroline Mary would have our class repeat a prayer that she dictated to us.

"Dear God...," she said.

"Dear God...," my classmates and I repeated.

"I pray that I...,"

"I pray that I...,"

"Get what I deserve on this test."

Sister Caroline Mary would have made a great coach.

Past the Point of No Return

There comes a point in many workouts beyond which the brain stops functioning but the mouth keeps going. Many people, in the throes of an anaerobic delirium, will start jibber-jabbering about all kinds of things.

Mr. Coach has one athlete right now who has earned himself the nickname of "Blackberry Pie." That’s because when his lactic-acid-to-blood ratio soars, he starts babbling about blackberry pie he once had on a trip to Arizona.

A lot of people talk about food when they reach this point in a workout. As a result, you can figure out which way they swing when it comes to food vices – sugar or salt. You don’t hear a lot about booze, though, thank goodness. The idea of alcohol just doesn’t appeal at that point.

Other people will veer in the direction of pop culture. They’ll hallucinate about hot actors, actresses, models and rock stars with whom they don’t have relationships but now imagine they do. Or they’ll start singing songs, usually badly. Random snippets of comedy routines or movie dialogue will pop out. My personal favorite is the Bill Cosby "Tonsils" routine which ends with the young protagonist gasping out, "Ice cream, we’re gonna eat ice cream," after surviving his tonsillectomy. To me, at this point, it makes perfect sense.

But, unfortunately, the direction that most "Point of No Return" babbling goes is straight into the intestines. It’s like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in reverse: Once you’ve eliminated (as it were) higher-order thinking, all you’ve got left are basic body functions. Mr. Coach, when he was training a few times for marathons, delighted in coming home after a 20-miler and telling me about all the stupid poop jokes that he and his tenured-professor buddies had come up with. As soon as the extra oxygen left his system, he had to admit the jokes really weren’t that funny but after Mile 15, he insisted, they had been.

College athletes, trapped in a pool, aren’t much better. The stuff that passes (as it were) for humor at this point in a workout wouldn’t even make the grade on the worst possible Funny or Die video.

Some coaches, of course, will insist on silent focus and commitment to workout purpose. Their athletes, of course, just shift to nonverbal language – the crossed-eyes, the tongue-hanging-out and the head-cocked-to-one-side expressions of exaggerated exhaustion and, of course, the soundlessly eloquent obscene gesture under the water’s surface.

Once released from their coach’s clutches, they’ll uncork the babbling in the locker room where it continues all the way to the dinner table. And with a few thousand calories back in the system after dinner they’ll regain control of their minds and mouths – until the next day when they start the journey all over again.

Just Look at the Parents

I can’t believe that no one else has noticed this, but I checked out the USA Swimming swimmer database and guess what? Neither one of the Obama kids is registered! OK, maybe they’ve just been doing summer park-league stuff so their results wouldn’t be showing up there, but if their parents haven’t gotten them in the water by now, then I think somebody needs to talk to them. Now.

Why? Well, just look at the parents! According to the dad’s Myspace page, he’s 6' 1.5" tall and he is clearly built like a butterflyer. Yes, we all know he’s into basketball because we’ve seen the pick-up game videos, but that guy has a wingspan and a half on him. And about 5 percent body fat. (Incidentally, I don’t care how you voted. Or even how I voted. This isn’t about politics. This is about swimming. Which, as we all know, is far more important.)

But speaking of more important, have you seen the mother? According to knowledgeable sources (on the Internet), SHE’s almost 5'11" and built like Dara Torres from the looks of it. Plus, according to those same sources, she’s got a 6' 6" brother. OK, so the brother’s into basketball, too. That just means the wrong coaches got to this family first. We’ve still got time on our side here. Plus a couple of other factors.

For one thing, basketball (along with most other sports) is a contact sport and that can’t be a good risk for the offspring of the leader of the free world. And while swim practice could be considered a contact sport, swim meets are not, so swimming would be a much safer sport for them to do. Even if their lane mates’ parents worked for the Bush administration.

And the relative safety of swimming should make life much easier for the Secret Service agents who will be assigned to protect these girls. Although seriously, wouldn’t you love to be there the first time another parent got all up in the coach’s grill because one of the Obama kids got her kid’s relay spot? Do you think the Secret Service agent would utilize one of those Mr. Spock death grips on the shoulder or just a stun gun on the crazy mom?

But back to the Obama girls and their genetic destiny. The bad news may be that they don’t yet have flip turns. The good news is they’re moving to a hot bed of swimming activity. And while everyone else has been fixated on which academic school the Obama girls will go to in Washington, D.C., the more important issue for the swimming community is which club should get them. The Potomac Valley Swimming LSC lists 38 clubs in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. By the start of the outdoor season, one of you better have those girls in the water.

And while you’re at it, see if you can slip the parents some info about masters swimming.

Ocean Miles

I have never partaken of an ocean-mile swim. As described in a previous blog (this one -- http://mrscoachchronicles.blogspot.com/2008/09/spouse-coaching.html -- to be precise), I had to learn how to swim surrounded by jelly fish and horseshoe crabs, and that experience pretty much drained me of the desire to ever again do much open-water swimming.

Mr. Coach, who grew up in safe, sanitized and jelly-fish-free suburban pools, thinks that ocean miles are a hoot. In fact, every winter he convinces his college swimmers to try one in Ft. Lauderdale – just so he can kick their butts. Seriously. The guy’s edging closer to 50 with every breath and he still cleans up in the Ocean Mile derby. (Note to Mr. Coach’s freshmen: Just say no. All you end up doing is the fifty 50s workout in one of the International Swimming Hall of Fame (ISHOF) pools as a substitute.)

But every year, those silly freshmen fall for the pitch. Want to swim ONLY a mile this morning AND not have to worry about your form? Swim the Ocean Mile. Want to see manta rays floating beneath you, like butterflies in a meadow of seashells and golden sand? Swim the Ocean Mile. Want to take on your aging coach and see who’s in better shape? Swim the Ocean Mile!

As for those pesky little worries about the Portugese man-of-war jelly fish, fuggedaboutit! You only have to worry about them if there’s a wind out of the southeast and then they cancel the swim (although you may want to ask Whitney about that).

But here’s the thing about Mr. Coach and open-water swims that any freshman might want to know: Yeah, he seems all mild-mannered gentlemanly and everything, but when he swims one of these things, he goes to his schizophrenic-psycho place and it’s not pretty. Once, after watching my husband slice his way through an open-water swim in a triathlon, I asked him how he did it and he replied, "Oh, all you do is grab ‘em by the ankle, pull ‘em under and swim over. You’re really doing them a favor." I stared at him and mumbled, "It’s like I don’t know even know you."

And yet every year, he convinces his student-athletes to join him in this folly. One year, I walked along the shoreline, watching them do it. The team had come down to Ft. Lauderdale too late that year for the official city-sponsored competition, so they staged their own. For God only knows what reason, some of the girls decided, after starting, to swim out to the international shipping lanes and then parallel the shore. Maybe they thought the water would be calmer out there. Anyway, a lifeguard who saw this completely flipped out and went all authority-figure on me, as I trudged along carrying everyone’s hotel-room keys and asthma inhalers.

"They shouldn’t be out that far!" he shrieked at me. "They need to get back in closer to shore!"

I looked at the guy, but didn’t break stride.

"Number one," I told him, "I don’t do rescue missions. That’s your job. And number two, I hate open-water swimming. That’s my issue from childhood. I own it, but that’s not going to change anything right now."

So we split the difference. The lifeguard trudged along with me and when the team made it out of the water, he yelled at Mr. Coach. Who was too far ahead of his student-athletes to realize that a handful of them had swum to the Azores and back.

"Well," Mr. Coach grinned and told the livid lifeguard, "I’ll bet they never do that again."

(Remember, freshmen: That’s the fifty 50s workout in one of the safe, sanitized and Mr.-Coach-free ISHOF pools.)

Final Exams

We have now hit the time of year best characterized by the phrase "mens insana in corpore sano." (For those of you keeping score in English, that’s Latin for "an unsound mind in a sound body.")

You see there is nothing that is more of a momentum stopper in a college swim season than final exams. In fact, I suspect that most college coaches would rather face an entire team with microscopic flu germs spewing out every orifice than even one pre-med major with AN ANATOMY FINAL ON TUESDAY, AN ORGANIC CHEM FINAL ON WEDNESDAY AND, OH MY GAWD, A 15-PAGE PAPER ON ECONOMIC TURMOIL IN CENTRAL EUROPE DURING THE GORBACHEV ERA DUE ON FRIDAY MORNING. You can send a sick kid home to bed. The only thing you can do with an hysterical Academic All-American is shoot him.

Keeping kids swimming through finals is as much an art as a science, not unlike a taper. To do this, Mr. Coach employs a variety of tools. One is the Ziploc workout. He actually got the idea for this from a high-school swimmer he once coached: She used to occasionally show up for workouts with a gallon-size Ziploc baggie and a sheaf of notes she needed to study. The notes went in the Ziploc and, during kick sets, she studied. (No small surprise, she ended up going to – and swimming for – the Air Force Academy and is now working for a branch of the government which, if we identified it or her, we’d have to send you a virus to kill your computer.) Nowadays, Mr. Coach will occasionally throw a Ziploc workout at his swimmers, just to calm their study-hungry nerves.

Seeing as how it’s also the holiday time of the year in December, Mr. Coach also will attempt to distract his athletes with holiday-themed workouts. You’ve got your "12 Lanes of Christmas Kicking," your "8 Rounds of Hanukkah Drills," your "7 Sets of Kwanzaa Descends," or the "Eid al-Fitr Mile for Time" (when Ramadan falls in December). He also plugs in a few strings of festive lights and decorates a battered, 3-foot-tall, fake-pine tree with abandoned and broken goggles.

But, for the most part, final-exam time is just maintenance time. Time to maintain swimming, maintain good health, maintain academic eligibility and, most importantly, maintain that tenuous grip on sanity. So Mr. Coach keeps them in shape – both physically and mentally – by simply keeping them in the water.

And, when all else fails, he just hands out candy canes.