CREATING EXCELLENCE
Building the right foundations for success
We’ve worked hard to create a friendly, supportive, and respectful club by practising and encouraging good behaviours and discouraging ones that don’t support our ethos.
We harness an ethos of excellence and expectation of success, where our athletes can flourish and national-level performance becomes standard.
To create exceptional athletes, we create foundations to build an environment where excellence is valued, admired, encouraged, expected, rewarded, and emulated.
Parents matter
Parents have an enormous influence on their children’s swimming. By setting high standards at home, expecting hard work and excellence, encouraging persistence, teaching accountability, and being supportive through the tough times and down to earth during the heady days, parents go a long way toward determining the basic mindset of their children.
Parents must value swimming. They must be willing to make family decisions for the sake of the development of a child’s talent. This may require rescheduling family holidays before or after major championships, constructing the family’s schedule around daily training sessions, or spending weekends at long meets and waiting hours for a few minutes of racing.
Parents must trust the coaches and value the long process of developing talent. It doesn’t matter how good the coach and the programmes are if the parents are continually undermining or second-guessing them.
Swimmers matter
Excellent swimmers are tough - they have a determination to overcome any obstacle or adversity. They are self-reliant, not dependent on a coach or their parents to do everything for them or make all their decisions. They are competitive and love to race, eager to take on anyone, anytime, anywhere. They have extremely high expectations of themselves and those around them. They are committed to their swimming. They pay attention; they have a laser beam focus when training. They have a sense of craftsmanship, precision, and attention to detail. They continually strive for improvement. They are confident in their abilities, and they show that relaxed confidence under pressure.
Quality not quantity
Swimmers must realise the more activities that occupy their time, the more likely they are not to maximise their potential in all of them. We can’t do everything, and if we try, something has to give. Prioritising is key. When music lessons, football, after school clubs and going out with friends’ conflict with swimming, or when swimming consistently loses in the competition for time and energy, then swimmers need to re-evaluate their goals. They must be honest about their commitment to swimming and set their goals accordingly because setting a goal without making a commitment to achieving it will probably lead to failure. Goals are not targets; they are things you will prioritise everything to achieve. Excellence in any field takes dedication and focus, choosing one thing rather than many. Read more
