Archive for September, 2008

What to Bring to a Swim Meet:

Swim­mers:

• Team Swim­suit
• Team Cap (2)
• Gog­gles (2 pairs!)
• 2 – 3 tow­els
• Some­thing to sit on-blankets, chairs, etc
• Healthy snacks
• Clothes to wear over your wet suit: Parka/Sweatsuit and T-shirt/Shorts
• Dry clothes to wear home
• Money for a heat sheet
• High­lighter and water­proof pen/fine line marker
• Some­thing to do: books, cards, ipods, etc. NO GAMEBOYS or CELL PHONES on the pool deck at swim meets.

Par­ents:

• Chair where per­mit­ted (depends on local fire codes)
• Some­thing to do (books, mag­a­zines, etc)
• Cash if you want a snack dur­ing the meet
• Cash for heat sheets, etc
• Lay­ered clothe­ing (Facil­ity tem­per­a­tures vary, and not nec­es­sar­ily with the season)
• Will­ing­ness to help time or ful­fill other duties if relief work­ers are needed.
• For more infor­ma­tion on becom­ing a USA Swim­ming Offi­cial, con­tact Coach Caroline

Bring­ing Back Com­pe­ti­tion for Kids is a Winner

by Sue Pascoe

“These are the times that try men’s souls…What
we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is
dear­ness only that gives
every thing its value.” So starts one of the
pam­phlets in Thomas
Paine’s “The Amer­i­can Cri­sis.” Although he was
speak­ing of the
Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War, his words ring true in our mod­ern
times in a sur­pris­ing
area: rais­ing children.

My children’s first
tro­phies came from YMCA Iddy-Biddy bas­ket­ball at the
age of 4. With the
most recent addi­tion of AYSO soc­cer tro­phies for my
three chil­dren, our
house­hold now has close to 100. Tro­phies may mean
some­thing to
par­ents — many of whom were raised when they still had
value — but for my chil­dren
they aren’t asso­ci­ated with win­ning, excel­lence,
atten­dance or even hard work.

You’d be
hard-pressed — in sports or school — to know that
chil­dren have issues with win­ning
and los­ing. In an effort to make sure no child feels
bad, all
com­pet­i­tive­ness is erased. Just because com­pe­ti­tion
is ignored doesn’t
mean it’s not there — it’s instinctive.

Last year, six high
school swim­mers, who had been with the local YMCA
pro­gram since they were 7
years old, worked hard enough to qual­ify for Y
Nation­als. You’d think the
Y would be ecsta­tic. Instead, the direc­tor said that
too much empha­sis
was placed on these “elite” swim­mers. In August he
did away with the
com­pet­i­tive swim pro­gram because some­one might feel
bad. Excel­lence was
the undo­ing of a pro­gram. After par­ents com­plained
that all lev­els of
swim­mers were par­tic­i­pat­ing, and that younger ones
needed some­one to look up
to, he agreed to rein­state a com­pet­i­tive pro­gram for
the younger chil­dren, but
no coach was pro­vided for the high school kids. This
empha­sis on keep­ing
com­pe­ti­tion to a min­i­mum infects every sport.

Unfor­tu­nately, the
well-intentioned drive to put all chil­dren on the
same level also extends into
the class­room, thereby requir­ing the same pro­grams
for all chil­dren.
Second-graders who can mul­ti­ply and fig­ure out logic
prob­lems are still
required to do the sim­ple addi­tion prob­lems as the
rest of the class. All
stu­dents are required to take alge­bra to grad­u­ate,
even if their brains aren’t
wired that way. A special-education kid who isn’t
toi­let trained and is
blind and par­tially deaf is in a reg­u­lar class­room,
“main­streamed” because
“we’re all the same”.

It’s the reign of
medi­oc­rity and the death of com­mon sense. I laughed
at the movie “The
Incred­i­bles” because the par­ents wouldn’t let their
son enter sports because he
could run too fast. At the end of the movie, they
let him enter a race,
but he still “dumbed” it down, win­ning, but only
barely. “Diver­sity” is
the catch­word for all that’s right, but it’s also the
catch­word that “dumbs”
every­thing down. In other words, diver­sity means
skin color or reli­gion;
it doesn’t actu­ally mean we want peo­ple with diverse
skills and talents.

When I was in third
grade, a spelling con­test took the top two win­ners
from each class­room to
rep­re­sent the school in a coun­ty­wide con­test. I
didn’t make it and went
home cry­ing to my mother. Today, she’d sue the
school dis­trict and the
con­test would be banned. Instead, she talked to me
about my
strengths. We talked about how my best friend had
won it and how she was
par­tic­u­larly good in that area, how it would be nice
if I could cheer her
on. My mother took a dev­as­tat­ing time for me and
made it into a life
les­son about an individual’s uniqueness.

Kids can take
it. They know who’s smart in class. They also know
the smart kid in
class may not be the best ath­lete. The most pop­u­lar
kid may not be the
most cre­ative. It’s time to cel­e­brate real
dif­fer­ences or at least let
them exist. Bring back spelling bees and math
con­tests in ele­men­tary
school and cel­e­brate the win­ners. Choose roy­alty in
a school based on a
pop­u­lar vote. Have art con­tests with real win­ners.
Do away with
par­tic­i­pa­tion medals, tro­phies and ribbons.

In life, we lose far
more con­tests than we win, and learn­ing to lose is as
valu­able as learn­ing to
win.

(Sue Pas­coe is a writer in Los Angeles)

For one rea­son or another we all fall short
from time to time. The impor­tant thing about fail­ure
is to learn from it,

and use it to grow into a bet­ter per­son,
swim­mer, etc. You may rec­og­nize some of these
“failures”.

· Ein­stein was 4 years old before he could speak.

· Isaac New­ton did poorly in grade school and was
con­sid­ered
“unpromising.”

· Beethoven’s music teacher once said of him, “As
a com­poser, he is
hopeless.”

· When Thomas Edi­son was a young­ster, his teacher
told him he was too
stu­pid to learn any­thing. He was

coun­seled to go into
a field where he might suc­ceed by virtue of his
pleas­ant personality.

· F. W. Wool­worth got a job in a dry goods store
when he was 21, but his employer
would not per­mit him to

wait on cus­tomers
because he “didn’t have enough sense to close a sale.”

· Michael Jor­dan was cut from his high school
bas­ket­ball team.
Boston Celtics Hall of Famer Bob Cousy

suf­fered the same
fate.

· A news­pa­per edi­tor fired Walt Dis­ney because he
“lacked imag­i­na­tion and
had no good ideas.”

· Win­ston Churchill failed the sixth grade and had
to repeat it because
he did not com­plete the tests required

for pro­mo­tion.

· Babe Ruth struck out 1,300 times-a major league
record.

A per­son may make mis­takes but isn’t a fail­ure
until he starts blam­ing some­one else. We must
believe in

our­selves, and some­where along the road of
life, we must meet some­one who sees great­ness in us,
expects

it from us and lets us know it. It is
the golden key to suc­cess. (Thanks again to Ann
Landers!)

AFFIRM: Six-step program

Sports psy­chol­o­gist Car­o­line Silby coaches par­ents in a six-step pro­gram, AFFIRM:

A: Give AFFECTION regard­less of per­for­mance out­come. Chil­dren need to know their fail­ures and suc­cesses don’t affect parental sup­port or acceptance.

F: Be FOCUSED, but don’t coach. It is the par­ents’ job to develop the child and the coach’s job to develop the cham­pion. Stay away from detailed, tech­ni­cal dis­cus­sions about per­for­mance. Instead, encour­age your chil­dren to estab­lish good goal-setting habits.

F: Be FLEXIBLE At the first sign of suc­cess, single-minded par­ents place their bud­ding ath­letes on the fast track to the Olympics with­out tak­ing time to find out their goals and objec­tives. (And with­out dis­cussing the time frame with the coach!)

I: INTERACT with­out dom­i­nat­ing the con­ver­sa­tion. A sup­port­ive par­ent lis­tens more than he or she talks. Lis­ten for descrip­tive words that express how your chil­dren feel about them­selves and their per­for­mances. By lis­ten­ing to your chil­dren, you com­mu­ni­cate to them that their thoughts and feel­ings are wor­thy of expres­sion and you respect their sports experience.

R: REFRAME It’s the par­ents’ role to pro­vide per­spec­tive. Remind your chil­dren of the big­ger pic­ture, which includes long-term goals, and other aspects of their lives, such as aca­d­e­mics, friend­ships, fam­ily and spirituality.

M: MODEL Par­ents are some of the most pow­er­ful role mod­els for chil­dren. Kids learn valu­able cop­ing skills watch­ing Mom and Dad deal with dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions. Live your own life with integrity by ensur­ing that your actions cor­re­spond with your val­ues and beliefs.

Olympian Dara Tor­res recently attrib­uted some of her amaz­ing swim­ming suc­cess to an amino acid sup­ple­ment that she feels helps her recover bet­ter. You may won­der if you need to pay the same atten­tion to what you put in your mouth after a workout.

If your exer­cise rou­tine con­sists of a 30-minute walk three times a week, just make sure you get some water or other fluid after you work out. But if you’re train­ing for a marathon, say, or a cen­tury bike ride, or putting in a lot of time at the gym lift­ing weights, you might want to pay at least some atten­tion to what you eat to get the most out of your workouts.

Still, you don’t need to buy pricey recov­ery drinks or spe­cial sup­ple­ments. When you work out hard or long enough, you deplete the body’s glyco­gen stores.

You may also be break­ing down mus­cle tis­sue if you’re lift­ing heavy weights or doing an endurance work­out that includes run­ning down hills or doing inter­val train­ing, says Monique Ryan, a nutri­tion­ist and author of Sports Nutri­tion for Endurance Athletes.

For those rea­sons, it’s impor­tant to take in some car­bo­hy­drates and a lit­tle bit of pro­tein after you do a heavy or long work­out — espe­cially if you’re going to work out again the next day.

Pro­tein “enhances repair and recov­ery, so you get stronger,” says Susan Kleiner, a dietit­ian who owns High Per­for­mance Nutri­tion in Mer­cer Island, Wash., and is a spokes­woman for the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Sports Medicine.

There’s been a lot of debate on how much of one to take ver­sus the other. One camp believes strongly that a ratio of 4 grams of carbs to every 1 gram of pro­tein is key; the other says you don’t need to worry so much about the exact math but should just aim for mostly carbs and a bit of protein.

Either way, tim­ing seems to be key for more fre­quent or intense exer­cis­ers. Aim to get the food in 15 to 30 min­utes after the end of a work­out, says William Krae­mer, a kine­si­ol­o­gist at the Human Per­for­mance Lab­o­ra­tory at the Uni­ver­sity of Con­necti­cut, Storrs. That’s the period of time in which the body seems to get the most bang for its buck from ingest­ing carbs and protein.

If you’re not plan­ning on another big work­out the next day (or later in the day, for some seri­ous ath­letes), you can worry less about the tim­ing of the meal and more about mak­ing sure you get ade­quate carbs and pro­tein spread over the rest of your daily diet. This will vary depend­ing on your goals, work­outs and other factors.

The source of your post-workout food is up to you. Reg­u­lar food like yogurt or choco­late low-fat milk is fine, says Richard Krei­der, head of the depart­ment of health and kine­si­ol­ogy at Texas A and M Uni­ver­sity. (In one small, dairy-industry-funded study, choco­late milk out­per­formed Gatorade and recov­ery drink Endurox R4 in help­ing ath­letes bounce back from a hard workout.)

Kleiner makes her own smooth­ies when she gets home from work­ing out, using, for exam­ple, skim milk, half a banana, a lit­tle cocoa pow­der and whey pro­tein pow­der. Whey is an excel­lent source of essen­tial amino acids, it’s easy on the stom­ach, and it’s very rapidly digested and absorbed, she says.

Even if you aren’t work­ing out intensely enough to make it essen­tial you get in a spe­cific post-exercise meal, eat­ing imme­di­ately after a work­out can keep you from overeat­ing later in the day.

Source: http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=234540