Baseball and Fast Swimming

With NCAA Swimming concluding, and the opening week of baseball upon us, I have been thinking a little outside of the box about how swimming might take a lesson from baseball both in how we attract kids to the sport and how we perform.






As a parent, I see a lot of similarities between youth baseball and age group swimming.   A lot of time invested in the stands for a small amount of activity in the form of a 2 minute (or less) race or getting a chance to field a ball or take a swing, followed by some candy from the concession stand.  Why does baseball draw more kids than swimming?  I know we are exposed to it more, but I believe kids enjoy baseball more because there are more opportunities for success.  My own kids usually come back from swim practice with little emotion saying it was hard or ez, while they often come back from baseball excited about that one hit, or catching the pop fly.  In swimming are we giving kids opportunities to be successful?  Are we getting excited about the small steps?  What would be equivalent to catching that fly ball in swimming?  How can we recognize that and celebrate it?


As I watched the NCAA Swimming Championships, I noticed something that may change the way swimmers prepare in the future and we may have to take a lesson from baseball.

The University of Michigan and Coach Mike Bottom took home the trophy this year.  His philosophy is to be fast all year long.  Compared to an athletes best times, his team was consistently swimming faster than most collegiate teams all season.  Coach Bottom was consistently criticized for being "too" fast, "too" soon and even though they had the fastest seed times going into NCAA's, many of the teams, who swam slower all season due to "being tired from training" were picked to catch Michigan and win the title.


I have heard Coach Bottom say that in order to grow the sport of swimming, we have to show everyone our best stuff on a regular basis.  Nobody wants to come to watch anybody swim slow and tired.  Just like nobody wants to watch Justin Verlander throw 85 mph fast balls due to a hard workout the day before.

Now back to learning a little from baseball.  Swimmers are known for poking fun at other sports for being lazy and not working as hard, but should we be be proud of that?  Pitchers need to have their best stuff every 5th day, sluggers have to bat with power every day, and a fielder or base runner needs to have his top end speed on any given play.  To maintain that power and speed takes work and preparation.  What if swimming looked more like this? What if we could swim at our best more often?  I don't necessarily have an answer, but I like to think about the possibilities.