Blog 2657: Matlock Review

Early season racing is all about setting up for the season ahead. After a break and just getting back into training we, as coaches do not expect PB's at this time of year, thats why there was no PB train/count or tweets from Saturday. You may of noticed that neither myself or Alex had our stop watches on us, nor did we look at the score board all that often (habits are hard to break and we did occasionally check, instantly berating ourselves for doing so) but instead we focused on the process of racing and the development of race skills and race tactics, along with the professional attitude of the swimmers making sure they did the right things between races and were prepared and focused on every race. We handed out process sheets at the start of the day and asked the swimmers to fill in areas of races that they wanted to work on or that myself and Alex had discussed with them and regardless of the time if they worked on those skills they had a great race. They handed them into us before each race and we scored them on the processes during the race and fed that back to them afterwards. What this did was educate the swimmers on how to race and what they need to focus on and I have to say I was impressed by the vast majority in their efforts (some youth boys seemed to focus on other areas towards the end of the day, as boys do!). It looked from ground level like our skills were on top form throughout the day and even when swimmers were tired they were trying to maintain their skill level and processes. Both sessions finished with a Skins event and Long Eaton through Sam Pearson and Helen Gorman were second on the touch in both. Sam Pearson won top boy. A tremendous day of high quality racing from all Long Eaton swimmers and big thanks to all the volunteers from Team Manager Debbie to all the Officials who helped make this day as successful as it was.