Team Travel
By John Leonard
Posted: April 25, 2007

You know you are getting old when you can’t find an article you supposedly wrote on the topic of team travel, even in your computer. Since I’ve been told it was a brilliant article and I can’t find OR remember it, I thought I’d try it again, since there are some things to be said on this topic.

Let me say that this is not going to describe HOW to do team travel, (which requires a pretty decent sized book all on its own), but rather, explain the WHY of team travel.

One of the “truisms” of swimming that coaches intuitively understand, even when they can’t verbalize it, is that Team Travel will “break swimmers loose” from their previous performance levels and allow them to “move up” when ten more meets in the home environment might not achieve that. How does this work?

Picture the ordinary swim meet. Child and parent arrives at the pool. Heat sheets are procured. The child looks at their name in the 100 free and says “gee, who’s here? Sally, Susie, Mary...Kate (I never beat her)...Colleen....sooooo.....I’ll be 6th.” The child knows the Sallies, Susies, Marys, Kates and Colleens of her area, and she knows her status in the pecking order.
So our child goes out and swims the 100 free. Lo and behold, she gets a great start, swims a wonderful first 50 and amazement of amazement, finds herself ahead at the 50! Wow! How can this be? So on the 3rd 25, she starts looking for the others and sure enough, here they come, and two catch her by the wall. She’s still 3rd and swimming very well! On the last 25, she finds creative ways to slow down, finish 6th and maybe (or maybe not) go a marginal best time. Why? Why? Why? Coach and parent ask the same question! “You were doing SOOO well!”
Our young lady simply knew her place in the pecking order, and found her way there. Better that than upsetting the apple cart and having to re-work all those competitive and social interactions that place her in the universe. Better to stay in her COMFORT ZONE!

So, what happens when this young lady goes off to a travel meet to a place where she knows no one? She looks at the heat sheet, sees her entry time, sees a list of names that mean absolutely nothing to her, and just goes out and swims as fast as she can and, (AMAZING!) she drops 2 seconds in the 100 free! (and maybe finishes higher than she would at home!) Why? She had no frame of reference except, SWIM FAST! Hence a breakthrough.

Children hate to disrupt the status quo. And every swimmer nows what the status quo is in local meets. Hence, the great idea of a travel meet.

This is far and away the MOST important reason for travel meets...improved opportunity for athlete improvement. But there are some others.

1. If the travel meet is a team trip, with swimmers traveling together, there is huge opportunity for team bonding and social interaction....also known in less formal terms as............fun!

2. The Travel trip allows for more frequent and possibly more meaninful interaction with the coaches. Mealtimes, down time at the meet, etc. all lead to more conversation, more time in the coaches presence, etc.

3. The Travel trip allows the development of more independence from parents and more Inter-dependence of the team with their peers.
4. The Travel trip allows the child the opportunity to “screw up” in a relatively secure social environment, and learn to recover from said screw-ups, and move on...promoting serious maturing to occur.
5. The Travel trip can allow the athlete to see swimming as a much bigger (and faster?) picture than the local meet scene. The sport seems more important, the athletes bigger, better, faster, more dedicated, etc. (assuming the trip has been selected wisely by the coaching staff.) Inspiration provides a lot of speed that perspiration can’t get to on its own.
Lots of reasons for age group athletes to travel occasionally. Share parental duties. One set of parents chaperone, four sets of parents stay home and get a weekend by themselves, or time to focus on another child. Not all the benefits are just to the athlete!

Enjoy it. All the Best, JL