Great Waves Vision

    The Great Waves Vision is to create a fun, exciting, elite and diverse swim team that helps each individual realize their potential in the great sport of swimming. Along the way, life lessons will be learned that will help the individual become the best person they can be. This is a process to achieve over a career, not a season. Each swimmer will have a plan to improve throughout their time with Great Waves. If they wish to continue to swim after their time with Great Waves, they will have the ability to keep improving in a way that they will not burn out in our program.  I want their experience to be life changing. 

Plan: 

Year 1...

    In this very uncertain time, our goal is to create a team that is going to be a contender at the local, state, and national level. Preparing your swimmer to focus on the process of becoming the best swimmer they can through hard work, stroke efficiency, and by setting short and long term goals. By self evaluating strokes, practices, races, and seasons, your swimmer will learn how to self motivate intrinsically, placing focus on self improvement, hard work, goal setting, helping to create a team atmosphere, delayed gratification, and learn through failure as well as success. 

Practices: During a typical practice, we will focus on stroke efficiency; learning to swim correctly and the most efficient way will set the foundation for fast/elite swimming. Your swimmer will be shown how to swim correctly, they will be verbally reminded daily if they are doing something correct or incorrect, yet understanding that it is ultimately up to THEM (not the parent or coach) to fix what they are doing wrong in the water. Too many times have I spent hours correcting stroke technique, only to have the swimmer not incorporate the changes into their practices and eventually races. Please understand that we (coaches and parents) can not do it for them, they have to be the one who change their habits, as well as put in the effort into each stroke, length, practice and meet. I will show and give them the tools to be a great swimmer, it is ultimately up to each individual to use those tools effectively. We do not do “garbage yardage”, meaning that we do not swim unless there is a purpose for that exercise.  Also I will allow Great Waves high school swimmers to practice with us at the normal monthly fee, as long as they are practicing at least once with their high school team, and that their high school coach is in agreement (if this is you, please make sure Coach Matt knows). Our goal is to be welcoming, co-operative, and inspiring to the local high school aged swimmers, not excluding or portraying an attitude of exclusion. 

Meets: We will be very selective in which meets we choose to attend. We will not be at a swim meet every weekend, and will be limited to no more than 2 per month. “Why?” you ask..”Swim meets are where they show improvement.” This is often a misconception, and although at a younger age, many improvements will surface at each meet, too many swim meets will be detrimental to your swimmers development. Swimmers often face fatigue and burn out when pushed (by themselves, coaches or parents) too hard, whether that means too many practices, meets or lack of interest. Again, our goal at Great Waves is to watch your swimmer enjoy and improve over the course of years, we want to continue their swim career through high school and if given the option and their desire, beyond into college. The best place to show improvement is at every practice. With the guidance of the coach, we will pick meets and events that are suitable for your child to succeed and give them an opportunity to show that their hard work is paying off. This does not mean that every swim or meet is going to be their best, but with focus on less meets, their focus, attention and energy can be directed more efficiently. Since we will be a USA club only, we will be doing mostly invites that suit your swimmers needs, times and will help them progress up the ladder. There will be Lake Erie championships at the end of the season (Feb/Mar): Regional Champs, Age Group Champs (14 and under) and Senior Champs. The season will end early March. This is to ensure that swim families may take a Spring Break if desired (since Thanksgiving and Christmas are usually busy with training), Spring Sports are available for anyone wishing to participate (we have many 2-3 sport athletes), but will also have a Spring/Summer Program for those interested. 

Covid-19: Since we are experiencing a global pandemic, we will be limited (for the time being) in practice space and meet attendance. We will adhere to the USA Swimming, , Health Dept., CDC, and Governmental guidelines set forth. In the future more space will become available and our team will grow. Once meets are available we will be picking which to attend, and also following guidelines set forth, if this means we have to travel for meets, so be it. If High School season changes or is affected, we will make adjustments to accommodate our older/high school aged swimmers.  Until then, there has been talk of virtual meets, and also monthly time trials that our swimmers will participate in to keep track of where they are, and also to keep their racing/competitive skills sharp. 

Season: Our fall/winter season will begin on Sept. 8th for most swimmers. I expect some people may want to join late, and if we can accommodate more, we will. Registrations will begin late August. Our fall/winter season will conclude in early March. Your prices will reflect this timeline. We will offer a spring/summer program (details coming mid winter) that will run roughly early April-early August. This will be an option that you do not have to commit to at this time, with more info coming mid winter.  There will be a total of about 10 months of Great Waves Swimming a year that your swimmers may choose to participate in, again with focus and plans to allow as much family time together.

What you are getting for your money: Your swimmer will receive more individual attention than in years past with more practice time (unless another global pandemic continues to limit us),  focus on stroke efficiency, individualized race strategies, top performance execution for practice and racing, knowledge on nutrition, mental health, long term health benefits, time management, goal setting, training with other like minded and motivated swimmers to achieve individual and team success. Your swimmer will learn from a deep well of knowledge, how to execute efficiency, race strategy, and elite swimming. Also learning how to be mentaly tough, face challenges, overcome setbacks, and reach for goals and chase dreams. All while contributing to a team vision, helping achieve a sense of community, while achieving individual and team success.