2025 Mid States Email #8 - Results & Lessons Learned
Mid States All Star Email # 8 – Results & Lessons Learned
Thanks so much for being part of Team Wisconsin’s roster for the Mid States All Star Met this year. It’s a big experience steeped in tradition (as you can see by the revered tones they used to speak about their duck drop). Parents: you did a wonderful job with quick, effective communication during a busy holiday season. And your swimmers were wonderful to coach. Lots of kids wanting feedback, connecting with others, making friendships, being appreciative, getting the most out of the experience.
To Roshel, Darya, and Megan: you three were spectacular and forging connections with 80+ swimmers so quickly and easily. Thanks for taking time away from your primary responsibilities to help this team have a great weekend.
To Angela: The admin work for this is thankless! We appreciate the work you did to make sure we had a lovely time from start to finish.
I’ve attached two files: a PDF of the results, and a file your coach will need to import so that your times work for future meets. Feel free to forward it along. They’ll need to match by ID number since the club code is different.
From a Wisconsin LSC standpoint, one of our big takeaways will be to make sure our athletes walk away with a few more “goods” next year. I loved Team Ohio having names on the back of shirts, the idea that Team Indiana had Zone Team Parkas available, LSCs that had multiple caps for kids for on-deck trading…lots of fun extra things to add to the experience.
Finally, one last teaching moment. If you’re tired of my sermons, you can disregard from this point on. It's coming from the desk of the Age Group Chair, and it’s all opinion-based going forward…
With the amount of time a family has to give, with the amount of money a family has to pay for registration & hotels & food & tech suits etc…I’m certain there’s an expectation of performance at this meet. When you add in the cache of swimming at a “Zone Level” meet at a major facility, one can expect that their swimmer will be at or better than their best for everything. Unfortunately, with as many “ups” as there are, there are a ton of “downs,” too. A Sunday 8:40 race is really 7:40A our time. We went from a REALLY long Saturday to a really short Sunday. Swimmers have to navigate a big pool far from home, fast competition, and long hours without the safety net of a coach they feel comfortable with and the warm blanket of close friends. Add to that the meet is in early January, so there’s an equal chance that your swimmer’s coach wailed on them with doubles or you took a trip to family & friends and haven’t been in the water much. When you put all the goods on one side, all the bads on the other, it stacks much heavier on the side of the bads, to be honest. So, what’s the point? With all that time & money invested, is it a waste?
Absolutely not. The investment of this meet isn’t for best times, it’s for the experience that creates the foundation for next year, or 2028, or some time down the road. If they pick up any skills on how to create a routine, or if they get inspired with their chat with an Olympian, or find the right combination of warmup/snacking/pre-race to help them at the next meet—that’s what this is all for. I’d label this meet as much more “experience” than pure competition, but these experiences and the learning moments they create are invaluable for if and when your swimmer takes the next step. I know that’s no consolation as you think about the cost of filling up your SUV 3 times this weekend but you’d be surprised at the number of high level athletes who used the lessons learned and skills developed at this meet to jump-start them to something bigger later.
So if you and your swimmer drove all the way down for one race, and they added 2 seconds and they’re devastated…it’s not a weekend wasted. It’s not money wasted. Have them work on something that helped or hurt their experience, and use that to prepare for the next time. It’s an expensive lesson to learn, but it’s vital for your swimmer’s future.
If you made it this far—thank you! I appreciate you reading all the wordy emails.
See you at the pool soon.
Coach White & the Team Wisconsin Coaching Staff
