Good evening,

Definitely tell your swimmers that their group assignment is not their destiny.

Additionally, group assignments change, especially at the end of October/beginning of November. At that point, everyone who wants to join has joined, and we've had the chance to see how all swimmers do in practice.

Also, please know that we do significant analysis, and spend an inordinate amount of time looking up past results found in our own database, as well as, results from the PJSL, PennDel, SwimCloud, and USA Swimming. Based upon this analysis and our current observations, we form the updated training groups.

How are the groups developed?

1. Training Group assignment is NOT an ego test, not a friend test, not a hard worker test, and not for bragging rights, IT IS a resource management puzzle.
2. It is a misperception among swimmers that they are "moving up" or "moving down"; in reality it depends on the how the puzzle best fits the number of swimmers per age group, per ability level, per # of lanes available in each time slot available.
3. There are several main criteria the coaching staff consider when discussing and placing swimmers in a group: Stroke Proficiency, Best Times Achieved Overall (not just one event), Race Speed vs. Training Speed, Experience, Age.
4. Beyond the obvious "who is faster" question for training groups, we try to group swimmers with similar training profiles based upon those criteria. As a result, there are sub-groups within each training group. Here are some less obvious examples: (A) A 10-year-old may have similar times in races than many of the 14-year-olds; however, the 10-year-old is in Red and the 14-year-olds are in White. Why? Because placing the 10-year-old in a lane with 14-year-olds means they would get swamped by waves, would not get the practice they need, would develop horrible technique, and not continue to improve. As a result, the 10-year-old is better off in the "Red" group. (B) Of course, often just the opposite is true too. We would not place an inexperienced 14-year-old in a session with all 8-year-olds even though their times may be similar. (C) There is a large gap between the demonstrated training speed and racing speed of a 15-year-old, whereas there is a much smaller gap for a 12-year-old. In other words, the 12-year-old can maintain times closer to their race speed in practice than the 15-year-old can. Therefore, in practice the 12-year-old shows they can handle and improve with a faster set pace and more yardage, while the 15-year-old may improve more with a slower set pace and less yardage. As a result, the 12-year-old is in "Gold" and the 15-year-old is in "Blue" even if the 15-year-old ultimately is faster in a 50 Freestyle at race time.
5. The goal is to place swimmers of similar profiles in the same lanes in the same groups to create as few sub-groups as possible in each training session.
6. FAQ - "Coach, one night my swimmer swam up in the next group and they said they felt fine and could handle it. Can they move up?" Answer: No. We do not want anyone "trying it out", it is not fair to the swimmers in that group, it causes disorganization, and is ignoring the coaching expertise we assume families joined for. As a general policy, once the season gets going and training groups have been assigned, we do not allow swimmers to participate if they attend the wrong group. More importantly from a training perspective though, kids often feel they "did fine"; however, they do not realize that we (the coaches) slowed down the whole lane for them or changed the workout to accommodate them. Obviously, this is not fair to the kids in that group and we are already differentiating significantly because there are 2-3 subgroups within each larger training group.

Again, please reinforce to your swimmer that their group assignment is not their destiny. Regardless of their group, hard work, dedication, and a positive attitude wins.

See you on deck,

Coach Drake