News & Articles Features  Swim Links  Speakers Bureau  Contact Us  Marketplace  Clinics & Events
 

Well everyone has suddenly woken up. The topic du jour is “what’s wrong with American Boys?” Everywhere you look nowadays, there is an article on boys. How to raise ‘em, how to graze ‘em, how to make ‘em whole. We have caught on to the fact that male college admissions are way down, male sports participation is way down, and male dysfunctional behavior is way up. The Media is alert to the problem. Club swim coaches have been well ahead of the media curve for 10 years now. They see up to 80% of their teams being dominated by girls. Why?

Pet theories abound:
1. Males don’t want to be measured by traditional sports. (Hence the rise of “extreme [non-measured] sports.”)

2. There is too much competition for the male athlete from other sports, especially those which can earn real money. (What’s different? It’s always been like that.)

3. There are fewer “serious” sports for women. (Seen USA Today lately? Where’s the lack?)

4. Boys don’t like the discipline inherent in swimming practice. (Hence the threat from video games... instant reward.)

5. Boys are into video games. Cheap thrills, no risks. And cool technology. (These things don’t appeal to girls? Seemingly not as much as to boys.)

6. Boys hate Speedos. (For a variety of reasons… the fact that short suits are 180 degrees from today’s fashion trend for one.) What will the rise of the long Speedo Spiderman suits mean to this?

7. Boys hate structure. Girls love structure. Most swim coaches are providers of highly structured and disciplined programs. Hence, we attract girls and repel males.

8. No male role models in the sport. The media loves female swimmers, especially from Atlanta Olympic Games. We see Jenny, Dara, Amy, and so on all the time (and well earned). Less often do we see Josh, Lenny, and Tom Wilkens. This is self-fulfilling. Fewer male swimmers, fewer make it to the top of the world.

9. Success in the female side of the sport is easier to come by since more countries take men’s swimming seriously.

10. Boys don’t like getting their butt whipped by girls all the way from age 8 to age 14 or later. Until the great equalizer of puberty kicks in, boys can’t stay with girls in training, learning or much of anything else.

Are they true? There is probably some truth to all of them, and in many examples, the problem is regional, with importance depending on where you are.

The Trend Busters

Like all trends some people spot them first, and some people find a way to counteract them first. The point of this article is to highlight some of those coaches and programs that are bucking the trend and being highly successful with males in the sport. Bob Bowman of North Baltimore reports that they re-look at and sort of “re-invent” their program each year. About 18 months ago, they devised some new groups, with all the 9 to 13 year old boys in one group, and split the ladies into two groups, one for 9 and 10 year olds, and the other for the 11-14 group of girls.

The boys do one day less a week than the older girls, and go fifteen minutes less a day. They also do training programs that are more technique oriented and contain less volume than the ladies. “We worried in the beginning that the older girls group might get too social, but with the boys out of it, it actually went the other way, and they are now a very serious training group. Meanwhile, the boys’ team has grown because they bring their buddies into an all-male workout. We assigned John Burke, one of our full-time coaches who is very enthusiastic, to the group. He’s been key to making the boys successful.” Bob himself is coaching the older girls group. Bob also noted that with changing coaches in the groups each year or season, they keep the overall program fresh.

The older girls were in the water for 1:45 per session, the boys group, 1:30 per session. This season, with a new pool coming into play, they will have the boys group and the younger girls group at the same time schedule in the same pool, in different groups. “The boys get a bit more leeway in the discipline areas” said Bob, “and they do a bit less volume of training, with a greater technique emphasis. Meanwhile, the older girls have become a serious training group and get a bit more coaching pressure to perform, which is good for them, at their age.” With Tom Himes off developing a satellite program for North Baltimore, and Bob Bowman, Murray Stephens and John Burke working with the original team group, North Baltimore is courageous in trying out some new models for development in young men. So far, it’s paying dividends.

At the High School level, Coach Kirk Price at Cherry Creek High School in Englewood, CO had some great insights; “today, some of the difficulties in getting boys in sports start right at the school level. With political correctness, it seems like the schools try to get the boys to act like the girls in school. Now that’s not all bad, but it is in a number of ways. Boys want to act like boys, behave like boys, and it is different than many girls. When you have an all-boys team, the interactions are different than when you have a school team comprised of both boys and girls.”

Coach Price coaches 50-60 boys in high school swimming each year, as well as 180 male tennis players. He thinks that in many places both sports are seen as “wimpy” and not masculine, but at his school, a lot of hard work and good thinking have gone into making both sports hard work, and more importantly, something the boys can take real pride in, being a part of the team. Coach Price says he puts a lot of effort in having the older athletes on the teams (seniors and juniors) mentor the freshmen and sophs. This connection with the older males is of vital importance to swimmers coming out for the team the first time.

Coach Price offered one more compelling observation; “I have an open phone line to the parents, and I keep what we talk about totally private. Today, swim parents have had their children involved in sports for a long time and have some knowledge. To shut them out is wrong, so we work hard at communicating with them. And teenage boys would rather die than tell you, the coach, when they have a problem. So if you have a thick enough skin to talk with parents, you can learn a lot about which boy is having a problem with what item.”