Let me start with this was not a decision I made or my wife made. We had our input, but ultimately, this was Zoeys decision to make, and we just laid our thoughts out to her, and she chose as she felt was right for her.

Before I let on the actual decision, let’s look at the options

Options 1: Jackson swim team. This option had the same drive time plus 6 minutes from her team at the time. She REALLY liked the coach there. Honestly, the coach alone made the faults of this choice easier to cope with. The faults, though, were poor facilities to include the pool itself, was 25m, and long course was an issue here. Also, the bathrooms are old and moldy.

Option 2: Florence swim team. This option was appealing because they swim in the same stuff her team has, so we have seen them around. The coach was nice and the facilities are newer than Jackson but again only 25m pool so long course season is harder.

Option 3: Stay with her current team. This is an easy option as she likes the team, has great facilities but the coach was an issue.

Option 4: Quit swimming. It’s not my choice but her choice to make

Something happened that made her choice super easy to make. The coach in question got the hint that not just us but almost all the students in that group were unhappy with their performance and actually stepped up. Then, on top of that, 3 very special high school and college age coaches stepped into the picture to fill voids. Of these three, one especially took a personal interest in Zoey and has told me that it’s this persons goal to make her a better swimmer if it takes all the energy they have because Zoey has the drive other kids don’t have to compete.

During the meet last week, another one of the new coaches saw Zoey stressing out over a swim. Grabbed her, talked her down, and boomed the best swim of the weekend.

These things made the answer to the problem easy. Zoey is staying with her team. So the first thing is first, we are dropping all past issues with the one coach she has a clean slate, and all marks against her are gone. We also have made a concerted effort to push the newer coaches towards the head coach as great ideas to take over those middle groups that are kinda missing a coach right now while him and the other coach are trying to coach them too.

Since coming back from the Hunstville meet, we have decided to look forward to the long course season as yes, we could last chance meet in a couple of weeks and maybe pull a state bid, but then is she barely making it and we are looking at a big bill just to barely compete in state. Instead, we are setting our sites until March on getting better at specific things. One is eating better, another core workouts to help her stay straighter in the water. She is spending each practice looking specifically in each practice to get better at something.

Zoey is motivated to continue on, but my wife and I are trying to focus that motivation on specific tasks and not just saying, “Let’s get better.” Let’s get better at specific things. Let’s focus on one thing at a time and not just a broad goal of getting better. She knows that she needs to work on techniques of swimming, so for example, today, when I walked in, it looked super weird, but she was doing a slow movement thing with her hand while doing backstroke. I realized she was attempting to teach herself how to be exact with her backstroke arm movements, so if she practiced muscle memory slow when she was racing, it would be that muscle memory and not just move fast. These small things are the difference in 3 or 4 seconds without working speed also.

As long as she continues taking every practice, one practice at a time learning to work on a specific thing each day then by long course state times we will not just have a qualifying time but she will be swimming in the evenings for points.