Letter from Coach Bill

Bill Manton

January 2010

To the Farmingdale Aquatics family,

As you know by now, Coach Eric has decided to take early retirement. I am sure we all wish him well with whatever he decides to do. At first I was asked to step in on an interim basis to fill in as head coach. Then I was approved by the Board of Farmingdale Aquatics to be the head coach on a more permanent basis at the January 19, 2010 meeting and will be proud to serve you. Most of you already know me with the work that I’ve done the last season with our Intermediate squad and with my wife Debbie the past six seasons on Preteam. I’ve been swimming since the age of 5 and still do 3-4 times a week. One of the reasons that I love the sport is because you can keep it with you your entire life.

I would like to open a new line of communication between our coaching staff and parents. We know how to teach them to swim faster, you know how to be their parents and together we can help them reach their full potential. We are still going to have to make some adjustments to our program as we find what works and what does not. Our goal is to find what works best for each swimmer.

We will be hiring a new coach named Kelly Harris. I feel Kelly will be an asset to our team. Kelly swam at SUNY Binghamton for four years, was a FHS Varsity swimmer as well as a club swimmer. She will be working with some of the seniors. Kirk will continue doing a great job with the Developmental program and I know his kids love him. Dan will be working with his Intermediate group taking them through the finer techniques of all four strokes. Mark and Bruce will keep working their magic with our Elite/Senior squad. I will still keep my group working hard to make sure they reach their goals of Silver and JO times. Debbie and I will continue to use our love of swimming to help the Preteam swimmers progress by finding their balance and feeling confident in the water. I feel we have people who are good at what they do and love what they do. Farmingdale Aquatics will remain strong and grow in the future. We also have a great board and many people behind the scenes who make this all work. When you see them, please thank them for their commitment.

As you know our pool is over 40 years old and has seen better days. We are unable to host a meet here due to the shallow depth of lanes 1 and 2. The pool has many mechanical problems that come with age and use. I believe we should push the Town of Oyster Bay to build its residents an indoor pool. This will not be an easy fight, but remember without a pool there would be no team. We need lots of people to get involved with this project. It would be for your swimmer as well as the future of our swim team. Think of how nice it would be for the kids to finally have a home team meet. Additionally, think of the financial boost it would give us to put back into our club. I cannot stress how important this is. You cannot assume someone else will do it.

All of us must do it. Please become involved with this endeavor. It will pay us and your children back many times over. We need to start with this right away and put a real 100% effort into it. Failure is not an option. Please contact me to become involved in setting up a committee to keep the pressure on the Town to get this done. We deserve this pool as we are one of the few Nassau townships without an indoor pool.

Lastly, I would like to personally thank Jim & Chris Casement for taking over our meet-entering software program called Team Manager and our website. They have picked up the pieces and have kept us up to date with our meet entries.

Remember that the entire coaching staff is here for you. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to ask. I am accessible to you and welcome your input.

Thank you very much,

Coach Bill Manton

Learning to Prepare for the Best

Coach Bruce

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SWIM PARENTS

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Learning To Prepare For The Best

John Leonard

As I write this in early January in Fort Lauderdale, the air temperature is a “balmy” 42 degrees….well, balmy if you’re from Green Bay, Wisconsin, maybe. Here in South Florida, that’s a cold wave. We swim outside, and the water temperature is 75 degrees…..the heaters can’t keep up when the air is this cold. The wind chill factor, according to Channel 7, is…well, we don’t want to know the wind chill with a nice brisk 20 mile an hour wind coming off the Everglades.

My phone rings at 5 AM and a small voice on the other end asks plaintively, “Do we really have swim practice, Coach John?” Yes, we really do.

WHY? Is the next question, which I wrestle with myself on the 15 minute drive to the pool….why put teenagers in the water on this cold and nasty morning when both they and I would prefer to stay snuggled in at home for another hour or hour and a half.

Now, I KNOW why, but can I express it to my swimmers? Yes, I’ll try. Everyone, on the day after the high school state meet, vows that “next year” they will A) make a final, B) Make the meet C) win an event or D) write in your own goal here.

It’s easy to vow to do something the day after, when you are excited, full of the promise of life and get up and go. It’s a lot harder to REMEMBER what you wanted to do in early January when it’s 5 AM and cold outside. Then it’s a lot harder and a lot easier to rationalize, “it’s just one workout”.

The problem is, when teenagers begin to learn to rationalize, they get really good at it really fast, and pretty soon, the ACTION required to fulfill the commitments to those goals/dreams, falls prey to the rationalization. And after you rationalize the decision you want to make the first time, it’s so much easier to do it the next time, and the time after that, and pretty soon, the goal is just a dream, because you’re rationalizing yourself into thinking, “I’d like to do that if everything could be perfect for me, and it would never be cold in the morning, or no social events would ever conflict with practice, and time with my friends always went the way I want it to.“

But things never go perfectly. The ONLY thing you can successfully predict is that obstacles to your goal WILL come up, and little or nothing will go smoothly. And that consistency in preparation is the only way to raise the percentages of the chance you will reach your goal.

Read that again….”raise the percentages of the chance…” Not a guarantee. If it’s a good goal, there are no guarantees, EXCEPT that if you don’t prepare correctly, according to the plan, you won’t raise your chance of success, you’ll lower it.

So why go to practice at 5 AM in the cold? Because it’s part of the plan, and it raises your chance of success. But most of all, because you have told yourself that you will commit to doing it. And if you let yourself down, who won’t you let down? Prepare for a chance for success. And feel really good about doing that.

Because not very many people do.

Farmingdale Aquatics: Blog Posts

Letter from Coach Bill

Learning to Prepare for the Best