Tech suits
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This is my first year of coaching college swimmers and I found that college coaches that we compete against get all butt hurt when our kids swim in tech suits. I could care less what they wear as long as we don’t swim naked. The reasons I’ve heard for not wearing tech suits during the season makes no sense.
Never did I care what they wore as a club coach. Regular suit in prelims and then tech suit in finals or tech in prelims and then tech suit in finals. What ever floats your boat. Just be FAST!
Any college coaches have any ideas how this got started?
oldschool
? All that is not shared... is lost.Not a college coach but I deal with the same thing in high school swimming. My number 1 frustration here is that our girls can only swim two events at the final meet and with their club team they can swim 7 events at their final meet. So they only wear a tech suit for 2 events with me and then 7 with club. They wind up thinking they got a lot better in club in 5 of their 7 events when in reality they could have gone pretty good times on everything in high school season if tech suits weren’t frowned upon so much.
At the last few meets of the year I encouraged some of my swimmers to wear tech suits to break some records and see how fast they could go in off events. I swam them JV so it wouldn’t change the outcome of the meet but still managed to upset the other coach at one meet.
I wore a tech suit in college in off events and it was frowned upon by my teammates and probably other teams.
From my experience in college and high school the reason coaches don’t want their swimmers wearing tech suits is they don’t want to give up the huge taper drop. It gives them a rush of excitement when their swimmer can drop 3 seconds in a 100 at the final meet. They also probably don’t want to risk someone not getting a season best time at the final meet. It would reveal that their taper isn’t all that they say it is. Tech suits have been hiding bad tapers for years.
I also find it funny when a coach has one 500 swimmer drop 15 seconds at sections (with a tech suit) and a similar swimmer only drops 4 seconds (without a tech suit) and they say “Swimmer A just had a great taper and Swimmer B was just okay.” In reality Swimmer B probably got slower with her taper and Swimmer A improved minimally. No one wants to credit the suits.
"Most people have the will to win. Few have the will to prepare to win."
Billratio,
I agree. They some how think it is far better to have these huge time drops at the final meet of the season (hopefully) then let their kids swim fast all season. The average rate of improvement over a season is 1.5-3% and for the life of me I don’t understand why dropping .8% in a meet and then the next meet drop .4%, etc. until you get to the final meet and the drop maybe another 1% or whatever that equals a 1.5 to 3% improvement for the season, either way it’s still 1.5-3%. Who cares how you get there.I discussed this with the kids and asked “would it be better to get paid (drop a little time) along the way or hope we win the lottery at the end” and each said they would rather get paid along the way.
Just frustrated
oldschool
? All that is not shared... is lost.Hey guys,
As a college coach for the better part of a decade I think it comes down to coaches wanting a fair playing field. That being said if I could afford to put my kids in tech suits for every race I would. I have found that most coaches are okay with it if they know ahead of time, in my experience all coaches are okay with it if they are going for something, record, cut, etc. But some coaches always are going to be upset about having a tech suit in nonchampionship meets just because that is the way it has always been. Whatevr, do what is best for your swimmers first.
I agree with the taper motivation however it does come down to money. At a JC back in 2005 I was coaching we had one well funded team shell out for full suits for the conference champs at 300-400 a pop. My school could afford jammers (still spent about 3-4K). At my university, 2006-2007, it was the same deal. They bought us jammers and I paid for a full leg on my own. I think I was able to use it a couple times the next year before it wore out.
It created an arms race. If one of the teams had shown up to a dual meet in techs all the swimmers on my team would be asking for them. I think it was an unspoken rule to spend the money at the end. I’m glad they changed the rules years back. It was really creating a huge money suck for the programs to compete with the newest suits. I’d rather have money for team gear and travel trips then one suit for one meet.
Ryan
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