Short-range goals for age-group swimmers

Ask a ten-year-old what they want from swimming and the answer is usually enormous: win state, make the Olympics, beat the girl in lane four. Those dreams are worth having. They just do not tell anyone what to do at tomorrow's practice. The City of Atlanta Dolphins coaching staff has written a set of goal-setting guides for the team's families, with titles like Short-range Performance Goals, Types of Goals, Purposes of Goals and Reaching Your Goals. This article follows the same order those titles suggest, with general coaching craft filling in the details.

Why a goal at all

A goal is a promise about attention. When a swimmer has one, they know what to notice during a set. Without it, practice becomes four hours a week of yards. With it, the same yards turn into something with a direction. That is the purpose of a goal, and it is why coaches ask for them even from the smallest swimmers.

Goals also give a coach something to talk about besides times. A conversation that starts with what are you working on this month is more interesting to a child than one that starts with how fast were you.

Three kinds of goals

Coaches sort goals into a few kinds, and it helps to name them. An outcome goal is about the result: placing in an event, winning a heat. A performance goal is about your own number: dropping time in the 50 free, making a qualifying standard. A process goal is about behavior: kicking to the flags off every wall, breathing every third stroke on the last lap, arriving to practice five minutes early.

Outcome goals are exciting but only partly in your control, because another swimmer might have the swim of their life. Process goals are fully in your control. The strongest plan uses all three, with most of the daily energy placed on the one the swimmer can actually affect.

What short-range means

Short-range means weeks, not seasons. A goal a swimmer can check on in two to four weeks keeps the feedback loop quick enough to matter. For an age-grouper, one season is a very long time. A short-range goal fits a young attention span and creates a rhythm of small wins.

A good short-range goal has a few features:

• It is specific: hold a streamline to the flags off every wall, not swim better turns
• It is measurable, so the swimmer and coach can both see whether it happened
• It is hard enough to take effort and small enough to reach
• It is written down, ideally in the swimmer's own words
• It has a check-in date that everyone knows

Writing it down and sharing it

A written goal behaves differently from a wish. Have your swimmer write theirs on paper and tape it where they will see it, inside a swim bag or on a bedroom wall. Then share it with the coach. Coaches cannot read minds, but they can adjust a drill when they know what a swimmer is chasing. A swimmer with a goal about backstroke turns will get noticed on backstroke turns.

The Dolphins guides are written by the coaching staff for this team's swimmers and parents, and they are worth reading together. Ten minutes at the kitchen table can turn a shy swimmer's I want to be faster into a sentence the coach can work with.

Reaching the goal, or missing it

When the check-in date arrives, look at what happened. If the goal was reached, celebrate it, then ask what changed. Often the answer is a habit, and a habit is the thing worth keeping. If the goal was missed, treat it as information. Was it too big? Was the plan for reaching it vague? Did something unexpected, like illness or a missed week, get in the way? Adjust and set the next one. A missed goal does not mean the swimmer failed. It means the first draft was wrong, which is how first drafts usually go.

Parents have a particular job here. The most helpful thing is to ask about the goal, not the time. How is the streamline coming? sends the message that the work is the point. What was your time? sends a different message, and children hear it.

Goals and character

The Dolphins have long described their philosophy as positive character development, self-discipline, a consistent work ethic and courage, and they close it with a line worth keeping: hard work, perseverance and courage are the backbone for success in any endeavor of life. Short-range goals are one of the quiet ways that philosophy shows up in a young swimmer's week. They teach a child to pick a target, plan the work, check the result and try again. Those habits do not stay in the pool.

The team has been in Atlanta since 1984, and its graduates have gone on to schools including Howard, Emory, Stanford and Georgia Tech. None of those paths started with a grand plan. They started with a swimmer who decided to hold their streamline for one more wall.

To bring a goal to the coaches, the Information page collects the team's guides, and the Coaching Staff page tells you who to talk to at practice.