Winning, it turns out, isn't the only thing

I don’t know what sparked the thought, but I was thinking today about those infamous lectures you get from coaches after a bad loss or something similar. Now, I know that coaches have to get stern every once in a while. I am fine with that. And, throughout my swimming career I developed a high level of tolerance for their bullshit. The first time I really saw the shit hit the fan was when I was a sophomore in high school. The coach, Scott, sat us down in an isolated corner of the pool deck so we were walled in by a couple of diving boards. We were just a bunch of wet high school boys that were 90% naked and out for a swim. We were looking for fun. Swimming, at this point in any one of our lives, should not have been treated as a job. Scott seemed to disagree. He blew up, telling us we should be ashamed of our performance and that he thought we were so much better than that. He wasn’t proud to be a Lambkin (yes, that was our mascot) that day and he told us we shouldn’t be either. The best part, this was after a win. We almost doubled the score of the team we swam against that day. We were unstoppable that year, easily winning every dual meet and going on to win conference. I wasn’t really sure what Scott was looking for. He never said. He just said that we sucked that day. I guess it was a performance because we didn’t 1-2-3 our opponents in every event.

Scott became a notorious yeller. I hated feeling his wrath from across the pool with a glare or from a foot away when he would be foaming at the mouth during his oral tirade against my swimming abilities. So, when I qualified for State that year at Conference and even got the Lambkins a few points in the meantime, one of the reasons I was ecstatic was that I wouldn’t have to face Scott’s wrath after I got out of the pool. Actually, he was jumping up and down on the side of the pool for me. He was so happy. And, I loved seeing him so happy, even if he was only happy because he only cared about winning.

My tolerance level wasn’t tested again until college, and then many times, but I want to focus on one lecture my college coach gave us after a meet against UCSB. We were back in Mission Viejo after a long ride and the coach let the girls off the bus. He told the guys to stay where we were. I prepped myself and took a deep breath thinking it might prepare me for the absurdity of his words. Usually it did, but not this time.

The rant he launched into was easily the most morale-breaking, disgraceful outburst I have ever heard from a coach. He was really pissed we didn’t swim best in-season times up in Santa Barbara. He was pissed we lost. Blah, blah, blah. It went on for quite a while and I could see the girls out of the corner of my eye standing in the doorways of their rooms, watching it all go down.

I know he said he was ashamed to have any gear on his body representative of the school. He was also ashamed to call us a men’s team. He called us all women. Oh God, I checked between the legs just to make sure. Phew. I know there was more, but at one point it got so ugly that I just couldn’t bare it anymore. I must have thought about something else for a while like sleep, but I know I eventually was contemplating ending my swimming career right then and there.

I don’t know what he exited the bus with. I looked up after a moment and he was gone. One of the captains stood up and preached in a roundabout way that the coach was justified in saying those things. I wasn’t buying it. I still don’t buy it. I couldn’t believe this teammate was saying that we were deserving of such horrible words.

Surely, nothing the coach just said made any of us want to keep on swimming, at least for him, right? Wrong. There were several that thought otherwise. I guess what I am saying, is that some of us justified the verbal abuse in the name of sport and winning and we honestly thought the coach was justified in ripping into us like that. How incredibly stupid and ignorant to follow a coach after that kind of eruption. That was the last straw for me. He would never again be a leader for me. It was an awakening of sorts. All I needed were my teammates. I would never let him lead the team for me from then on. I know that I wasn’t seen as a leader on the team because I didn’t respect the coach after that, but I didn’t care, I wanted the team to establish expectations of a coach, and that was something that those who justified his lecture didn’t have. Perhaps I saw them as beyond saving, but I was done showering any praise on a coach to win a recruit, to calm my teammates, or to paint a pretty picture of the coach-athlete dynamic at the university.