At an urban high school its difficult to recruit students for the swim team. I am now the team’s coach and I often hear something to the effect of, “Are you crazy? I can’t even swim!”, when I ask students if they want to join. I’ve been looking for ways to focus my efforts and the other day I got a gift that with a few clicks of a mouse I had one more swimmer.
Last Tuesday they sent us a spreadsheet with the results of a career interest survey the freshman had taken. It was cool to see the different jobs they chose but I was wondering, the data freak that I am, what I could do to make the data tell me more. Then I noticed that two of the columns were interests Some students chose some pretty random things like scuba diving and cave exploring but most picked basketball and football. As I was going down the rows swimming caught my eye. After filtering out the students who chose swimming and the boys in that group I had a list of ninth graders who like to swim. This was cool.
I scanned this short list for guys in my classes. I picked up on one in particular and when came into my room that day I asked him if he wanted to join the swim team. He said he hadn’t thought about it but he did like to swim, so yeah, he would join the swim team. I couldn’t believe it was that easy.
Experiences like this are why I like computers and am convinced they make life easier and more interesting. Before the end of the week I plan to use this list to get enough swimmers for two relays in every event. Otherwise its back to convincing football players and guys who don’t make the basketball team that swimming is a good way to stay in shape for next season.
Just tell the football players it will help them get swim team girls