Striving for Excellence - A Club "Turn Around" Story

Bloomington, Illinois - An interview with Charlie Yourd, Head Coach of the WAVES Bloomington-Normal Y Swm Clubin Bloomington, Illinois.

How does a small, low-expectation, recreational program change in just a few years to an up-and-coming team developing fast young middle distance swimmers? WAVES Bloomington-Normal Y, on the prairie of central Illinois is an example of how a strong coaching philosophy of distance training can turn a competitive swim team around.

In the summer of 1998, a courageous and visionary Bloomington-Normal YMCA associate director, Kathleen Cox, decided that the time had come to change the direction of the Y's WAVES swim team. Through much of the 1990s it was considered a recreationally-oriented program that wasn't competitive on the state level. Their swimmers had a reputation for only racing 50s. Swimming the 100 was considered a distance event in those days. Cox wanted to raise the caliber of the team, and so she looked for a coach who had a clear philosophy, a well conceived plan, and most importantly, who based his decisions on what is best for the development of the swimmers themselves.

Wth the hiring that August of the current head coach, Charlie Yourd, the WAVES team philosophy changed to an excellence-oriented distance work ethic. Yourd had come to coaching later in life. After working as a wilderness forest fire fighter in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, driving a cab in San Francisco, managing a national trade show, and producing international finance conferences, he became fed up with the business world, and decided to return to his first love, competitive swimming.

In 1995 he hosted an anti-drug swim symposium at San Francisco's Olympic Club featuring leading world coaches such as George Haines, Forbes Carlile, and Peter Daland. At the time, Yourd was reading everything on swimming that he could get his hands on, listening to hundreds of hours of coaching clinic talks by successful coaches, and also visiting top programs in the Bay Area, long noted for their outstanding teams, coaches and swimmers.

He observed numerous workouts and discussed practical and philosophical aspects with the head coaches of the Terrapins (when world record holder Natalie Coughlin was 15), Santa Clara, DeAnza, San Ramon, and Orinda; all good programs producing national or international caliber swimmers year after year. While dining with US Olympic and Stanford coach Skip Kenney at the annual Cal-Stanford graduating seniors dinner (an event Yourd started), he enthusiastically described to Kenney his on-deck visits to the programs mentioned above, whereupon, to Yourd's surprise, Kenney responded. "Why haven't you visited my program?"

"An Outstanding Way to Learn"
Soon Yourd was spending a few days each week on deck at Stanford too. During these club visits, he soaked up everything he could. "All the coaches were wonderful; they each went out of their way to help me". Said Yourd: "It's an outstanding way to learn. I can't imagine how a coach can work without first studying directly under the best coaches."

By 1998, Yourd had become a "volunteer intern", as he dubbed it, working with the national group at the Santa Clara Swim Club.

Yourd said: "The Santa Clara coaches, Dick Jochums and John Bitter had me working with a middle-distance lane. This made a big impact on my coaching philosophy. In that lane were Olympian-to-be Tom Wilkens, a couple of girls who went 1:59 for 200 IM in high school, and a backstroker ranked third in the world for 200m. While training, technique, and talent are important, to do anything significant also requires good training habits, as well as the attitude and behavior patterns that make top-level athletes."

Changing Course
Upon arriving in central Illinois, Yourd found a team in need of strong direction. Quite a few changes were soon to occur. First, synchronized pace clocks were installed at each end of the team's two training pools. Next, it became a strict rule to put all lane ropes and backstroke flags in place before the start of every practice. Yourd immediately drafted a long-term plan designed to change the culture of the team. There seemed to be a low level of respect by swimmers and parents for the authority of coaches as well as a lack of understanding of the true benefits of the sport. With great enthusiasm and determination, Yourd set out to gradually put his new program into action.

Yourd knew that, first and foremost, he had to instill proper training habits in the younger swimmers. He realized the importance of grooming the team's younger swimmers in good training habits right from the start. So he made sure that 10 and unders practiced at a time when they would never see any teenaged swimmers.

Yourd said: "None of the kids on the team had ever had role models of how top athletes train, and no one had demanded proper habits and behavior. The available role models were people who treated year-round swimming as an indoor version of a summer league team. I isolated the little kids from what I considered negative influences. With no access to role models either positive or negative, I would say to them: "This is the way it is done, and so they had to take my word for it."

The WAVES Training Program
"We run a distance-oriented program," said Yourd.
"We train our swimmers for the 1500 freestyle and the 800 IM. Full cardiovascular development is what we are after. Along the way we toss in some neuromuscular coordination. This is the path to the top taken by so many great swimmers. People look at Natalie Coughlin's success at the 100-200 distances; they don't know that by age 14 she was putting in 100k weeks. Our training program is very simple; because I think it's important that the kids at all levels can understand what they're doing and, most important WHY they are doing it."

"We strive for gradual improvement in each key areas. With frequent and consistent attendance, after a few years you've got yourself a pretty good swimmer. To me it all starts with demanding excellent practice behaviors. Everything we do is oriented toward successful middle distance racing. We know that this is not for everyone, but kids need to have a strong work-ethic to do well in our program. There are so many youngsters who want a challenging environment that offers them a real chance to succeed, and for young athletes who really want to strive for success in competitive swimming, and not mess about, the WAVES is the place to be.

Swimmer & Parent Education
After spending a few weeks mentally preparing his 12-unders to swim their first 1650 at a meet, Yourd was surprised to discover he'd forgotten to lay an educational foundation with their parents, some of whom just up and took their swimmers home before the meet-ending 1650. "At the time I wasn't happy, but it was a good lesson that I laugh about today. It taught me the importance of educating the parents as well as the swimmers."

"In addition to frequent team emails, we spend a great deal of time and attention on a team newsletter that comes out every four weeks or so. It 's pretty popular, we make enough copies so swimmers and parents can each receive their own issue. The newsletter provides acknowledgement, motivation, and education along with directions to meets and practice schedule changes."

"Most families are in the dark as to what the sport is all about. I want to make sure that I help them understand competitive swimming. I'll reprint articles that express a point of view that I believe to be helpful to the direction we're headed as a team. And so there