Swim Team Builds Self Esteem

I coach and lifeguard for the Greater Newark Boys and Girls Club in Bear, DE, as a volunteer. I teach the "Dolphins" how to swim, how to improve their techniques and times, and how to set individual goals and to meet or exceed those goals. I teach them the importance of pool safety and respecting your and other members' belongings and space. I teach them courtesy and manners and good sportsmanship. I teach them how to make friends with their teammates and others who are guests of the program. I build their self-esteem by encouraging them to try new things and letting them know that mistakes are okay, that you learn from them and keep trying to do things the right way, and that they can depend on me to be there, as their coach and lifeguard or just someone to talk to, if that's what they need. I teach them different ways to handle anger and frustration through swimming and exercise and other physical activity, instead of whining, hitting, cursing, and bullying, because we don't tolerate that kind of behavior in our club. Accordingly, I teach them that being a member of the swim team is a privilege and a reward for good behavior and unacceptable behavior will prevent the child from participating in competitions and may cause the child to lose his/her spot on the team. In doing so, I am teaching each child that his/her actions have consequences and he/she will be held accountable for his/her own actions, whether they be positive and rewarded or negative and punished. This reinforces the discipline that children are being taught in school and hopefully at home. The primary goal that I want children to set for themselves is not to win but to do their absolute best, to give it a great effort, and to feel in their heart that they did everything they could to success, and if they fell short or lost the meet, then that was okay, because they gave it their best effort. There is no shame in doing your best and not winning, because there are always going to be others out there who will be better at certain things than you are. So, if they do their best, they can be satisfied that they did not lose because they just didn't try hard enough, but they just weren't physically developed enough or for some other reason out of their control, and that it was a fair competition. And, that's where sportsmanship comes in...to accept loss when you gave it your all but the other person still won and you congratulated him/her on his skill and on winning. To lose with grace is an art that is important for children to learn early on, because in life we do not win or succeed every time we attempt something. How well you lose tells a lot about a person's character much more than how well you win.