Frustration on Friday at 4 pm — and Summer Dreamers starts on Monday. The contract changes are explained.

Yesterday was a bad day for me because I lost my cool waging an administrative battle with some with Pittsburgh Public Schools. I was frustrated. I think a solution that includes a down-sizing has been found. We’ll see what the first day and week of camp brings.

Sadly, the contract for Swim & Water Polo with the Pittsburgh Public Schools / APOST and the nonprofit, BGC is in going to change. There are more than a dozen kids who expect to be in water polo next week, and they’ll be denied. Ugh.

Providing opportunities and access to aquatics for our city kids is central to my being. The outcome in this latest challenge, still to be formalized with an adjusted deal, is not what is desired: FEWER kids in our program. So, I’m disappointed. I’ll explain what’s what in this posting.

I am sticking to my original thoughts and will not compromise. Let’s not threaten the program’s principles in terms of:

  1. Safety, nor,
  2. Learning advancement, nor,
  3. Game integrity.

The spirit of cooperation and my relationship with PPS and PPS Summer Dreamers is something I take seriously. I have never broken a deal. Generally, I’m wrongly blamed for recruiting extra students into Swim & Water Polo. In the past, we often open up more spots for kids who want to join us. I have expressed a desire to grow participation in Swim & Water Polo, past 190 students at our peak enrollment in the past, to more than 1,000. So, turning away kids is against my personal constitution.

I have a plan for coaching 90 kids at the Northside site and I’m happy and excited to do so. But, how those kids are managed needs to be with best practices and in a way I dictate. We want to energize the kids in water polo — not ring-around-the-rosy games. The squad structure and matrix of the Swim & Water Polo activities are keys to our mission and success.

Summary: I want 15 or 16 kids in a squad. I want to manage three squads each with 16 kids. Meanwhile, the on-site order was to do two squads of 25 kids. Hold everything! Someone at PPS feels the best I can do with my program is to have two squads each with 25 kids. I won’t do that, and that’s what I made clear in a not-so-elegant manner on Friday.

Very best solution — three groups and use of all the local pools

The ultimate solution, to get a program that sets the world on fire, is to have three squads of 15 to 17 kids. Two of the squads would swim each day, in shifts / stations at the indoor PPS swim pool at Allegheny Middle School and the THIRD squad would go off campus to the Northside’s Citipark Swim Pool called Sue Murray. They would hike over and swim there from 1 to 3 pm.

Sue Murray Pool from past

At the Citiparks Pool, we’d have some skills to work upon. But it would be a time to also play games with some other kids, playing well with others. And, a time to get outdoors. We have had a great history of swimming outside with Swim & Water Polo in the past years. Never a problem. Always rewarding. And, when we can work indoors for a majority of the time, going outdoors is a great camp experience in terms of variety.

The city kids should be able to use the city parks and city pools — and they have been welcome. We need PPS to allow this to happen again, as it worked in the past without problems.

Two adults and a captain helper can easily manage 15 kids in a well supervised walk and swim. Even if this happened 1 day a week, it would do wonders. To keep it simple, let’s take one squad every day so every kid gets to go outdoor swimming once every third day — if they know how to act accordingly, of course.

If denied regular outdoors swimming — then let’s have three squads rotate in stations and swim indoors

We can live with less regular field trips and swim a super-majority of the time indoors with three squads in three stations. Begging for less than ideal is a buzz kill.

Background:

Swim & Water Polo operates as an “activity provider” in a sub-contract with APOST and PPS. APOST is part of the after-school wing of the United Way. APOST is a meta-organization for doing some administrative duties with PPS. APOST helps, especially, with finance and cash-flow issues for the activity providers.

This 2017 Swim & Water Polo contract had assigned 90 students with 50 at Northside’s King and 30 at U-Prep in the Hill District. There isn’t any issue at U-Prep as we have 30 kids total, that is of course, two squads of 15 students in each squad.

Supervision isn’t an issue.

Plenty of swim instructors, coaches and lifeguards are ready to work. For the Northside site, PPS provides some teachers and camp coordinators to help.  On paper, now, the ratio is 4:1 camper:adult. At King, we were to have six PPS teachers, two lifeguards, three teen captains, and one and a half experienced coaches. I’m counting myself as half as I’ll be either at King or at U-Prep depending upon activities. Plus, we were promised five Learn-and-Earn helpers, but seem to be expecting three. Let’s not even count those folks.

Fit, Fitness, and pitching the numbers.

The 50 kids at King are to swim at the pool at Allegheny Middle School, an easy three-block walk. The pool is 4 lanes wide with a shallow and deep end. One important limitation is water space in the shallow end with third-grade kids. None of the kids are expected to know how to swim on the first day. Less than 10% will be able to swim in the deep water as we begin. In past years, Swim & Water Polo had far more of middle school kids in higher grades. This year, in 2017, all the assigned students are 3rd graders. If we had a mix of students from various grades, some would be older, taller, and able to stand in deeper water. Last year, 2016, allowed for different squad sizes because many of the kids had been in Swim & Water Polo in in prior years (2015 & 2014). There were already good swimmers and older kids in the camp. And, the pool, Brashear High School, was a bigger, 6-lane pool. We could play two games at the same time. In 2017, the assigned kids are all new to Swim & Water Polo.

My plans for the 50 students calls for the formation of three squads with 16 or 17 kids per squad. (50 divided by 3 is 16.6.) Given a typical day and kids absent from camp any given day, we’d have about 15 kids per squad. There are plenty of reasons for having three squads of 15-students at King, in my expert opinion.

The rub. I’m told we must have two squads with 25 kids.

No way. I’m not going to dunk 25 kids, all rookie swimmers, all 3rd graders, into the 4-lane pool. Two-squads won’t work.

With three different squads, the swimmers have ample room in the pool, in lessons, in the games and in the locker-areas for transitions.

The three squad matrix, my plan, came with two objections from PPS teachers who are assigned to our activity. The complaints arose from newcomers to my program and within the initial 3-minutes of our initial training meeting on Thursday. I heard the order: “All 50 students were going to go to the pool at the same time.” Plus, “Every day of camp would be just like the others.”

PPS people are to support the activity providers, not dictate, the terms of the experience (in this case, sabotage).

Some issues surface between activity-providers and assigned PPS teachers now and then. Nine-out-of-ten times, the relationships have been great. But, training week is always awkward. And when the personnel fit isn’t present, things can spin sideways, especially after a pitched complaint to a specific principal / camp director. “Partnerships,”  expert leadership, and program goals matter little. The principal pitched the concept of ONE group of 50 kids all in the pool at the same time. OMG. The cooler head of the activity coordinator gave a compromise of 25 kids with two groups.

Three squad matrix with three activity stations in a circuit-style rotation

Schedule:
  1. Academic / classroom instruction happens in the mornings.
  2. Our kids get early lunch (great) to 12:45 pm.
  3. 12:45 to 1 pm: Meeting with all coaches and students with Water Polo, plus attendance. Breaking up into squads and then heading to stations.
  4. 1 to 1:50 pm: First station
  5. 1:50 to 2:40 pm: Second station
  6. 2:40 to 3:30 pm: Third station
  7. Prepare for dismissal at 3:45 pm and 4 pm buses.

The stations are similar to circuit training. The groups rotate from one station to the other on a schedule. I call this the daily matrix.

    Activities and locations for these three stations:

  • Swim Pool
  • Literacy / Technology in a computer lab or else patio with tablets
  • Exercise in patio and immediate areas on the sidewalk around the school.

Time at the swim pool is divided into a tiny bit of dry-land time to ensure listening. That can be some simple arm swings. Getting in the water is accompanied with fitness time, often starting with shallow-water running, jumping, kicking, spinning, dolphin dives. Then comes the group lesson on swim technique. Then we get specialized drills and skills with water polo and SKWIM. Passing, defense, goal-keeping and game play. The last bit in the water is generally devoted to game play, scrimmages, continual action. Game over. Put away equipment. Dry off and change into clothing for a group walk back to school.

Time with literacy and technology includes connected writing, discussions, quiz taking, video watching and efforts with multimedia and our online resources including a course, Get Your Feet Wet – Swimming, at Play.CLOH.org. We do A-for-Athlete activities and stress water safety stories too.

The exercise time with the students includes body-weight exercises, med-balls, stretching, some yoga, planks, box jumps, and a few other exercise routines that we’ve designed and create. But this exercise time also includes talk about water polo rules, SKWIM techniques, game-play, sportsmanship, teamwork and goal-setting. We de-brief and prep about our time in the pool and answer questions, offer in-depth tips and watch video of ourselves. Plus, of course, we take the hike to and from the school and pool, hydrate, perhaps snack, and change into and out of our swim suits.

Conducting “Recreational Swimming” and “Free Swims” isn’t our aspiration, especially at the indoor-pool setting in the summer.

The three 50-minute periods can work its magic, especially in the early stages of camp when swimming stamina isn’t developed. We don’t want the kids to take breaks in the water, get cold, have to substitute and sit idle. When people are out of the pool, on the deck, and causing distractions, the sessions suffer.

Everyone stays engaged with the matrix and 15 player squad sizes.

One squad swims first, while the other squads are at the exercise and literacy stations. On the next day, that squad swims at the second station. And later in the week it swims in the third station. Every day brings a slightly new experience with new flow, new challenges, new lessons, new progression. I like it best when a squad gets to exercise before swimming, getting hot and breaking a sweat before showering and cooling off in the swim pool.

Equipment issues too

SKWIM goal at the Obama pool, 6-lanes wide. See how we can’t put 25 kids into the pool at one time.

In 2016 we deployed swim fins and in 2017, we invested in lots of additional fins for the smaller feet of the younger swimmers. These official SKWIM fins are going to be a great addition to the program. However, we have four or five pair of each size fin. We should be able to get a whole squad of 15 kids wearing fins — but — there is no way we’d have enough fins to outfit a squad of 25 kids if they are in the water at the same time.

Playing water polo at an indoor pool is competitive fun and everyone gets to play.

About the author 

Mark Rauterkus

Swim, SKWIM and Water Polo coach and publisher in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Executive Director of SKWIM USA, a nonprofit advocate organization and webmaster to the International Swim Coaches Association. Head varsity and middle-school swim coach for The Ellis School. Former candidate for public office on multiple occasions.

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