Motivation can have many different sources. The desire to win an event or a medal is often one motivator. However in swimming, there is no way to play defense against the swimmers in the other lanes, so sometimes a different form of motivation needs to be used.
A common form of motivation used by coaches is to aim for certain times, either personal bests or numbers that would qualify a swimmer for postseason competition.
“I put different times out in front of them, times that opposing teams have posted,” Manheim Township coach Dan Graybill said. “Then I just keep working them hard.”
Other coaches encourage their swimmers to target their own times and be less concerned with results around the league.
“We usually encourage them to go for better times, for their own personal bests,” Manheim Central coach Heather Fittery said.
But according to the coaches interviewed last week, the primary source of motivation cannot come from someone on the staff or any numbers on a list. Fittery added that even using new personal times as a motivation can be difficult.
“You won’t get a best time in every meet,” Fittery said.
Coaches want the motivation to come more from the mind and heart than the statistics or even the coaches’ own leadership.
“Pretty much of it is on them (the swimmers),” Fittery said. “They’ve got to work hard at practice. We can coach and encourage them, but they have to have the drive.”
And when the swimmers take personal responsibility for their motivation and inspiration, they can find some deeper reasons to put forward their best.
“What pushes me is I have been swimming since I was 5, and this will be my last swimming season,” said Manheim Township senior Cole Stevens. “I’ll be running in college, so, this is my last season. I used to think that the time was unlimited. Now it’s shortening up.”
Stevens will be running track at South Florida next academic year.
But at least one Lancaster-Lebanon League coach does see a duality in motivation. It does need to come from within, but Elizabethtown coach Chad Houck said that others on the team can work to develop that motivation even further.
“So much of motivation comes from within, but it is also peer reviewed,” Houck said. “You want to perform well for teammates and coaches, especially if you’re part of a relay.”
Stevens echoed that sentiment when he said that he deliberately held back some during Thursday’s 500-yard freestyle win so he would have the energy to help with a victory in the 200 freestyle relay minutes later. He and his Blue Streak teammates were successful.
Houck also sees a parallel in having his Bears swimmers motivated in the pool and in other areas of life.
“One of the things is time management,” Houck said. “They’re all in school so they have to balance schoolwork, athletics. Several of them are in chorale; you’ve got to practice time management to get that in.”
