Oct. 31, 2023
CEO of US Masters Swimming, a Champion in and Out of the Water: Dawson Hughes, EP 233
Dawson Hughes, the CEO of US Masters Swimming (USMS), started swimming when he was just eight, and now he stands at the helm of an organization that's making waves in the world of adult swimming. Listen as he shares his journey, his goals for the future, and some exciting initiatives on the horizon for USMS.
In our chat, we dive into the heart of US Masters Swimming's mission - expanding the adult swimming community to a broad range of people. We shed light on the challenges of making the sport more accessible and inviting, especially for beginners who might be intimidated. We explore the unique role swimming plays in providing stability during life's transitions and how to attract a younger demographic. We also touch on the significance of the 'Swimming for Life' hashtag, which encapsulates the essence of the community.
We wrap up our conversation discussing the intrinsic benefits of swimming club memberships, the importance of fostering a supportive team, and the ins and outs of managing a large organization like US Masters Swimming. Dawson shares his commitment to creating a welcoming, inclusive environment and provides valuable insights on career transitioning within the swimming community. So, tune in and immerse yourself in the beauty of swimming and discover why it's more than just a sport - it's a community, a support system, and a way of life.
Email us at HELLO@ChampionsMojo.com. Opinions discussed are not medical advice, please seek a medical professional for your own health concerns.
Chapters
00:01 - Promoting and Growing Master Swimming
08:26 - Expanding the Swimming Community
20:17 - Swimming Club Membership and Benefits
27:28 - Career Transition in the Swimming Community
30:56 - Inclusive Planning for Swimming CEO
Transcript
WEBVTT
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Welcome to the award-winning Champions Mojo hosted by two world record-holding athletes.
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Be inspired as you listen to conversations with champions and now your hosts, kelly Palace and Maria Parker.
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Hello friends, welcome to the Champions Mojo podcast.
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I am your host, kelly Palace, and, as usual, I am co-hosting with Maria Parker.
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Hey, maria, hey Kelly, great to be here today and see you.
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We are in for a treat.
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Today, we're going to be chatting with the CEO of US master swimming, dawson Hughes.
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Dawson took over as chief executive officer of US master swimming in March of 2016.
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He leads the national office staff in providing support for the organization's members in every aspect, including the day-to-day operations of the national office staff.
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Dawson is great at creating win-win opportunities and partnerships for master swimming.
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Working with USA Swimming Foundation, where he serves on their board of directors, he's taken the following initiatives to the next level, including the adult-learn-to-swim program, the USMS digital transformation for greater efficiency, the USMS online community, the college club swimming events and the swimcom USMS fitness events.
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Maria, what else can you tell us about Dawson?
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Dawson is a native of Newport Beach, california.
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He grew up in and around the water and began swimming competitively at the age of eight with the Irvine Novaquatics.
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He graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and swim at the D1 level for the Wolverines for two years.
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As a new master swimmer myself, I have been very excited about everything USMS swimming has to offer.
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But Dawson at the helm of the USMS swimming.
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The future's bright.
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There's a lot more on Dawson, but let's dive in and hear from him himself.
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Dawson, welcome to Champions Mocho.
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Hey, kelly and Maria, Thanks for having me.
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We're delighted to have you.
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Yes, it's so great.
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We have the ma'am, the in-charge of USMS swimming, and we call ourselves a master swimming podcast.
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So we want to get right to the root of all things.
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Master swimming and Dawson, I know you're pretty darn humble so you're going to push back on this, but you're a champion.
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You are a champion swimmer Anyone who swims at the D1 level.
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You swim at Michigan and you're a champion of getting adults to swim.
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So you have this dual role.
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What we want to talk with you about today, and so I guess our first question for you is what is it that really draws you to the sport of swimming, to promote it and to do it?
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I'll take credit for being a champion in high school, but I don't know if I can take it any further than that with my swimming career.
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But I appreciate the background In terms of being involved in swimming.
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I grew up in Southern California and was around the water all the time.
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Swimming was just second nature.
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We had a pool in the backyard.
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I actually started my competitive swimming career at age five in Harbor and Newport.
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I had a summer camp and we did races.
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I like to say I was an open water swimmer to start with and that experience made me realize how competitive I was.
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I had a friend that beat me for two years straight and I kept asking why he was faster than me and my parents said he swam with a competitive USA Swimming Club in town and I said I want to do that and at that point I started swimming year-round competitively and I beat him the next year.
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So I learned that putting a plan in place although it was a pretty limited plan at the time could get me to a goal In terms of transitioning to this.
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I've been around sports my whole life.
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Swimming happened to be the one that I was probably the best at and it was also the one that I think took the most long-term commitment and focus.
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And I did a lot of sports as a kid, typically like all the ones that were around the water played marco, played basketball, and I stuck with swimming all the way through, I think because of the relationships I made with my teammates and my coaches and because of kind of the long-term goal setting and commitment that I was willing to put into it.
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And again, it seems silly to say I think it goes back to when I was about six, but I realized I was pretty competitive.
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I think that still translates to masters.
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A lot of people are surprised when I tell them that only about 30% of our swimmers participate in events.
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Most of them have a fitness goal in mind and it doesn't mean they're just going to the pool three days a week and chatting on the side of the pool although there's a lot of that that goes on.
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Most of them are putting a plan in place and even if their plan is just to lose a couple pounds or to get in the water three days a week or to swim a certain distance over the course of that year, I think it all applies.
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I think it's something that's common with swimmers is to put that long-term goal in place, plan in place to reach it.
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So obviously you were a planner, you were competitive and we would love to hear what is that one thing, that plan that you see master swimming really needs?
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What are you planning for master swimming that we can all get excited about?
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Yeah, there's some things I can tell you about and there's some things I will tease a little bit because they're not quite ready for prime time.
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But the first thing is really trying to bring master swimming to everybody around the country and make it as convenient as possible.
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We have about a thousand master's clubs around the country and we have around 300, 400 events a year.
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But there's still places where we don't have the true master's club environment, and what I mean by that is having a coach on deck that's supporting whatever your individual goals are, having that community of swimmers around you and building that camaraderie that comes along with being on teams One.
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It's not available to everybody in all places.
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You obviously have to have a pool relatively close by, but the master's club has to be there as well, and there are plenty of pools where we don't have that now.
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And it has to be convenient.
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And that's one of the challenges we face with growing the master's swimming ranks is that there's a lot of convenient fit this options out there.
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There's a lot of people, a lot of my friends from my swimming days, that are like I'd love to get back in the water.
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I was in such good shape, I just don't have the time, and continuing to grow our clubs and finding the right people to coach those clubs and getting them plugged in is a huge focus of ours.
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On top of that, trying to get more events in place and potentially more events that are more convenient for people, shorter events, trying some new things that compete with other adult fitness events that are out there.
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It's easy to run a 5K on a Saturday morning and you have the rest of your weekend.
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Swimming aren't always that easy.
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Looking for more unique ways to give people access to swimming events that are fun it can be is a big focus.
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That's great.
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I love that idea.
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I love the comparison to the 5K, and this wasn't true when I was young, but I'm 60 now 5K was a big deal, kind of like a swim meet, the big deal when I was in my 20s.
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And now I can go out and find a 5K anywhere I am, where I travel, and do one.
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So I love that vision for the future of an easy and not too intimidating, because one of the things that running has done as well has made the whole thing really not intimidating.
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You can go, you can walk, you can push your stroll or, you know, everybody can participate.
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If you succeed, what is that going to look like?
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I think there's a couple of things.
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One is you mentioned intimidation.
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We have battled this perception of masters being intimidating for a long time, since before my time I'm masters.
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I think the master swimming brand in general indicates fast, older swimmers to people and it's not necessarily accurate.
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It's just that perception.
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Our CMO, kyle Leary, and I have talked about this before.
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He's a little bit younger than I am, but we both swam in college and we both love college, thinking I'm never going to be a master swimmer because we're going to be of that age group to go do master swimming.
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What we didn't realize at the time was we were in our early 20s and people swimming in the master's clubs we were aware of were in their early to mid 30s.
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We just thought they were old because we were 22 and that was old to us.
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But the mindset hasn't changed.
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So with all of the initiatives that we're doing, we're trying to break down that perception and get people to realize it's not just about swimming fast or winning at nationals.
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Those are all great, they're all important.
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We have a lot of people who are highly motivated by that type of competition, but it ultimately is about people healthy and using swimming to get there.
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We track our success from a business standpoint around how many people are members in USMS.
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But that's a pretty limited way of looking at it.
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We have a lot of people that swim on master's clubs that aren't necessarily members for a variety of reasons.
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There are people swimming in open water events around the country that are USMS sanctioned events.
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There are triathletes that are using swimming to reach their goals that may or may not be members.
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So we're looking at a lot of different ways to achieve our goal.
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Ultimately, we just want to grow a community of swimmers around the country.
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You guys know it's a great community.
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It's very supportive.
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We've got clubs who lift people up in their dark times and people use swimming to get away from some of the stressors of everyday life.
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So the more that we can grow that community, the better.
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We've got to find some better ways of tracking how big that community is.
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It's not just about having somebody join a USMS member.
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It's more about growing that overall community and supporting our clubs at the local level so they can keep offering that experience.
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One thing I've learned in talking to US swimmers that Kelly and I have interviewed is the most important thing is the community.
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I think that's so true.
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So how do we get those people I'm thinking of not necessarily myself, but maybe my adult children and their spouse?
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That would be so amazing for them to be able to go and work with a group, right where they are, to exercise in an easy way, and that's what you're working on.
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We're also trying to again.
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It's a hard paradigm to shift.
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We're trying to change the mindset.
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I told this story a lot and when I took this job and accepted the position, I told the board president at the time, Patty Miller, before I start.
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I got to go get in the water and swim a little and it had been years since I've swum at all.
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She goes awesome, you're a division one swimmer, You're going to be fine.
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I was like I'm not in good enough shape to swim with a master's team.
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Like I got to get in the water.
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She's like that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard and your job now is to figure out how to get people not to think that way.
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I ultimately went swam a few times because I was quite an ego saying I didn't want to jump in the water and embarrass myself.
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But I got in a workout right when I moved to Sarasota and she was right.
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There was people from their 20s to their 90s in the workout.
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There were all ability levels.
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The coach navigated the workout the way that served everybody's needs and I ultimately was I don't know halfway up the food chain and in the middle lanes with some people that swam all the time, but I still was in decent swimming shape.
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So we really need to figure out how to get that perception removed and make sure anybody that feels like swimming might be a fitness option for them isn't intimidated, it isn't scared to do it.
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Swimming comes with some challenges.
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There's driving to the pool, there's the actual getting in the water part, there's the getting out and taking a shower part.
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You can't just put on a bare running shoes and go run outside here from door.
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So we got to also make it fun or willing to dig on those extra steps to make this part of their fitness routine.
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The problem that businesses across the board are challenged with is attracting a younger demographic.
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We are the same way we have been forever.
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We have pretty solid statistics that show that our membership starts to come back around 45 or 52.
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Swimming.
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Typically, their career demands may have come down a little bit, their family demands have come down a little bit, they have a little more control over their own time and they've taken a 20 or 25 year break from swimming.
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We really want to find a way to not have people feel like they need that 25 year break.
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They don't need to swim 10 times a week like they did in high school or college.
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There's a huge community of swimmers out there that aren't engaging with masters for a variety of reasons, and it's not all just from burnout when they were kid.
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It's just not an easy thing to do when you're balancing career, family, kids and everything else going on in your lives.
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Finding some ways to have people engage in a more limited fashion when that is the case and it can't be their priorities are some of the things that are coming up soon, different than our traditional model, that I think will help us change that dynamic as well.
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I love that because you're talking to two people at the extremes of your demographic.
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Kelly is amazing, as you know master swimmers, she holds all kinds of records and I barely swim and it's taken a lot of Kelly talking to me for me to get and I've loved what I've done.
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I love what masters of swimming is doing and how inviting it's been.
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But then, yeah, there's a lot of other people, but it is Kelly's pet peeve that people leave swimming.
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I think a podcast is a good way to reach the youth, because people who are listening to podcasts are those young.
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Just in our last probably two out of the last four shows we interviewed James Pokronowski and Denise Latender.
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They both never took a break from college swimming to master swimming.
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So I thought they were so interesting and unusual and they brought up community.
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Like when they're getting married, starting a hard career, going through law school, what was something that could ground them?
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It was swimming.
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It was like, oh, I'm trying to go to school or I'm trying to start a new job that's unfamiliar and uncomfortable, but swimming is something that I know how to do a flip turn.
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I know how to do 10-100 or 150 or whatever they're doing.
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So, denise, it's actually this week's show that she talks about why swimmers should never quit.
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You and I talked about that and you said you guys have the.
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What is your hashtag?
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Swimming for life.
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Swimming for life, swimming for life, yeah.
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So I believe that, like you said, people don't get burned out.
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We love talking about mindset on this show, from just the newbie mindset.
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So how does that person who is scared to death to show up on a pool deck?
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To somebody who is scared to death?
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Am I going to make a fool out of myself when I tell everybody I'm trying to break a national record?
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And I don't.
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It's a mindset thing, it's the pressure.
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So we'd love to hear from you, dawson, about what you think that mindset needs to be for someone to try master swimming.
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There's risk in anything you do.
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Right.
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We struggle a little bit with getting the message across that master swimming is fun.
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My wife is a former cross-country runner and she's like swimming's what you do to recover from running.
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I was like that's ridiculous and what's going to smell.
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I got her in the pool a little bit during the pandemic.
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But it's hard to go from zero to 60 and it's hard to go from not running at all to running a 5K which is why they have couch to 5K philosophies, and I think that's some of the things we've tried to do with our fitness series.
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On some of the new initiatives that we're coming out with our try master swimming campaign, which is a marketing campaign to just get people to try it I think that first step is saying look, I realize I want to get healthy and fit.
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I realized that swimming is a good way to do that.
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Either I did it as a kid and I was in great shape, or I'm at a point where swimming is the best option for me because it's less impact than other fitness activities.
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Making that first step is the hardest part and we've put some campaigns in place to just get people to make that first step.
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Then it's really on us our clubs, our coaches and our swimmers to make people feel welcome.
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And we've done a lot of work with our clubs because swimmers get into a mindset and they have done it for a long time and they understand what a set looks like on a whiteboard and what all the hieroglyphics mean.
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They know that at 5.30 in the morning that you park at one side of the parking lot and you go to this gate that looks locked but it's not locked and you know how to get in a pool.
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We've had people who have said I couldn't figure out how to get in a pool.
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It's my first time there and I had no idea.
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They told me to be there at six and it was dark and I had no idea.
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So we have to make sure people feel welcome.
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I know that a lot of our members do that.
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I know a lot of our clubs do that, but it's easy to forget what it's like to be a new swimmer If you're somebody who has swum before.
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I think it's more about setting aside your ego, putting together your plan and not your.
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I'm trying to win my high school state championship or I'm trying to win my conference championship in college, or I'm trying to make the Olympic game.
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Those things aren't going to happen anymore.
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If you've taken a 20-year grade, there's lots of other goals you can set as a master swimmer from swimming in nationals to getting into the top 10 to just swim three days a week and I feel great about it.
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Now I've made a bunch of new friends.
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But it's really getting that longer term goal in place, putting in the plan that gets there.
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But you've got to get to the pool and get in the water.
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That's the first step and I think that's the biggest turtle we'll have.
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Oh my gosh, I love that story about showing up at a dark pool with the little gate.
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That's so true, that's been exactly my experience.
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It's like where do I go, who do I talk to and what is that stuff on that whiteboard?
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I don't understand it.
00:16:49.879 --> 00:17:01.267
So, dawson, if you want to speak to the community, from the Marias to the Kellys, from the new so Swam Melbourne Masters has had a huge growth in our team here.
00:17:01.267 --> 00:17:07.457
This is Brevard County, florida, and I have called Brevard County Florida historically for the last.
00:17:07.457 --> 00:17:09.903
I think our team Swam Melbourne is like four years old.
00:17:09.903 --> 00:17:18.902
Prior to that, I've lived in Brevard County for 20 years and I called it the black hole of master swimming Nothing.
00:17:18.902 --> 00:17:29.406
So there were times when I thought I'll start a master swimming program but couldn't find full space much, and then there were times when I wanted a master swimming program.
00:17:29.406 --> 00:17:53.143
So if you're speaking to someone who might be in a black hole of master swimming and unfortunately BJ and Trinity Graham started Swam Melbourne and they really stuck to it and they went through the hard times and they've hung in there and now I think we have 120 people but if you're speaking to the group out there that either wants to start a program or wants to join a program, what would you tell them?
00:17:54.105 --> 00:17:55.650
In terms of starting a program.
00:17:55.650 --> 00:18:10.218
This is our biggest focus is figuring out how to get Quadrix facility connected to a coach like BJ and get them negotiated into a startup position with a club that has planned to be viable.
00:18:10.218 --> 00:18:30.392
Once we can put those things together, us Master's swimming is put together, programming to support them in terms of marketing, in terms of just really that logistical and negotiating support with the Quadrix facility, but also grant money to get things going for lane space, for coaching fees, for whatever else they may need.
00:18:30.392 --> 00:18:37.192
Bj has done an awesome job and he's had some awesome champions like you guys to help grow the club and spread the word.
00:18:37.192 --> 00:18:46.517
That's the most important thing is having that kind of entrepreneurial swimming minded coach who can put together business aspect of it.
00:18:46.517 --> 00:18:50.997
It's not the fun part of it, but it's got to be a place to make it successful.
00:18:50.997 --> 00:18:55.381
And then having enough people that come in the club and are like this is what I've been waiting for.
00:18:55.381 --> 00:18:55.744
This is awesome.
00:18:55.744 --> 00:18:57.023
I want to bring more people in.
00:18:57.023 --> 00:18:58.932
I want to get a bigger group here.
00:18:58.932 --> 00:19:02.022
I don't mind necessarily having an extra person in my lane.
00:19:02.022 --> 00:19:03.455
It's great We've got a bigger club.
00:19:03.455 --> 00:19:05.501
It's going to be viable in the long term.
00:19:05.501 --> 00:19:10.576
Because of that we can't do all of that from the national office level at the local level.
00:19:10.576 --> 00:19:15.790
But we can provide a whole lot of marketing negotiations or we can provide some funding.
00:19:16.744 --> 00:19:19.894
There's some clubs that have started, one in particular in Southern California.
00:19:19.894 --> 00:19:31.848
It took 15 or 20 grand to get the club going to a point where it was just going to break even over time and some people who really wanted a club in that area and had a coach in place funded that initial startup.
00:19:31.848 --> 00:19:34.069
That's kind of an extreme example.
00:19:34.069 --> 00:19:35.834
Prices are different, different places.
00:19:35.834 --> 00:19:42.573
Lane Reynolds are different, different places, but it's tough to tell a swimmer that's looking to start a club or get a club put together.
00:19:42.573 --> 00:19:45.713
You're not going to go in your own pocket and you might never recoup that money, right?
00:19:45.713 --> 00:19:47.732
So we have the resources to do that.
00:19:47.732 --> 00:19:56.633
We can build a plan with them, build a budget with them and try to build that program up to a level over several months maybe four to six months and then turn it over and let it run from there.
00:19:56.633 --> 00:19:57.768
So that would be.
00:19:57.807 --> 00:20:02.412
Step one is reach out to us at the national office and we can help start that conversation.
00:20:02.412 --> 00:20:04.152
If you have a pool in mind, that's Boston.
00:20:04.152 --> 00:20:07.595
If you have somebody who wants to coach or you want to coach, that'd be the better.
00:20:07.595 --> 00:20:08.809
That's actually our hardest thing.
00:20:08.809 --> 00:20:11.493
Why is somebody who's willing to be the CEO of a club?
00:20:11.493 --> 00:20:16.756
They don't necessarily have to coach every work, but somebody's got to manage it or put together a board that will help manage it.
00:20:17.224 --> 00:20:24.233
If you are looking to just join a club and get into swimming, number one is go to our website and see if you have a club close by.
00:20:24.233 --> 00:20:25.750
We don't have clubs everywhere.
00:20:25.750 --> 00:20:27.813
We do have a thousand of them around the country.
00:20:27.813 --> 00:20:29.509
All of them are a little different.
00:20:29.509 --> 00:20:33.449
All the personalities are a little different, based on coaches and based on the people that are there.
00:20:33.449 --> 00:20:39.032
If you have questions, again, you can call the national office and we can help navigate that for you.
00:20:39.032 --> 00:20:42.394
We know most of them and if not, we know somebody locally who does.
00:20:43.085 --> 00:20:55.548
If there's not a club close by, we have lots of resources online for both, from online workouts to fitness logs to track your swimming, to the partnership with swimcom to track your swimming and try to engage with the broader community.
00:20:55.548 --> 00:21:02.095
But again, even if you're an individual and you would really like to swim with a club instead of independently, feel free to call us.
00:21:02.095 --> 00:21:08.414
We would love to hear that there is a group of people that are looking at this and figure out if there's a way we can help support at the local level.
00:21:08.414 --> 00:21:13.731
It's not as easy for us as hey put this big marketing campaign together and all these people want to come and swim.
00:21:13.731 --> 00:21:17.894
There's got to be a club there for them to swim with and a group of people to join.
00:21:17.894 --> 00:21:25.276
There are people who swim independently and do an open swim hours and training by themselves works and they still come and swim in events too.
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