Blog Post of the Week: October 1

By Shawn Klosterman, originally posted at SwimmingWorld.TV

Have you ever been at a swim meet and seen something that made you step back and say, "swimmers are just plain weird?!" Every time I read The Mrs. Coach Chronicles, I have a similar moment of clarity. Mrs. Coach is a journalist and former runner who was thrown off the boat head first when she married a swim coach. She is now learning to accept her roles as a lap swimmer, swim team mom and coach's wife, and she is bringing us along for the ride.

When I read Mrs. Coach, I feel like I am in the bleachers behind some of the new team swim moms who are trying to figure out our crazy sport and describing it in the most hilarious way. Wanna know the strain that being coached by your husband can bring to a marriage? Ever wondered what inspires your team moms to consider the summer league bull-pen to be the seventh circle of hell? It's all there, from the refreshing perspective of an outsider thrust right into the middle of a life lived on the pool deck.

This week's blog entry, "Lane Matters," is an observation of the prejudice of lane-ism. In other words, she is on to us… she knows that lane assignments in practice are more a matter of social status and wolf-pack mentality than ability and logic. The way she describes it, it seems that if our coaches left us to decide our own lanes every day, it would eventually turn into Lord of the Flies. Cliques would form, alpha-males would fight for dominance, and romance would eventually lead to trouble.

Excerpt: To be a "Lane Sixer," in one team's lexicon, is a terrible thing. I don't know, but if I were them I'd be afraid of the kids in those outside lanes. I've usually found the outside-lane dwellers to be intelligent and sarcastic. Show me a bright smart aleck who has found a reason to work hard at a sport they never win at, and I'll show you someone who's going to be signing Lane Three's paychecks some day.

You can dig through the Mrs Coach archives at http://mrscoachchronicles.blogspot.com

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