okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Quotes from a swimming coach
Some quotes from a NY Times article about the swimming coach at Kenyon College:
Though swimming is an individual pursuit, Steen treats it as a team sport. He preaches to his athletes that everybody has a redeeming quality; as teammates, their job is to find the positive in one another and let go of the rest. ... Steen...is a big believer that the result should never overshadow the process. ... ...Steen swiveled to meet a visitor eye to eye. He leaned in close and said the pursuit of a single goal often inhibits the risk-taking and creative thinking necessary for personal growth. ... Steen challenges his swimmers to reshape their contours of success. In one mass e-mail message to them, he wrote, "Find a place within yourself where success and failure don’t matter, a place where you can engage in battle without compromise."
The entire article is here. I read a bit about the Kenyon College coach in a book by Hodding Carter about his efforts to qualify for the Olympic Trials in swimming at the age of...well, I can't remember exactly...maybe 40 or so...