Swimming Competitions: Club Swimming Championships – Part 2
How to Put Together Enjoyable and Engaging Swimming Competitions – 50 ideas for a Positively, Powerfully, Perfect Program – Part Two.
Part One of this Post covered a lot of ground – (or water) – about Swimming Competitions – Now enjoy part two!
More ideas to make your club championships one to remember:
16. Do the same thing but with 100s / 400 IM.
17. Personal Best prizes, e.g whoever does the biggest PB for the meet, wins a prize.
18. Invite a local school band to play for the beginning of the evening / day. It will set the tone of enjoyment and fun.
19. Give the senior swimmers a 25m race. They’ll love it and the younger kids will love watching them.
20. Award the medals / ribbons / prizes after each race. Everyone loves immediate feedback.
21. Music not medals…..Give the older swimmers one song I-tunes download for third place, two songs for second place and three songs for first place.
22. Ask a state or national level swimmer to attend for a short time to present awards and make a short speech to the club.
23. Invite the local member of government or state member to attend for a short time – tell people what a great club you are.
24. Turn awards – give prizes for the fastest turns. Time swimmers from the time their heads go under the flags on the way in to the wall until their feet get to the flags on the way out.
25. Stroke technique prizes. Appoint a judging panel (the head coach, team captain and a former great club swimmer for example) who award points for the best technique in each stroke, the best turns, the best dives, the best racing skills, the best finish, the best underwater work……award technical excellence not just winning times.
26. Encourage multi eventing. Award special prizes to swimmers who do PBs in more than one stroke.
27. Big kid / little kid relays. Grab a swimmer over 15 and another swimmer under 10. Add their ages together, e.g. a 16 year old plus a 9 year old = 25 year team. Add their PB times together and the combined age of their year team, e.g. 30 seconds plus 41 seconds plus 25 years = 96 seconds. The winning team is the team who beats their overall score (in this case 96 seconds) by the greatest margin.
28. Family relays. Mom, dad and all the family enter their best times for 25 or 50 metres. (They can even do time trials in the morning to get a time). Add all the family times together for a total family score. Then have handicap relay races between families.
29. Handicap races. Millions of variations. Use your imagination.
30. Brains and brawn awards – ask kids to enter a list of their most recent report card grades from school. Then add the number of PB swim times to A, B and C grades and award prizes to the kids who have improved their minds and their muscles in the past year!
31. Fancy dress – there are no limits to this idea. How about come as your favorite movie star? Or musician? Or athlete?
32. Talent challenges – each age group has to come up with some entertainment, e.g. 8 year olds could sing something mid morning, 10 year olds could perform a funny skit at the lunch break.
33. Form a Club Championships committee which includes a few swimmers – there is a big difference between adults putting together a program which they think kids will like and a program which kids will actually enjoy.
34. Even better – let the kids come up with their own Club Championships program (with a little help from the coach).
35. Use Swimming Competitions and Club Championships to educate parents – why not organize lectures on sports parenting, sports nutrition, life / school / sport balance and use Club Championships as a learning experience for families.
Check out Part three of this great post.
