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APRIL 17-19, 2009
The Dutch Youth Swimming Federation has asked that our own Coach
Kurt travel to the Island of Curacao to offer a swimming clinic to
university swimmers from six countries. Mr. Sigmund Goloe
stated that he met coach Kurt last year in Aruba during the Aruba
Invitational and was so impressed with his techniques that he knew
he wanted to bring coach Schallitz to Curacao as soon as
possible. When he was asked by the Dutch Swimming Federation
for a coach to give a clinic, Mr. Goloe jumped at the opprotunity
to ask coach Schallitz.
Here are some of his comments from doing the clinic.
The island was wonderful, the weather was unbelivably fantastic
and the kids were just plain wonderful to work with. On the first
day, there were several skeptical coaches. One in particular was
standing with arms crossed at the back of the room and after a few
minutes into our first session exclaimed that I had no idea what I
was talking about and walked out of the room. This reminded
me of the time I trained the Olympic coaches in El Salvador- the
first day they were very skeptical and didn't want any part, but by
the second day they were all my best friends and couldn't believe
they didn't do things my way before. In this case, the coach with
the crossed arms decided to leave his swimmers in the clinic - and
good thing too.
By the end of our two and a half day clinic we had covered front
crawl and butterfly. We used under water video to capture
stroke rate, stroke length and efficiency ratings both before the
clinic and after. On the final day we played the video to the
coaches and swimmers. There was a lot of laughter, open
mouths and disbelief. During the clinic I had more than one coach
come up to me and ask, "Why do you film them? You can't possibly
see a major difference in just two days!?" I told them to just hang
on and watch.
Well - on that last day everyone was stunned. EVERY single
swimmer in the entire clinic, from over six countries -
IMPROVED! And they improved measurably in stroke rate, stroke
length and efficiency. One girl actually improved her
efficiency by just over 57% in only two days! Since the clinic I
have received email from swimmers all over the world. One swimmer
from Panama told me that his times are faster now than ever before
and his friends are all asking him how he did it.
The really great news for the Blue Dolphins is that based on
this clinic, several coaches have requested additional clinics. In
fact one team had an Olympic swimmer scheduled to do a camp in
October of 2009. They have now canceled with the Olympic
swimmer and have requested coach Schallitz for the camp
instead. The clinic has now been confirmed and the Blue
Dolphins have been invited to an international swimming meet on
Curacao in October!
More to come when we get the information from Curacao - stay
tuned.
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