The Junior Year Myth

There is a belief common to many swimmers and their parents that one's junior year of high school is the "make-or-break year."  They view the junior year as a swimmer's final opportunity to earn a spot on a college team.  I won't argue that the junior year isn't important, but here are a few concerns I have with emphatically taking this approach:

1) Whether they mean to or not, when parents frame it as the "make-or-break year," it places an undue pressure on the swimmer to perform.  Often, high-achieving parents have high-achieving kids, and the parents just want to make sure their swimmer understands what is at stake.  Inadvertently what the parents are really doing is turning the pressure up a few notches.  More often than not the result:  A swimmer who shifts his focus from the reasons he joined the sport (fun, self-improvement, competition) to a new goal; earning a college scholarship.  This makes swimming feel like a job for many, and takes the fun out of it.  Some swimmers even tighten up under the pressure at meets, causing poor results and increasing the pressure again.  Parents, please understand that if your swimmer is a high-achiever and is planning to swim in college, he probably already realizes the importance of his penultimate year as a club and high school swimmer.

2) This approach emphasizes the swimmer's short-term performance rather than her long-term athletic development.  A swimmer's performance isn't merely a function of how hard she trains that year.  Rather, it is the sum of the years of well-planned and committed training that have progressively improved a swimmer's skills.  Yes, it will help the swimmer's college prospects if she swims well.  Ideally though, the coach and swimmer have been focused on steady improvement all along.  The junior year will just be another step forward from that firm foundation.  I am glad to have anything that motivates a swimmer, but I am skeptical when I hear "it's my junior year, I am REALLY going to work hard now!"  Welcome to the party, you are a few years too late.

3) Rarely does the prospect of swimming in college serve as a proper motivator.  Just as paying employees more on the job has been shown not to increase productivity, earning a scholarship spot on a college team does not always bolster a swimmer's motivation to compete well.  My theory is that this happens when the athlete's primary motivators have been intrinsic and outside influences counsel him to trash those intrinsic motivators in favor of the extrinsic motivation of a college scholarship.

4) What then becomes of the swimmer's senior year? If the junior year is the make-or-break year, what comes after that -- the made-or-broken year?  From the standpoint of the athlete, if he now has it made, then what's the point in trying to improve?  If he has blown his chance to swim at the college program of his choice by not posting the necessary time, then his drive to improve may be even lower.  As a coach on both the club and collegiate sides of the recruiting fence, I have seen this happen too many times.  The athlete has a great junior year, signs a letter-of-intent to swim collegiately, cashes in his chips during his senior year, and then suffers the consequences well into his collegiate career.

Don't buy into the Junior Year Myth.  Though parents (and coaches) may have the swimmer's best interests at heart, the high school junior year should be just another step in a long-term program emphasizing continual improvement toward individual excellence. Making it out to be much more than that is often counterproductive.