Swimming Blogs - Chris DeSantis

Last week, multiple people came to me with a New York Times article on Jim Steen. Its not often that college swimming, in this case Division 3, makes it into the country's biggest newspaper. As the article's title implies, it is mostly about the "simple truths" that have meant sustained success for Kenyon Swimming.

One of the anecdotes in the article concerned the team's most recent league championship. Steen sat down the swimmers who already had "A" cuts and told them that their primary objective was to get at least enough men and women qualified that weekend that Kenyon's roster would be at the maximum 18. Kenyon consistently has more people qualified for their NCAA championships than they can bring. I can remember when I was a swimmer in college wondering what motivated those few extra swimmers who were left off the NCAA roster. Didn't they want a shot at individual glory?

The article reminded me of that feeling. Another, entirely unrelated conversation with Garrett brought me to the subject again. Garrett in his travels had talked with an NCAA coach who was upset at losing a recruit. The recruit had supposedly told the coach that he felt he had a better chance for "individual success" at the other school.

What's really at work here is a set of competing ideals about what "success" really is and the best way to achieve it. The last piece of the puzzle for me was an article by David Sloan Wilson and Edward Wilson on the theory of group selection. Typically, when we think of "evolution" we think of Charles Darwin and the "survival of the fittest". That is, individuals that succeed will naturally predominate and have children, and both among species and within them those with "weaker" traits will die off.

Group selection operates on a different premise. Human beings are social creatures- we communicate and cooperate. Within any group, a selfish action will benefit you directly at the expense of others. This makes selfishness extremely appealing, particularly if everyone else is also selfish. Being unselfish works just the opposite- you sacrifice a little from yourself but helps everyone else indirectly. Group selection is based on the idea that certain social groups, not individuals, cooperated and behaved unselfishly to ensure the survival of the group.

How does this work in swimming? Well, another story from the Steen article discusses a senior who the previous year reached his goal of qualifying for NCAAs but did not make Kenyon's squad. The senior nevertheless returned for his senior year and made the NCAA squad. Coach Steen, as many other successful coaches have, has very clearly gotten his swimmers to believe in group selection. I believe the results are quantifiable. When you have a group of swimmers that buy into the fact that they need to make all of their teammates better, the improvement curve for everyone rises dramatically. However, there is also little room for the selfish athlete who guns for himself at the expense of his teammates.

I think that Steen's wisdom serves coaches and athletes alike. When you coach a team that can't even get one person to NCAAs, it can be tempting to coddle your best swimmer. After all, that trip to the meet means recognition for you as a coach. Truth be told, I think that it would be much better to convince your best swimmer to buy into making everyone around him/her better, and someday bring a whole team to the meet. As for the athlete who chose one school because he believed it would help him "individually", I think he may find that he would have been better off in a program that put team first.