Swimming Blogs - Scott Hays

To start with, I'm a long stretch off from a professional blogger. I'm just a guy with a few random thoughts. I've been reading different forums with thoughts on why swimming will or won't stay in the forefront of the minds of Americans over the next 4 years until the 2012 Olympics, Michael Phelps or no Michael Phelps.

Here's a couple of thoughts.

1) I have no facts, but I'm willing to bet there's probably 30-40% of the population of this country that doesn't know how to swim. They have no idea what it takes, just to swim. Of those, the majority know how to do nothing more than a freestyle/front crawl stroke. That's what they consider swimming. People will constantly tell you "I can swim". To you and I, that means one thing, to the rest of the country, that means an entirely different thing. Until we can make swimming as popular and mandatory in our school systems, in our physical education classes, people will never have a clue as to what the swimmers in the Olympics are doing, or what is going into it.

2) Look at what our primary sports in America consist of. Football, major hitting and "violance" (don't get me wrong, I love it...") Basketball, non stop action, and again, a pretty good share of violance. NASCAR, I'm sorry, I just don't get it, but you can't tell me people watch cars going around in an oval for 2-3 hours just for the sake of watching cars go fast, my guess is they are there secretly hoping for a couple of those cars to wipe out, thus, violance. Heck, even in baseball, the all American sport, who doesn't love to see the benches clear out and rush the mound and have a blow out on the mound? So what do we do? Maybe we could have a couple of relay team knock the snot out of each other everyonce in awhile so we can add what America really wants to see everyonce in awhile. Heck, a few fist fights at the turn end on occassion, Maybe that will start to draw the American public in.

3) Refreshments. All the sports I just mentioned have a couple of things in common at their events. Beer, beer, hotdogs, more junk food, and more beer. Heck, aren't all sports about a healthy lifestyle? Get Budweiser to sponsor a couple of good sized meets, A couple of adds with the clydesdales pulling the beer wagon through the Olympic pool, or the 4x100 mens team racing the clydesdales...

4) It isn't that swimming isn't a popular sport, it isn't that it can't be exciting, it's just that we aren't giving Americans what they really want at a sporting event. We need to figure out how to get them drunk, give them blood, and send them home with a great story to tell, and make them understand how it's done.

Americans love sports, they love winners, and we have it all in our swimming world here in the states. We just aren't providing it in a manner that the lazy American can understand it. It's a complicated sport. They don't get it. They see the surface, but don't understand it. We need to start getting kids involved more at a young age, and not just competitively, but at a basic swimming program, to a point where they understand all strokes, so when they see the next MP, or Natalie Coughlin, they can say to their parents, that's so tough to do... ANd they can explain it. Then if our sport ever makes it to tv on a regular basis, more and more people will start understanding it.

Just a thought from a guy who came from traditional sports, to watching his daughter grow up in competitive swimming, and has come to realize that next to gymnastics, that swimming is probably the most underrated sport out there.