BUILDING CHAMPIONS DAN FLACK COACH

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2 Q. Swimming Technique: How is it that Baylor became the NISCA boys and girls national champions? A. Coach Dan Flack: The opportunities at Baylor are end- Swimming Technique was first published in 1964 as the official magazine of the American Swim Coaches Association. Today the title lives as a section in Swimming World Magazine and can be downloaded separately. BUILDING CHAMPIONS Dan Flack has leveraged a competitive career and early coaching training to build successive powerhouses at the Raleigh Swim Association and now the Baylor School in Tennessee, where his high school and club teams reign among the nation s elite. environment. COACH DAN FLACK Head Coach/Aquatics Director The Baylor School (Chattanooga, Tenn.) Dan Flack swam and coached at UNC- Chapel Hill (1988) with a double major in criminal justice and political science. He took his first head coaching job with North Carolina Aquatic Club ( ), and he served as head coach of Bruin Swim Club/Ocean State Squids ( ) before earning Louisiana Coach of the Year honors in 1999 and 2000 with the Bengal Tiger Aquatic Club in Baton Rouge. His Raleigh Swimming Association teams won the men s, women s and combined team championship at the NCSA Junior Nationals in 2004 (national coach of the year) and RSA was selected as a USA Swimming Gold Medal Club for Flack has coached more than 20 Olympic Trials qualifiers and dozens of high school-aged swimmers to top 100 world rankings. Director of the Baylor School programs since 2007, last year he guided the club squads to second place at the 2008 U.S. Short Course Junior Nationals and third place at the 2009 NCSA Junior Nationals. 24 May 2010

3 Talk about your training philosophy. - and then extending peak speed. tion and tempo training to stimulate the nervous system. We do resistance work regularly to lay a great technical stroke foundation. We teach swimmers how to put out amazing maximum efforts. The first year in our program requires a lot of technique reprogramming and learning in-water efficiency. That is why the students do well what to expect and really take off. How has your time with (University of Georgia coach) Jack Bauerle influenced your development as a coach? My time at Georgia was a perfect fit for me me how to talk to ath- ing at instilling that killer confidence at the right moment. But the most - anyone could know Steve Bultman and Carol Capitani. When an issue with the much less and listened much more. ABOVE» Coach Dan Flack bbaaadd Are there any motivational keys that seem to work? tick and explain that they are part of something much bigger than themselves. That really energizes a group once everyone How do the boys and girls support one another? Do you have a goal-setting process? of what the students perceive they can accomplish. How does that work? We have the kids fill out goal sheets similar to those at the national team want the team to do is philosophy. We want gized and enthusiastic - Talk about technique. We are constantly working on tech- have taught many of our swimmers two distinctly different freestyle strokes one for pure sprinting and one for more middle distance work. Record meet results Maintain best times Set goals Graph progress What about with Frank Comfort at the University of North Carolina? What is it about a high school state championship that elicits fast swimming? can get third at sectionals and won t get any extra props around the hallways at You have more than one style? starts with a reverse periodization program model: percent kick non-freestyle focus lots of strokes continued on 26 Helping swimmers to achieve their goals May

4 COACH FLACK continued from 25 ming with power work at the end minutes all-out from a dive or something like that cent kick non-freestyle focus lots of strokes competition A more middle distance or shorter event swimmer has a week that looks like this: percent kick power work speed - at the end - end and lots of technique cent kick power work cent kick if we have a meet the Tuesday competition There are usually five or six layers of this work going on in any one of our training sessions. What about dryland? mix it up a lot. We do more work outside - we have tried to get more athletic in and exercises. We do a pretty dynamic warm- after the session. Talk about swimmers taking ownership outside the pool. choice to do something extra to differenti- on the willingness to separate yourself from everyone else and making that choice on your own. Spend the extra time at your eventually How do you teach body awareness in and out of the water? water in situations where swimmers have the change for which we are looking. This Do you have a staff? are some of the hardest working people characteristics to the pool deck. 26 May 2010

5 SPENCER ROWE S lades: SAMPLE SETS - Trials and who have finished at the junior national level or higher. SCY PROGRESSION OF TIMES 2007 (age 14) 2008 (age 15) 2009 (age 16) 2010 (age 17) LCM and efficiency improved really fast throughout SAMPLE DRYLAND tinuous of ABOVE» Spencer Rowe squat progression pyramid graph May

6 So You Want to Win a Championship? Bottom line: be prepared, understand what winning means and swim fast! W Thank God we still look at it as a team take the team out of it even though it is still - Terry Sue Gault. We win together; we lose out at the same time; we start practice at the - That sense of team is working for Peter has orchestrated a resurgence to the top of girls has filtered down to younger age groups. That respect gives the younger kids a chance to see what makes swimmers make for winners. So why is it that some teams just know they are going to win? - with the inception of the program or the coach and how he is going to move through try to instill that concept from the time swim- hope our aura reflects that. There are times we are hoping we win they didn t just walk on and do it it took THE ROLE OF SALESMAN As the yards pile up and swimmer condi- - workout. PICTURED» The key is who is more prepared. You go to the block and there are eight people who want to win, but only a few are prepared to win. Coach Bill Rose, Mission Viejo 28 May 2010

7 years later this set still comes up all the We did it not so much as a part of his train- went from that workout to a Western States take the results and just happened to get them spread out among the major coaches winning the workout. That means consis- - like that all the time just for that to get TEAM BEHAVIOR Something else the team does is wear we make a huge deal out of it. We are the fun and minimal drama. Wright asks Middle Tyger athletes what they are going to do to ensure the success of their Gault has charged her team more than once to step up in the face of unfortunate disqualifications to top swimmers. says Bottom. Some teams that win are - the camaraderie and the way the Wildcats treat their competitors. That is the kind of winning attitude that enhances our sport. A SYSTEM OF WINNING What makes a real winning team is winning and what that means in the long years from now? The images they ll remem- Great teams love to compete and have of Georgia women who won all five relays at Michigan men. Michigan won every individual freestyle event. Tom championship with predominantly middle and they trained and performed like it. team was the forerunner of expectations for Wolverine team made the U.S. Olympic team and at least five others made international Olympic teams. We had so much There was a ton of team leadership that included post-grads and holdovers from for him to run a team meeting. The guys had already done it and were ready to step way to win a championship. PICTURED» There are some teams that everybody likes to see win because they do it with a gracious spirit. I like Frank Busch and what he portrays. I enjoy watching (the University of) Arizona swim well, watching the bench, the camaraderie and the way they treat their competitors. That is the kind of winning attitude that enhances our sport. Coach Mike Bottom, University of Michigan May