NOVA News
October 16th, 2023
Part 1 - Mental Preparation
Confidence is the key to success in life, whether that is swimming the 200 fly for the first time, giving a speech at school, or interviewing for a first job. So how can coaches and parents build confidence in our swimmers from the mental side in our sport?
Start with encouraging your swimmer to have Self Belief. This sounds simple but your swimmer believing in everything they have done in the past helps them to prepare for the challenges ahead; the training, the dryland, sleep, nutrition, all lead to confidence in the task ahead. Performance success depends on three types of core beliefs: a swimmer's view of what they are about to do (event), a swimmer's view of themselves (how prepared a swimmer is), and a swimmer's view of the future (what happens after, good or bad). Self-limited belief is sometimes the barrier that holds swimmers back. The biggest challenge to most young athletes is to change these negative beliefs and thoughts into positive affirmations.
Beyond believing in ourselves, knowing we have done everything we could to prepare for our moment, what else can we do to help build confidence and be mentally prepared? One of my favorites is Control What You Can Control. Too many of us allow silly things that are out of our control to give us an excuse why something didn’t go right. Just as in The Serenity Prayer by American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, you cannot change things that can not be changed.
Swimmers cannot allow “uncontrollables” to affect their mindset during a swim meet. Learning to not focus on the “fears” will help a swimmer's performance and ultimately give them more confidence. Swimmers only have control over their preparation, their effort and their attitude. Swimmers have many things they cannot control at a swim meet: past/future swims, water temperature, teammates mood, officials, opponents results, schedule/timeline, heat and or lane. Learning to accept these challenges leads to success, as the old saying goes “it is what it is’. Swimmers who are in the right mental mindset with confidence perform their best in the pool.
The NOVA coach’s goal is that each swimmer and parent learns a little about the mental aspect of swimming. If you feel your swimmer would benefit from more information on mental preparation please reach out to your swimmer’s coach for age appropriate books and information.
Hope this helps a little as we continue to roll through championship meets, more to come next week on Sleep…
This past weekend it was NOVA's 9-12 year old swimmers turn to take on the Central District Championship meet and WOW did they go above and beyond! Everyone brought their A game, dropping crazy fast times, supporting each other in and out of the water, and showing everyone what it means to be a NOVA swimmer!
The amount of new best times, time standards, and age group cuts achieved this weekend was awe inspiring. It felt like every heat NOVA swimmers were grabbing a sticker to place on the best time mural or posing with their newly acquired time standard duckies for a social media shoutout! Of course, the illustrious Hot Heats made an appearance at the meet and with them came a roar of cheering, dancing, and chaos! At finals, NOVA swimmers once again stepped up and showed passion, determination, and the will to win!
It was clear that all the hard work and dedication from each and every swimmer paid off, resulting in a decisive victory for NOVA. Congratulations to every swimmer on such a successful District Champs!
#OneNOVA
- Coach Kevin
February 16th-18th- NOVA's 9-12 year olds competed at the Central District Champs meet at Regency. Swimmers raced hard, achieved many new best times and time standards, and danced the "Hot Heats" to victory.
Novice Gold, Age Group Dev. Bronze, Age Group Dev. Silver, Age Group Dev. Gold, Age Group Bronze, Age Group Silver, Age Group Gold
Championship Meets
Group coaches: Lead Tim Mousetis, assistant MJ Teixeira
How many swimmers are in Senior Bronze? There are 61 kids in Senior Bronze
What skills are SB working on this week? We are in our taper season getting ready for District champs this weekend. We are focusing on our details, race pace efforts and getting ourselves fired up to swim fast and represent NOVA well.
Tim, what's your favorite part of working with SB? ALL OF IT! We have such a great group of swimmers that enjoy being around each other everyday. We are usually laughing at something or someone every morning. They work hard and are never afraid of a challenge. It’s been a fun year with Senior Bronze this season
MJ, what's your favorite part of work with SB? We have such a wonderful group of kids whose goals all differ. Our kids truly are such good people. They’re not only talented swimmers, but they are just very incredible humans on and off the pool deck. I also enjoy the variety within their goals. Each person has a different goal and I enjoy the strategy and different game plans it takes to get each kid where they want to go.
Tim, what's your favorite part about working with MJ? It’s great having someone like MJ and the energy she brings on deck everyday. She has a way of uplifting everyone around her. I know it does for me and I see it with the swimmers in our group everyday at practice. After getting to know MJ and her swimming background, we both figured out we were trained very similarly through our high school years with our year around teams (TIDE) and (Typhoons). I realized pretty quickly that MJ has an eye for the small things when it comes to swimming so it makes it easy and a lot of fun to know we are both looking for the same things.
MJ, what's your favorite part about working with Tim? There are so many things! Tim always has such a good read on his swimmers. Sometimes he knows them better than they know themselves, ha ha! I appreciate his adaptability to what the swimmers are needing at the moment. I also appreciate his communication style, and how he allows me to take ownership and leadership in my assistant role. He always cares to ask my opinion and empowers me to have a leadership role and set me up for success in each practice! We also both like shaping the person as a whole rather than only the swimming aspect of the kids lives, which we both align with which is awesome.
Tim, if you had a choice between two superpowers, being invisible or flying, which would you choose and why? This is a tough one. I’m trying to decide which one I would get in less trouble with. I think the cooler one is flying but I’m not big on heights so I think I gotta go with being invisible.
MJ, if you had a choice between two superpowers, being invisible or flying, which would you choose and why? Flying!!! Free flights forever, no traffic, no car issues! It really just seems like the most efficient solution to a lot of things…
