Gwen Empie, major in Environmental Humanities, shares about their internship with the Anchorage YMCA Swim Team in Anchorage, AK
“My name is Gwen Empie and I am a rising junior, Environmental Humanities major. This summer I traded my swimsuit for a pair of sneakers and joined the YMCA of Alaska as an assistant swim coach. Growing up on a YMCA swim team, every summer I saw older swimmers come home from college and back to the pool to help coach the younger kids. I always admired the patience and energy they brought to practice and I found it cool they would decide, after a long year of swimming, that they wanted to go to more practices to help out younger athletes. When I started my internship with the Anchorage Y team, my perspective completely changed. I have loved being able to explore this sport, that means so much to me, from the other side of the pool. Working with new coaches, exploring a new program, and learning so much about the intentionality of practice design, team building, and working with athletes in an individual way has taught me a lot. I find it fascinating how many coaches can utilize different strategies with their athletes and all see such positive improvements.
In Alaska, there is only one YMCA, the YMCA of Alaska, and therefore there is only one YMCA swim team. This means to compete against other teams, the Anchorage Y team and all of the athletes need to also be enrolled in a nationwide organization called USA Swimming. This means all of the athletes can attend YMCA championship meets, like Regions, held in Seattle, WA, and Nationals, held in Greensboro, NC. However, they can also local meets through USA, like the long course (Olympic sized pool) senior championship meet coming up later this July. This dual enrollment allows these kids to compete on a wide scale, see a lot of different competition throughout the year, and travel to more locations and pools.
I’ve enjoyed watching these kids progress throughout the summer and working with them has been really fulfilling. I really appreciate when they ask for advice or implement a piece of feedback or successfully accomplish something new we’ve been working on! The head coach of the team, Denise, has been really conscious about explaining her thought process and letting me hands-on work with meet entries, processes, writing practices, and being in the gym/running drylands workouts with the athletes. I’ve found this to be very valuable for me because I am finding out what kind of feedback different kids respond to and how to phrase constructive criticism in a way that makes sense, along with learning a lot about the mechanics of coaching from a “behind the scenes” prospective. I’ve really enjoyed my time so far and look forward to the remainder of our season and our championship meet where the team will be able to see some effects of their hard work!”