The Fitter & Faster Swim Tour, known for its high-performance clinics featuring Olympian instructors, has announced the Green Flag Series, exclusively for the Indiana LSC.
The series (named after the green flags in Indiana’s ubiquitous racing culture) targets swimmers with three years or less of club swimming experience, in hopes of encouraging them to stick with the sport.
“We needed a better kind of entry into what we call the Team Indiana system,” Indiana’s Sport Development Director Roch King told SwimSwam. “We’re looking in particular to better serve the group of this kind of started club swimming but still aren’t completely sure that this is their sport.”
‘Team Indiana’ is a symbol for the cooperative spirit of the Indiana LSC’s clubs and coaches, who benefit from a number of readily available facilities under club control and foster a family-type environment.
“The Series came about as a result of the Indiana LSC looking for someone to partner with to run their camps,” Fitter & Faster Director of Sales Julie Bachman told SwimSwam. “We are very good at putting on events, and we have the relationships with the athletes, and the ability to put on some amazing curriculums, so the fit was there.”
“We want to fuel that ignition for the athletes to say ‘this is a cool sport, there’s cool people that do it, and I can see myself getting better at this.'”
Each stop includes a signature Fitter & Faster High Performance Clinic along with the youth clinic. Organizers try to diversify regionally within the state for each pair of series clinics, and the clinics for young swimmers also feature a segment for parents to introduce them to Indiana swimming culture.
In the past, the Green Flag clinics took place on a Saturday with a High Performance clinic following Sunday, but in the upcoming stops, the two sessions will happen on one day.
“We’re looking in particular to better serve the group of this kind of started Club swimming but still aren’t completely sure that this is their sport,” King added. “We want to fuel that ignition for the athletes to say ‘this is a cool sport, there’s cool people that do it, and I can see myself getting better at this.'”
If you’re jealous that your LSC is yet to implement such a series, fear not: the Fitter & Faster tour is always looking to expand.
“We have conversations with different LSCs all the time, and I think more so than ever we’ve started to address some other areas – a good example is open water,” Bachman added. “When an entity like an individual state’s LSC or even USA Swimming looks at some of these things that they’re trying to accomplish from a swimmer participation standpoint, a lot of the LSCs will look outside themselves, and say ‘Let’s let Fitter & Faster take this,’ and I think we’ve been extremely effective at that.”
The next Green Flag Series clinics are happening on October 7th and 28th, in St. John and Fischers, respectively. Olympian Lacey Nymeyer and NCAA Champion Giles Smith will serve as instructors on the 7th, with Olympian Nick Thoman on the 28th.
Click here to learn more about upcoming clinics.
Fitter & Faster Swim Tours is a SwimSwam partner.