In October of last year Alan Lynn was hired as the Head Coach of the Scottish National Team. Lynn came away from this weekend’s Scottish National Championships optimistic, but more excited about the future of Scottish Swimming.
Lynn feels that the most important aspect to improving the performance of Scottish swimmers is to support the coaches,”My first challenge is to move us on from where we are now which is obviously a pretty high level,” Lynn told the Herald Scotland.
“Most of my work is going to be done through the coaches. For too long, I think the coaches have been neglected and my role will be to support them in whatever area they need it.
“We have a lot of good options for the swimmers around the country now, that’s only going to get better as we develop further and I think that up-skilling the coaches is a way for us to move on to another level.”
One of Lynn’s main focuses will be on developing a stronger squad of top female athletes. Hannah Miley and Corrie Scott earned Commonwealth medals, but Lynn is looking to increase the depth of the team.
One of the things that Lynn is doing to foster that is running a training camp this week in Glasgow for the top 40 female swimmers in the country.
“This camp is about creating a culture where the athletes take responsibility and self-regulate. None of them lack the knowledge of what to do but I find that a lot of them don’t necessarily make the right choices all the time,” said Lynn.
“If I knew exactly why we’ve been stronger on the male side than the female it would be easy to fix.
“Some of it’s cultural I think – we live in a male-dominated world, sport is still male-dominated and I think that girls can sometimes accept that too easily. Of course, there are individuals who haven’t and who have blazed a trail for women in sport but I think we need to give the girls confidence, give them an identity and raise their expectations. We need them to stand up and be counted.”