Team Owner Jeff Pease

Looking back at this past year, I wanted to highlight the many successes of NCA, but first, let me take a step back to revisit the role I took on nearly two years ago and my feels about that change.

This role has allowed me to view our program with a different perspective than when I was in the trenches coaching everyday for most of the past four decades. As I have stated to you on many different occasions, I believe my primary role is to mentor and coach my coaches.  A strong coaching staff, like any successful business, is only as strong as it’s weakest link.  My intent is to evaluate every level of our program from our entry-level novice groups to our highest performing age-groups and senior groups. I scrutinize and challenge every coach on my staff, but I also give them the freedom to develop their own coaching style within the NCA developmental model that, as you know, draws heavily on our NCA Value Wheel. I rattle the chains and I shake the tree when I see weaknesses in my staff, but I celebrate and support my coaches when I see a job well done.

I also consider one of my primary roles as educating parents based on my 40 years of coaching every level of the sport and my role as “sports Dad” to my three children.  Many of you have heard me speak at new parent meetings or awards presentations or maybe even in conversations on the pool deck of the importance of having a healthy relationship between the coach, the swimmer, and the parent.  This is the foundation of your swimmer creating a meaningful and, hopefully, long-term relationship with our sport.  One of my major mentors, Pete Malone, co-authored a book I highly recommend all parents read: Just Let ‘Em Play: Guiding Parents, Coaches and Athletes through Youth Sports.  Pete was a high school teammate of mine and went on to a Hall of Fame coaching career.  His insights in the book are based on 44 years of coaching over 10,000 swimmers.

My third primary role is the one I enjoy the most: motivating, challenging, and inspiring the current generation of NCA swimmers.  As the kids can attest, my favorite part of being on the deck is telling the stories of so many of the great kids I have coached over my 40 year career.  Some of my stories are silly while others are pretty intense, but all allow me an important teaching moment.  If every swimmer leaves deck after hearing those stories with a better understanding of what it means to wear the green cap; how important it is to embrace our NCA Value Wheel; and how to represent our great program in the community, then I have fulfilled this role.

I also have “Coach Jeff” moments on occasion (as Coach Mickey and Coach Eva, both former swimmers of mine, can corroborate) where my intensity and passion delivers the needed point and teaches the right lesson to reinforce what my staff is trying to get across to their swimmers in a specific moment.  These moments keep me connected to our swimmers and demonstrate to my coaches that I am present and in support of them every single day.

Reflecting on this past year, I wanted to highlight the many successes that NCA enjoyed.

• Our Go For The Gold Team Building event last spring to support our Olympic and Paralympic Trials qualifiers. Thanks to your support, we raised over $10,000 for these deserving athletes.
• NCA receiving the award to host the 2017 California-Nevada Sectional Championships. There has never been a meet of this magnitude conducted in the history of San Diego-Imperial Swimming, and we are honored to be the meet host and showcase Alga Norte and San Diego.  I encourage every member of our program to get behind this major undertaking: volunteer (jobs are now available on TeamUnify), sell signage, and plan to be on deck to witness the great swimming.
• We restructured our non-profit Boosters organization to re-establish its primary role: to support families who are experiencing financial hardship with swim fees and/or travel fees.
• I listened to our membership’s feedback that we need to provide our swimmers with more technical feedback.  I introduced a technical assistance program called Office Hours and slowed down our 10U workouts to allow our coaches to give our kids more meaningful feedback. I also revamped Saturday Super Stars, which brings our senior swimmers in as mentors to their younger teammates.  I formed a partnership with SwimLabs of Encinitas and have secured our first dates in March and April. This will be a valuable teaching laboratory to assist our NCA staff tin better understanding stroke mechanics by utilizing underwater video.  Finally, I secured our Speedo clinic, inviting our own USA Swimming National Team member Kendyl Stewart to conduct a butterfly clinic February 4 for 50 of our 10U swimmers.  All of the resources we are providing our swimmers are partially or fully subsidized by our registration budget.  And most importantly, I have directed my staff to select swimmers for all of our technical assistance programs based on MERIT and NEED, not based on how fast a swimmer is at meets.
• I am hopeful that our senior program will bring back a Club Excellence banner to NCA as one of the top 18U programs in the country in the near future.  We currently have three 15 year old seniors ranked in the top 20 in the United States for the first time in the history of our program, so the future is bright for NCA!
• With the help of a professional marketing team, we revamped our team website to become a better tool for communication, motivation, and education of our membership. We hired a social content coordinator to steer content to where it needs to be our website and social media sites. Look for ncaswim.com to be the Mercedes of swim team websites in the near future and interact with the team on social media. (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter)
• Most importantly, our age-group program is flourishing from our entry-level, novice swimmers to our Far Western potential finalists, and I am confident that I assembled one of the best staffs I have ever been associated with to guide the future of NCA for years to come!

I want to close with a story about one of my cherished alums and the impact that NCA made on her life.  For privacy, I will refer to her only as Kate. Kate’s grandparents brought her to NCA when she was 12 years old. Kate was raised by a single mom in a tough neighborhood in Oceanside, and she tragically lost her Mom to a violent crime shortly before I met her. Thankfully, her grandparents took Kate into their home, and they thought swimming would be a healthy outlet for her.

When I first met Kate, her eyes were filled with abandonment and lose, and the anger she felt soon manifested itself.  Kate was not easy to coach, had frequent outbursts, and rarely finished a practice.  But it became evident that she loved to race and compete, and she moved up the NCA ladder into my senior group.

Kate never made a Junior National cut, but she was one of the hardest workers I ever coached, a great NCA teammate, and she completed a successful 4 year swimming career at UC Irvine.

She recently connected with me on Facebook, congratulating me on how well NCA is doing and filling me in on her life. I felt such pride knowing that she is doing great, happily married with two beautiful young daughters.  She shared with me that she is indebted to NCA for the support she received from the coaches and her teammates during that very tough period of her life, but really, it is I who is indebted to her. The mark she made on this program is everlasting, and just one of so many great successes to come from our NCA community!

This club is thriving, and I will continue to equally celebrate and support my swimmers at all levels, teaching life skills, and developing student athletes with great character.

See you on the deck and go NCA!

Coach Jeff