"At it's best, sport allows us to not only know ourselves better, but to also become more fully who we are." (From Introduction)

As the title suggests, "Learning to Swim: Reflections on Living" is much more than an instructional manual for swim teachers. Instead, each chapter is crafted around life lessons witnessed over many years by author and long-time, award-winning swimming coach Neil McKinlay.

I have to confess I resisted reading this book for several weeks. Not only did the book's main title mislead me, but also I doubted whether anything focused on swimming would interest me. I’ve always perceived competitive swimming to be a physically demanding but rather dull sport. Consequently, I assumed there probably wasn't much that I could learn from stories about people who spent hours engaged in the repetitious and solitary pursuit of traveling back and forth, up and down the lanes of a swimming pool. I was wrong.

I was both surprised and delighted to discover that McKinlay's book addressed issues that coaches of all sports should reflect upon. It seems to me, that at almost every level in today's childrens' and youth sports, winning - as measured by competitive results - is so overemphasized that the many and varied benefits of participation are frequently overlooked. As a result, young people and the adults who lead them, end up missing valuable opportunities to learn more about themselves and to develop skills that may help them succeed later in life. In Learning to Swim, McKinlay reveals the experience of competitive swimming to be a metaphor for life. As a result the book turns out to be an entertaining and insightful account of the type of lessons that young people should be learning from competitive sport programs.

The book is divided into short chapters in which McKinlay recounts personal experiences with his swimmers. In each chapter, we are introduced to a different athlete and a new challenge. We learn how important it is for coaches to take the time to be sensitive to the needs of those they teach. McKinlay shows us that sport experiences often unexpectedly turn out to be life changing for young athletes regardless of their athletic ability. He shows us that all young athletes have the potential to grow from participating in sports, and how much coaches themselves can learn from their students.

"In some sense, every one of us is learning how to swim."

This book should interest sport advocates as well as those who have doubts about the potential value of sport for young people. Learning to Swim would be a great addition as a supplementary text for a coaching methods class. McKinlay's story-telling approach is easy-to-read, entertaining, and deceptively instructive. The stories could be used to stimulate personal reflection and classroom discussion of issues easily overlooked by aspiring coaches, otherwise comfortable to simply mimic the behaviors of their mentors.

Problems with children's and youth sports have persisted for years. While this book makes no pretense to solve them, it's clear that problems will persist until those in positions of leadership take time to reflect upon the true purpose and value of athletics. In Learning to Swim, McKinlay has succeeded in crafting a thought-provoking and enchanting book that anyone who teaches or coaches today's youth will enjoy. Highly recommended!

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